Good bye

I’m afraid that Loofah was very very sick. When we got him to the vet his tem­per­a­ture was 97 degrees, which is four degrees low for a cat. He was bad­ly dehy­drat­ed and had bare­ly any elec­trolytes left.

It turns out that he had high­ly advanced dia­betes and prob­a­bly kid­ney fail­ure. Either of those by itself would have meant a $3000 hos­pi­tal stay plus a lot of main­te­nance for the rest of his life – twice-dai­ly injec­tions, pills, and reg­u­lar vis­its to the vet, plus mon­i­tor­ing his blood chem­istry con­stant­ly so that adjust­ments could be made to his med­ica­tion. But togeth­er it was just too much with too lit­tle chance to have a nor­mal life. So I made the deci­sion and went into the lit­tle room to say good-bye to Loofah. He was already bare­ly mov­ing and his breath­ing was so shal­low. I told him how much I love him and how much I will miss him. I told him that I was sor­ry he’d had such a dif­fi­cult life and that I did­n’t know if there’s a bet­ter place after death, but that I hoped so and his suf­fer­ing would soon pass.

The tech­ni­cian came in and told me that I was mak­ing the right deci­sion, that Loofah was ask­ing me to let him out of his pain. He told me that there is a bet­ter place wait­ing for Loofah, and he asked me if I was ready. He put the stetho­scope on and admin­is­tered the injec­tion, while I watched Loofah’s eyes. In just a moment it was over.

Strange­ly enough, a cou­ple min­utes after the tech­ni­cian left the room, Loofah let out what almost sound­ed like a sneeze. I could feel that he was­n’t breath­ing and that his heart was­n’t beat­ing, so I don’t know what that was, exact­ly, but it sort of seemed final. I kissed him and cov­ered him with the blanket.

I’m home now and Ozzy is run­ning all over the apart­ment and look­ing out the win­dows. I think he’s try­ing to find Loofah.

I know I miss the lit­tle guy. I don’t know how to explain it to Ozzy, who of course does­n’t speak Eng­lish, being a cat and all. But I want to explain it to him, because he seems con­fused. I don’t know how I’m going to cope. But it’s just Ozzy and me again.