El Burro Volador

If I was a bit flippant about Cleo’s thyroid problem, it was because I was relieved.  The diagnosis was that her problem was treatable, and that, with the addition of daily medication, she would go back to being her good old weaselly self.

But that was on Wednesday.  Although we gave Cleo her first dose of medicine on Thursday, it became apparent by Friday morning that she was, as Rebekah put it, fading.   So we took her back into the vet for more tests.  I held her on my lap the whole time I was there, even though, as usual, Beezy shed like all get out, leaving a layer of cat hair on my shirt and short so dense that it actually obscured the color of the underlying garment in places.  I didn’t care.

The doctor who saw Cleo this time was alarmed by her worsening symptoms, and concluded that something more than the thyroid was involved.  The word “lesion” was used in reference to Cleo’s brain.  I agreed to leave her for further testing and go to work.

At about eleven-thirty the doctor and I had that difficult phone conversation where you explain that yes, you love kitty, but thousands of dollars for an MRI or CT scan (in my experience, vets never call it a “cat scan”) is not in the budget, so please confine your efforts to some blood-testing and cover our bases with medical treatment.

At about noon, the doctor and Rebekah had the much more difficult conversation, the one where the doctor says the test for feline leukemia came back positive, and there’s no treating or controlling the disease at this stage.  Rebekah asked the doctor if we could have Cleo for one more night before bringing her back fo her last visit.  They said yes.

We planned to make Weasel’s last night a good one.  On the way to pick her up from the vet, I stopped and bought some cream for her – we had tuna at the house, but solids were always less interesting to Cleo.  We thought she could read in bed with ‘Bekah, who wouldn’t mind when Cleo batted at her book or laid down on it.  We figured she could be let out into the garden for a last roll in the dirt and bask in the sun.

She probably couldn’t sleep on bed, for fear she might fall off in the night (her balance was going, and she walked in circles – she had very nearly fallen off of several things in the last couple days), but we were planning on putting her to bed in a pile of fresh-from-the-dryer laundry, another one of her favorite things.

As it happened the highlight of Weezy’s last day was the afternoon she spent tucked beneath Rebekah’s chin as they read together on the bed.  Her forepaws weren’t working well enough to bat at the pages as she used to, but she seemed happy, ‘Bekah said.  I had gone back to work for a few hours so that the two could have some alone time and so that the bills from Beezy dying didn’t wipe us out as well.

By the time I came home at four o’clock, Cleo was sinking much faster than we’d anticipated.  I held her for a while.  I poured her a saucer of cream, and though she was clearly interested, sticking her head over it several times, she didn’t seem to be able to extend her tongue to lap the bowl.  Eventually I took her outside for a bit, and this seemed to perk her up.  She got up to explore the garden, but could only circle around the same couple feet of ground, no rolling or basking was in store.  I took her back into the bedroom and tried to read with her, but found that I couldn’t concentrate on anything but Beezy.  I got a piece of paper and began writing down all the things I loved about Cleo.  Then I read it aloud to her and petted her for a while.  Rebekah came in and we had a talk.  It was becoming increasingly apparent that the spark of life in Cleo was withdrawing from her body – she couldn’t get to her feet on her own, her breathing was becoming labored, her left eye was drooping, and neither of her eyes followed an extended finger passed in front of her face.  We decided that waiting until our appointment late next morning, more than twelve hours away, was selfish – Cleo could do nothing but suffer, and we were just putting off saying goodbye.

So we called the Emergency Vet Hospital.  We bundled Weezy up in Bruce, Rebekah’s longtime security blanket, and took her for one more car ride.  At the hospital they put us in a room right away, had us fill out paperwork and settle the bill beforehand – which was considerate, as we wouldn’t want to bother with it after.  I held Weezy while Rebekah did the  pen work.  They took Cleo in the back to put a catheter in, and through the closed door we heard her make her tiny plaintive cry, the one that all her life long had never failed to inspire pity in me.  I told ‘Bekah I should go back and just be there to comfort her while they did, but she told me to let them do their jobs.

Once Beezy came back to us, wearing a bracelet made of a green ace bandage with a catheter poking out, she soon settled on my lap.  Curled into a tiny ball, she looked cozy and comfortable.  I cupped her tiny head in my palm and stroked her ear with my thumb, while my other hand found a place by her hip to scritch, also with just one thumb, burrowing into her soft, dense fur.  She began to purr quietly for the first time all evening, and closed her eyes.  “Motorboat, motorboat” I said, as I often had before when Beezy began to purr in my lap.  For a moment it was as though nothing was wrong; we were just waiting for the doctor to come in and wrap up a routine physical.

Then the doctor came in, and ever-so-delicately, ever-so-gently, steered us through the final act of Weezy’s life.  I gave up my petting of Beezy’s head to Rebekah, and Cleo kept purring quietly throughout the injection until, sometime just after eight o’clock, she died.