JAMES T. CAT RIP

Tonight we had James put to sleep. He was 17 years-old and had been a part of my family since the late 1980s. He came down with a tumor quite a few years ago, but we were able to keep it in check with some pills. He was a good cat--put up with a lot of crap from his keepers. Spending several years among dogs who were much dumber than he couldn't have been an easy thing for him. Spending the last three years of his life having pills jammed down his throat twice a day couldn't have been easy, either. Still, he was always a trooper--enthusiastic, loving and happy to have you pet him. :)

Now for the depressing bit. (Feel free to skip this part as it's more for me than for you, I'm guessing.)

He was doing fine up until a month ago. About a week into January he lost nearly half his body weight and started to eat less and less. He suddenly had trouble walking and finally, two days ago, stopped walking all together and eating, too. A piece of smoked salmon our other two cats were clamoring for actually repelled James.

Soon, he would just stay where ever you put him. TheWife and I realized that his time on this planet was very limited and rather than watch him dwindle away over the span of days, we felt it would be best for him and us if we took him to the vet's one last time.

This is where being an Atheist really sucks because I know that he's gone. No cat heaven, no cat Jesus, no cat God to absolve him of his sins of peeing where he shouldn't and forgetting to lick his butt after a trip to the cat litter box. He's just gone--but on the other hand, I have this rather unusual belief that we're all immortal as long as we're remembered. So, I figure, I'll just have to remember James for as long as I can. The sound of his purr, the feel of his fur, the touch of his little paw pulling at my hand when he wants his ears scratched some more.

Oh yeah and you can check out [http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepete/tags/jamestcatrip/|some pictures of him if you feel like remembering him, too]. I know I've got more pics of him floating around, it's just that I only had those handy today.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I've turned off the comments for this post, so if you're feeling sad for my wife and I, just pray to whatever God you believe in, or just think of us and that'll be enough for me. Thanks.

With all the truly fucked up things in the world, you'd think a cat dying wouldn't be that big of a deal to me. Oh well...

UPDATE 2/13/6:

The animal hospital we bring our cats to has a special comfortable room for pet owners who are about to put their pet to sleep. It was the room we put James to sleep in. The room had a comfortably-cushioned wicker loveseat and chair and "inspirational" wall art. Most of the time I hate so-called "inspirational" art because it's just BS rhetoric. However, one of the things on the wall in that room was a sort of poem that for some reason helped me deal with what we felt we had to do. Here it is in case you're contemplating putting your pet to sleep:

From The Outermost House
by
Henry Beston (1888-1968)

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren. They are not underlings. They are other nations -- caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

The other thing that helped me was my friend Jen using the word "custodian" to describe what a pet owner really is. We are custodians of another life. That said to me that I have to make the morally hard choices as well as the easy ones. Thanks, Jen. Thanks Henry Beston for your words, as well. I know you're dead, but I still feel like I can thank you.