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Aug. 17th, 2009 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleThis is a lesson I didn't need, this protracted, draining battle. It's always there: the inevitable, the figure in the corner, sitting and waiting. The curtain always falls. The check always comes.
It's always been the long shadow cast over my conscious and subconscious brain. Somehow, I have a few rods and cones in the back of my eyeballs that are permanently black: they look at my dog, my parents, my friends, at my face in the mirror, and they tell me, "One day. One day you'll cease to be, and everything you do will be gone like smoke. Every thought, every feeling, every desire and dislike. All gone."
It's easy, you know, to push that aside. It's easy to shove it to the back of your brain and say, "Well, yeah, but not now. I have to walk the dog/wash my hair/finish some work/make dinner. I'll worry about it later. I'll look the other way til later."
And you try to forget. Maybe you do forget. Until it's later.
Until it's later, and you notice maybe someone you love isn't moving as easily as they did. Someone isn't remembering conversations. Someone is coughing too much. Someone's missed an awful lot of work. Someone's grandkids are looking worried. Someone's wife is a wreck. Someone's parents are shellshocked.
Someone's cat is much too thin.
I've had Marble for eleven years. I got her and her sister meadow as feral kittens, caught with their equally feral mother in a humane trap by a friend behind the building said friend worked in. They came to Pittsburgh with me, the two kittens, and Simon, who joined them from the ASPCA. Five hours in a car, and while Simon yowled like a sonic dagger to the brain with the unfailing regularity of a living metronome, occasionally reaching out a paw to grab my arm and scare the hell out of me, Marble and Meadow huddled together in their separate carrier, unspeaking, for all that long drive.
Simon was immediately outgoing and gregarious, but the girls remained feral for months. Months. They would run away when I crossed the room. They would push back into the sofa cushions, staring with enormous eyes, if I got too close. They would shed like small explosions if I managed, somehow, so carefully, to pick one of them up. Meadow found the most improbable, logic-defying spots to hide from me. I still don't know how she managed to get behind the microwave.
But Marble. She was smart.
I bought them a cardboard scratching box. Just pieces of corrugated in a little tray, laced with catnip to keep them interested, and away form my damned sofa. In the spirit of positive reinforcement, I would keep a respectful distance, and when one of them sharpened their claws on the thing, throw cat treats. Meadow didn't quite grasp the concept, insisting that the sky was falling every time a little fish or tiny chicken leg landed near her. But Marble got it. And fast. She would huddle over the box. She'd scratch at it a few times. Then she'd stop, and look at me across the room over her shoulder, to make sure I was paying attention. If I didn't move, it was scratch, scratch, look again. Scratch, scratch, look. And always, always she won. Her manicure never got finished, but she slowly lost her girlish figure as she came to realise that I=food.
Meadow never quite lost her rampant neurosis, and went to live with a friend some time after I moved back to Philly. Marble and Simon stayed with me, getting used first to Kayli, then to Kahlua, and accepting both with remarkable aplomb. When feline sibling Tekiah joined us, they accepted her as much as she deigned to let them. And for the most part-- and with the glaring exception of She-Who-Hates-All-Save-Mummy (and by Mummy, Tekiah means Kahlua, not me)-- we were all happy.
And then one day, early this spring, I think, I got a call from my friend, the one who'd taken Meadow. It'd been years since we spoke, and as I enthusiastically greeted her, she said, "Wait. Don't get too happy yet."
Meadow's kidneys were failing. They'd tried everything. I stared at Marble. A few days later, Lisa called back. Meadow had died.
I saw the shadow in the corner.
Marble had already begun to lose weight by then. At first I thought, well, these things happen when cats get older. Never mind the fact that Simon was almost exactly the same age yet still looked as he ever had. I closed my eyes. I wouldn't look. But finally, the fear and common sense took over, and I went to the vet with her. It was time for shots for her and Simon, anyway. She'd gone from 15 pounds-- a literal marble-- to ten. I was concerned.
We tried drugs. Nothing. We tried an ultrasound. Abnormal. We tried a fine needle aspiration. Inconclusive. And finally, two weeks ago, exploratory surgery. By then, she was seven pounds. It was hepatitis.
The shadow wasn't sitting in the corner any more. It was sitting in the middle of the couch. At my table. On my bed.
