[originally written February 9th 2017]
You know before you step out the door. You’re going to the rescue centre, there will be something small and cute there and you will fall in love. You might tell yourself that you’re just going to look, but you’re not. You’re going there because you want to fall in love, you want to share your life.
You also know that one day it will end. The dog that jumps up to greet you after a hard day’s work that somehow makes it all better. The cat that sits and curls up on your lap and just purrs gently when everything seems lost. One day they will die. You know this, but when you’re stood in the rescue centre trying to work out a way of leaving without promising to take all of the animals you don’t accept it. You’re choosing a new life companion and in your head that companionship will last forever.
You know however as time passes that the day it must end is coming closer. When my cat Lily was about 14 I saw her laying motionless on my lawn. I found myself thinking that if she’d passed away I wouldn’t be so upset. 14 is a good age, she’d led a good life and right up until that day she’d been scampering round like a kitten. Yes, this was a good way to die, to find a sunny spot on the lawn on that warm spring day, to curl up and drift off into the big sleep just as she’d drifted off into any other sleep.
I crept closer to see if I could spot any sign of life. As my shadow fell over her I heard the faintest “mip” and she rearranged her paws. She was fine, just far more deeply asleep than usual.
I smiled and carried on walking, but that image stayed in my mind. If that’s how it happened, if one day I just found her curled up having just gone to sleep never to wake up, that would be OK.
Barring a miracle, that is not how it’s going to happen.
Looking back she wasn’t quite right this summer. We used to lose her in the summer, she rarely came into the house. She’d be out prowling or sleeping either in the garden or in the nearby fields. She’d get sun-bleached, by late August she’d not be a black and white cat, more of a sort of brown stripy cat, not that we really had a cat you understand – she was nature’s child, wild and free.
This summer she spent a lot more time with us. We just put it down to old age and maybe not being as sprightly as she once was. As Autumn became winter however we noticed that she was losing weight fast. We tried a few different foods but none of them seemed to make a difference so we took her to the vet.
Initially all seemed fairly bright, there can be any number of reasons for older cats losing weight and many of them are treatable. As time progressed however there were more test results and we noticed more symptoms and the field of diagnosis narrowed. Sadly it was the benign things that were being eliminated. We’re now in a world where all probability points to her being terminally ill. We’re still not quite sure what the root cause is, but the weight of evidence points in that direction.
I hope that she isn’t in too much pain. Right now she doesn’t seem like she’s in too much pain so I still have that dream, that I walk out into the garden on a warm spring day to find her curled up in the sun, having shuffled off this mortal coil in the gentlest of sun and lightest of breeze.
The reality however is far more brutal. At some point she will be in pain. At some point the pain will be too much. At some point it will be better for my Lily, my dearest companion of the past 16 years if she were no longer here.
And I’m sat here now with tears streaming down my face as she walks all over the keyboard and rubs her cheek against mine.
At some point I will have to kill her.
I am terrified.
I wrote this post a few months ago and I didn’t publish it because at that time I thought it was – well – just too sad. It felt like I was writing her obituary long before she had died.
A few days ago Lily came to see me whilst I was asleep, she curled up and went to sleep next to me. For the first time I can remember when I woke she was still there. I dearly hoped that’s what I’d be able to tell you, that she’d died whilst peacefully asleep next to me. Sadly, as I predicted, that’s not how it was.
She had a brief spell where she seemed to recover a bit, but it soon became clear that it was temporary. She continued to become evermore frail. Over the past 2 weeks however it started to become noticeable that she wasn’t moving or even standing in the same way she used to. Her life seemed to consist of long periods of sitting on her favourite rug staring into space, going to the food bowl, going to the litter tray and coming to us for affection and comfort.
Reluctantly we concluded that by continuing to feed and care for her we were extending her life beyond its natural limit. As it was now clear that she was in pain we decided that to continue to care for her without there being a dramatic medical intervention was unethical.
We visited the vets last Friday and we were not able to come up with any medical solution that would have any reasonable prospect of giving her any further valuable life. We therefore took the decision to end her life in the most peaceful way possible.
We buried her in the garden on Saturday, in one of her favourite spots – almost exactly where the above photo was taken. Currently the spot is marked by a white lily plant. We say hello to her every time we go to work. She’s still with us, still part of our story, still part of who we are.
Rest in peace Lily, 17/04/2001 – 21/04/2017
