{"id":642,"date":"2014-10-13T08:46:58","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T12:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=642"},"modified":"2019-09-13T06:11:15","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T10:11:15","slug":"killed-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/killed-cat\/","title":{"rendered":"I Killed My Cat"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Going to bed is not possible. Because before I go to bed I brush the cat and give him the last half of his chow so he won\u2019t stomp on me, hungry in the middle of the night. But there is no cat tonight. I have killed him.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d just finished his dinner and was making the yowling sound that usually means he\u2019s about to throw up. I chased him yelling \u201cNo Not On The Carpet\u201d all over the house until the dog and I cornered him. He was panting and a front paw looked broken. He tried to get away limping on the buckled paw. That\u2019s when I realized he was in pain.<\/p>\n

A bright almost-full moon glared at me as I lugged the cat carrier to the car. The cat and I drove from one emergency animal hospital to another but Cornell University\u2019s Companion Animal Emergency and Critical Care Service confirmed what the first vet told us.
\n\u201cWe can stabilize him $800 to $1000 overnight $129 to have him seen by the vet, call the cardiologist in the morning maybe $1600 heart failure leaking blood clots $340 sonograms and testing, hypothermia, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – we cannot promise a good prognosis \u2026\u201d I\u2019d already spent $100 at the first hospital.
\n\u201cPlease. I don\u2019t want him to be in pain.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s up to you,\u201d said the vet.
\n\u201cLook, I\u2019m the one who signed the papers to remove my daughter\u2019s life support. So I can face letting go of her cat if it\u2019s the time for that,\u201d I told the doctor of veterinary medicine who looked no older than my daughter who died.<\/p>\n

Almost ten years ago, at an SPCA extension<\/a> in PetSmart, Marika held up a lethargic kitten that had multiple thumbs and a Roman nose.
\n\u201cLook mom. This one has two hearts on his side.\u201d With some effort, the kitten raised its head and licked her hand gratefully. \u201cYou\u2019re lucky,\u201d she said. He was lucky. The vet found eye and ear infections, an upper respiratory infection, and a heart murmur. We took him home. Marika named him Skittles<\/a> and he grew to be a big, sweet, healthy member of our tiny family. Now Skittles\u2019 luck was running out. His heart murmur had caught up with him.<\/p>\n

This is crap, I said to myself. I am not God. Why am I always the one signing papers and calling the end to life?<\/p>\n

Skittles was wailing when the vet carried him back to me, swaddled in stiff pink waterproof pads. I wrapped my arms around the pitiful bundle.
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I whispered into the fur on the top of his head. \u201cThank you for being a really great cat.\u201d What could I say to this friend I just sentenced to death? \u201cI love you, Skittles.\u201d I rubbed his chin. He licked my hand gratefully as the vet injected him.<\/p>\n

The almost-full moon glowered at me when I arrived home and walked my daughter\u2019s dog in the driveway. It kaleidoscoped through my tears as I began my nightly chant:
\n\u201cGoodnight Moon. Goodnight Marika. Goodnight Morocca, Fraidy, and Sushi \u2026 Goodnight Skittles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has anyone ever had to do this? What do you do to feel better? It feels like I’ve been dumped into an old plastic bag where something’s decaying. Everything looks blurred and gray outside the bag while inside it stinks and I’m running out of air.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going to bed is not possible. Because before I go to bed I brush the cat and give him the last half of his chow so he won’t stomp on me, hungry in the middle of the night. But there is no cat tonight. I have killed him. He’d just finished his dinner and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[275,276,281,278,279,277,280],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-ending-a-pets-life","tag-euthanasia","tag-grief-pet-loss","tag-i-killed-my-cat","tag-pet-in-pain","tag-pet-loss","tag-saying-goodbye"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}