Friday evening Margaret and I were happy and having fun making supper. She was getting some stuff ready in the kitchen, and I was outside putting hamburgers on the grill. Elliot, our cat, was her normal contented self. Five minutes later we heard her crying in the bedroom. We went back there and she was laying on the ground, unable to move any part of the back half of her body. Ten minutes later we were in the car on the way to the animal hospital. Less than an hour later she was dead.
Just over three years ago, while at my younger brother's high school graduation, my other brother, Clayton, got a text message. He worked at Zaxby's at the time, and his co-worker was asking him if he could adopt a kitten. She had been heard crying in the storm drain and the fire department had to come, send someone down into it, and get her back out. My parents said no dice, Clayton had a cat already and they didn't want another one in the house. He argued with them but I saved the day by stepping in and saying, "I'll take her" (after seeing a picture of the kitten on his phone). Everyone agreed - that is, until my mom remembered that I was temporarily living in their house. By then it was too late though, Elliot was mine.
She was the greatest kitten in the history of the world. She and I shared a room and I took her to the vet a bunch and got all her shots and that sort of thing. I would come home from work, sit on the end of my bed, turn on the TV, and play a little XBOX. Elliot would stick her claws into the back of my shirt, crawl up my back, and perch on my shoulder (or even on top of my head) and watch me play and purr her little heart out. A few months later I moved to my apartment in a nearby town. Clayton was living in his own apartment by then, and so Elliot stayed with him for a few months (I was busy getting married and all). Clayton's roommate had a little dog, and Elliot and this dog (Atticus) would have epic wars over one another's food. Elliot would wait outside the door to Atticus' room, and when the dog ran out (going for Elliot's food) she would run in, eat as much of his food as possible as quickly as possible, and then use her paw to flip his bowl over, scattering the food, and take off running again.
Elliot moved back in with me, and now Margaret and I were married so Mag of course lived with me as well. She and Elliot fell in love so quickly, and with such intensity, I actually grew jealous. "She's my cat." I'd tell Margaret. "She loves me!" But that wasn't true anymore - Elliot would follow Mag around, jump into her lap, sleep on her side of the bed, and always choose her over me. A year later we moved into the house we now live in, and brought Elliot with us of course. Our landlords didn't want any pets, but we explained to them that if we couldn't keep Elliot then we simply weren't going to rent from them. Keep Elliot we did, and son, she ran this house. She would spend each day on the guest bed, watching out the window for either Mag or I to arrive home from work. She'd watch us walk up to the back door, and then jump down and run into the den, throwing herself on the floor on her back and waiting for us to pet her. When I'd sit down to watch TV she would jump onto the couch, walk across my lap, and lay next to me purring. I'd pet her, but when I reached up to press a button on my laptop or something she'd reach out her paw and put it on my arm, extending her claws just enough so I'd be sure and know she was there, telling me, "It's petting time right now." She'd sleep in bed with us quite often, and sometimes would wake Mag up in the middle of the night was touching Mag's face with her paw. Mag would wake up and say something to Elliot and Elliot would just lay there and purr (sometimes so loud it was impossible to go back to sleep).
On the way to the hospital Mag was sitting in the backseat with Elliot as I drove. "Don't worry baby," I told her. "Obviously there's no way she could have broken her back so it can't be anything that serious. She's freaking out right now because she doesn't know what's going on, but the vet will and they'll take care of it. It's probably some weird cramp or something." It was truly horrific, seeing Elliot scared and trying to move, turning back and forth but not able to use her back legs. I felt that the horror was on our end though - it sucks for us to see her like that but she's just scared and will soon be cared for. I told Mag on the way, "Listen, I can't get tomorrow off so maybe you should call your boss and let him know you might need it off. They might have to keep her overnight and you might have to come get her tomorrow morning."
We got to the animal hospital and took her inside. I filled out paperwork as they took Elliot from Margaret into the back. A few minutes later they called us into a small room and said the vet would be there in a minute to let us know what was up. We waited nervously for a moment or two, me assuring Margaret that everything was going to be alright, and then the vet came in. She explained to us that what was going on was a blood clot. There was a lot of technical speak but basically the top half of the heart grows large to compensate for a smaller bottom half, sometimes some blood clots form up there, and they can get thrown out and clot up the blood stream. This was what had happened and was why she couldn't use her back half, and why her back paws and all were growing cold. It's not preventable and just something that happens sometimes - especially to young cats. I'm thinking in my head, "Okay, blood clots. What do I know about blood clots? How do they fix these? Flush them out? Why are we standing her talking about all this - let's get moving and get it fixed!" I was about to say something to that effect when I looked back up at the veterinarian. She has large, expressive eyes and I figured it out about half a second before I heard the words, "euthanize her."