I sat on the floor of the bathroom every day for a week, over and over, shooting food down her throat while she glared at me resignedly. The gentlest of my feline trio, she accepted what she couldn't escape. Just as, tonight, she's accepting having a feeding tube inserted as a last-ditch effort to help her recover. Which is more than I can say for myself. I can't accept the tube. I can't accept the shaved patches and the too-prominent bones and the loose coat and the yellow, yellow skin. She will go far more gently into that good night than I, watching her, will accept.
I'd like to say there's some kind of greater meaning that I'm finding in all of this. I'd like to say that I understand that giving her a gentle death before she begins to suffer is a gift. I'd like to say I can come to terms with the natural order of things, and that this is a part of the caretaking of another creature that we all must accept. That in going through this, slowly and deliberately, making the informed, considered choices I never had time to make when Kayli died so precipitously, I'm learning how to live, and finding peace.
But I'm not.
There is no comfort. There is no peace. There is guilt and anguish and rage and loss and utter, absolute, selfish terror. This is not just my beautiful, graceful, snarky, loving, beloved fur-covered child dying: this is me. This is my other animals, and my music teachers, and that director I loved, and my aunt, and the musicians I worshipped, and my parents, and you. This is everyone. This is everything and every one I've ever loved.
So please G-d don't send me that poem about the rainbow bridge. Don't tell me this is a gift, or that I'll find another kitten soon. Don't tell me that when I hold her some day which may be very soon, and she gives a little sigh, and the light goes out of her eyes, and I never again hear her demanding breakfast, or feel her standing behind me with just the tip of her tail touching me, that somehow this is good. This is not good. It's just what is. It's the fight no one wins, and I'm losing it. She's losing it. I'm losing her. I can save her suffering, but she'll still be gone.
If, by the grace of G-d, some miracle occurs, and she pulls through, there won't be enough words in the language to express my gratitude and joy. I love her-- her attitude, her green eyes, her soft-as-a-rabbit fur. I don't regret the time, or the lost work, or the thousands of dollars. I don't regret taking her in eleven years ago.
I regret-- I am enraged and terrified and bewildered-- that it might end like this: too soon, and in sickness and surgery and confusion and a hospital miles away from her favourite spot on the couch. That it ends in a fight I can't-- no one can-- win. That I am absolutely helpless. That the only thing I can do is ask the shadow for just a little more time.
It doesn't feel like enough.
It's always been the long shadow cast over my conscious and subconscious brain. Somehow, I have a few rods and cones in the back of my eyeballs that are permanently black: they look at my dog, my parents, my friends, at my face in the mirror, and they tell me, "One day. One day you'll cease to be, and everything you do will be gone like smoke. Every thought, every feeling, every desire and dislike. All gone."
It's easy, you know, to push that aside. It's easy to shove it to the back of your brain and say, "Well, yeah, but not now. I have to walk the dog/wash my hair/finish some work/make dinner. I'll worry about it later. I'll look the other way til later."
And you try to forget. Maybe you do forget. Until it's later.
Until it's later, and you notice maybe someone you love isn't moving as easily as they did. Someone isn't remembering conversations. Someone is coughing too much. Someone's missed an awful lot of work. Someone's grandkids are looking worried. Someone's wife is a wreck. Someone's parents are shellshocked.
Someone's cat is much too thin.
I've had Marble for eleven years. I got her and her sister meadow as feral kittens, caught with their equally feral mother in a humane trap by a friend behind the building said friend worked in. They came to Pittsburgh with me, the two kittens, and Simon, who joined them from the ASPCA. Five hours in a car, and while Simon yowled like a sonic dagger to the brain with the unfailing regularity of a living metronome, occasionally reaching out a paw to grab my arm and scare the hell out of me, Marble and Meadow huddled together in their separate carrier, unspeaking, for all that long drive.
Simon was immediately outgoing and gregarious, but the girls remained feral for months. Months. They would run away when I crossed the room. They would push back into the sofa cushions, staring with enormous eyes, if I got too close. They would shed like small explosions if I managed, somehow, so carefully, to pick one of them up. Meadow found the most improbable, logic-defying spots to hide from me. I still don't know how she managed to get behind the microwave.
But Marble. She was smart.