Margaret started crying and turned and walked into the corner. The vet almost started crying but I, the manly man, stayed in practical mode. There was a long silence and then I said, "So...that's pretty much the only option?" She told us it was, and that sometimes they had tried pain medication and stuff but that nothing had ever worked and they had always regretted trying it. The blood clot causes intense pain and is untreatable. She said she'd give us a minute to talk about it and then left us alone in the room. Mag cried. She cried in the way that only girls can cry, beating on the chest of the guy that's holding them and crying not just out of grief - but at the unfairness of a world in which grief exists. "You know we have to do this, right?" I asked her, and she nodded. I was pretty teary-eyed myself, but having someone else to comfort always helps me hold my own emotions in check. A minute or so later the door cracked open and a tech brought us a box of tissues and left. "Hang on a second," I told her. "Can I talk to you in the hall?"
I left Margaret in the room, stepped out into the hall, started telling the tech what we wanted to do, and just broke down crying. I cry very rarely, and never in public, but I just leaned on the wall in the hallway crying and crying and trying to talk. I finally was able to tell her, "This is what we need. You bring her back in, we tell her goodbye, and then we're going to turn and walk out of the building and you take care of the rest. We'll come back tomorrow afternoon and get her body. Whatever I need to sign and whatever I need to pay let me do it now because we're going to leave as soon as we say goodbye." She asked if we wanted to be with her when they put her to sleep but I said no, we wanted to say goodbye and leave and for them to do it as soon as possible. I paid her, signed a release form, and went back into the room.
Margaret sat in a chair against one wall, and I sat in a chair against the other, each of us staring at the floor, or another wall, or anything but one another, and crying. They brought Elliot in and cautioned us to be careful - that she was in a lot of pain and therefore biting and clawing a lot (I knew already - I still have a swollen hand with four deep fang marks on my hand where she bit me while we were loading her up in the truck). Elliot just laid on the table and meowed to us though. We hugged her, we kissed her, we cried, and we said goodbye. They asked us if we wanted a moment alone but I told them no, to just take care of her as quickly as possible. We turned, put our arms around one another, walked stoically across the waiting room, through the front door, and stopped in the parking lot and just wailed like babies.
I'm crying now as I'm writing this. It's so weird to me. I've lost pets before, but I was always young or not that close to them. I know people have real tragedy in their lives. People have lost siblings, lovers, parents, children, and much, much more. 70,000 people die every single day around the world. But as Stalin once said, "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic." I'm not in a competition over who has the most right to grief - I don't want grief or strive for it. Maybe I shouldn't feel as sad as I do, or have cried as much as I have. All I know is that it hurts a lot and sucks so hard. When you have a pet you know that you are going to out live it. Humans have a longer life span than almost all creatures that could be considered pets (I don't know many people who have a sea turtle for a pet). Still though - this was an inside cat who we took great care of, I thought she'd been around for at least another ten years. We already talked about, and I thought a lot about, the fact that Elliot lived with us before our kid Flipper did. He'd grow up with her as our pet and she'd be as much a part of our family to him as his mother and father were. She'd die eventually, hopefully in her sleep when he was like 13. Not now, not one hour after being fine.
She's buried now. We got her on Saturday and took her out to Mag's parents house. Clayton came out and met us and we buried her next to Mag's Yorkshire terrier, who died almost four years ago. We told her goodbye, planted a lantana on her grave, and cried a little bit more. The greatest part of the grief is over. Replaced by a quiet sadness that will fade with time, once we get used to not seeing her when we get home, or sleeping in bed without her.
On Friday we got in the truck and drove back home in near silence. Holding hands and taking turns crying as we made our way down the roads back to our home. We walked in the door and Mag lay down on the floor, in the spot where Elliot would always lead us before turning on her back so we'd rub her belly. I laid down next to her and we curled up in an awkward ball and held each other and cried. Then I got up, walked outside, took the hamburgers off of the grill and threw them away. I walked into my room and got out my clothes for work the next day. I took a shower. I went to bed. When faced with death, what else can we do?
R.I.P. Elliot. I loved you way more than anyone ever would have thought I had to capacity to love an animal.