I bought them a cardboard scratching box. Just pieces of corrugated in a little tray, laced with catnip to keep them interested, and away form my damned sofa. In the spirit of positive reinforcement, I would keep a respectful distance, and when one of them sharpened their claws on the thing, throw cat treats. Meadow didn't quite grasp the concept, insisting that the sky was falling every time a little fish or tiny chicken leg landed near her. But Marble got it. And fast. She would huddle over the box. She'd scratch at it a few times. Then she'd stop, and look at me across the room over her shoulder, to make sure I was paying attention. If I didn't move, it was scratch, scratch, look again. Scratch, scratch, look. And always, always she won. Her manicure never got finished, but she slowly lost her girlish figure as she came to realise that I=food.
Meadow never quite lost her rampant neurosis, and went to live with a friend some time after I moved back to Philly. Marble and Simon stayed with me, getting used first to Kayli, then to Kahlua, and accepting both with remarkable aplomb. When feline sibling Tekiah joined us, they accepted her as much as she deigned to let them. And for the most part-- and with the glaring exception of She-Who-Hates-All-Save-Mummy (and by Mummy, Tekiah means Kahlua, not me)-- we were all happy.
And then one day, early this spring, I think, I got a call from my friend, the one who'd taken Meadow. It'd been years since we spoke, and as I enthusiastically greeted her, she said, "Wait. Don't get too happy yet."
Meadow's kidneys were failing. They'd tried everything. I stared at Marble. A few days later, Lisa called back. Meadow had died.
I saw the shadow in the corner.
Marble had already begun to lose weight by then. At first I thought, well, these things happen when cats get older. Never mind the fact that Simon was almost exactly the same age yet still looked as he ever had. I closed my eyes. I wouldn't look. But finally, the fear and common sense took over, and I went to the vet with her. It was time for shots for her and Simon, anyway. She'd gone from 15 pounds-- a literal marble-- to ten. I was concerned.
We tried drugs. Nothing. We tried an ultrasound. Abnormal. We tried a fine needle aspiration. Inconclusive. And finally, two weeks ago, exploratory surgery. By then, she was seven pounds. It was hepatitis.
The shadow wasn't sitting in the corner any more. It was sitting in the middle of the couch. At my table. On my bed.
I sat on the floor of the bathroom every day for a week, over and over, shooting food down her throat while she glared at me resignedly. The gentlest of my feline trio, she accepted what she couldn't escape. Just as, tonight, she's accepting having a feeding tube inserted as a last-ditch effort to help her recover. Which is more than I can say for myself. I can't accept the tube. I can't accept the shaved patches and the too-prominent bones and the loose coat and the yellow, yellow skin. She will go far more gently into that good night than I, watching her, will accept.
I'd like to say there's some kind of greater meaning that I'm finding in all of this. I'd like to say that I understand that giving her a gentle death before she begins to suffer is a gift. I'd like to say I can come to terms with the natural order of things, and that this is a part of the caretaking of another creature that we all must accept. That in going through this, slowly and deliberately, making the informed, considered choices I never had time to make when Kayli died so precipitously, I'm learning how to live, and finding peace.
But I'm not.
There is no comfort. There is no peace. There is guilt and anguish and rage and loss and utter, absolute, selfish terror. This is not just my beautiful, graceful, snarky, loving, beloved fur-covered child dying: this is me. This is my other animals, and my music teachers, and that director I loved, and my aunt, and the musicians I worshipped, and my parents, and you. This is everyone. This is everything and every one I've ever loved.
So please G-d don't send me that poem about the rainbow bridge. Don't tell me this is a gift, or that I'll find another kitten soon. Don't tell me that when I hold her some day which may be very soon, and she gives a little sigh, and the light goes out of her eyes, and I never again hear her demanding breakfast, or feel her standing behind me with just the tip of her tail touching me, that somehow this is good. This is not good. It's just what is. It's the fight no one wins, and I'm losing it. She's losing it. I'm losing her. I can save her suffering, but she'll still be gone.
If, by the grace of G-d, some miracle occurs, and she pulls through, there won't be enough words in the language to express my gratitude and joy. I love her-- her attitude, her green eyes, her soft-as-a-rabbit fur. I don't regret the time, or the lost work, or the thousands of dollars. I don't regret taking her in eleven years ago.
I regret-- I am enraged and terrified and bewildered-- that it might end like this: too soon, and in sickness and surgery and confusion and a hospital miles away from her favourite spot on the couch. That it ends in a fight I can't-- no one can-- win. That I am absolutely helpless. That the only thing I can do is ask the shadow for just a little more time.
It doesn't feel like enough.