Saying good-bye to my cat in the time of COVID
We sat in the car and waited for the veterinarian’s assistant to let us know it was OK to enter the office. I wore gloves and a mask, the requisite coronavirus precautions. The cat lay in a carrier in the passenger seat. She didn’t cry or whimper.
It was an unusually warm, sunny July day, so I opened the window. July is normally fog season in Pacifica.
After a few minutes, the assistant waved us inside and showed us into an examination room.
“Take all the time you need with her,” she said. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
I carefully stroked the cat. Under her fur, I could feel every vertebra in her spine. I remembered the day in December 2006 I met her.
“The softest fur you’ve ever felt” was how the staff at Maddie’s, the SPCA adoption center in San Francisco, described her. My partner, a volunteer at the center, had told me I had to see this cat.
The buff-colored shorthair, then probably 3 or 4 years old, had a delicate, slightly smooshed-in face. She lived in a posh enclosure with a television that played bird videos, which she showed no interest in. There’s no substitute for the real thing.
At first, she acted nervous and aloof, which was probably why no one had adopted her. After she relaxed, she cautiously approached my arm and gave it a dozen timid licks. Tiny kisses.
The SPCA hadn’t exaggerated about the fur; her mane was extraordinarily silky. I took her home the next day.
Maddie’s staff had dubbed her Annie, but that wasn’t going to work because my partner’s name is Anne. One Annie liked belly rubs and the other preferred back rubs. The one without a tail refused to drink milk. It wasn’t hard to keep straight, but why risk a mistake and hurt feelings when you can simply change a name?
So Annie became Allie, and for 13 years she performed her kitty duties flawlessly — sleeping on the sofa, lounging in the cat tree furniture, swatting the tail of the other resident cat, chasing laser light beams and string tied to sticks, and happily exposing that soft underbelly to the caresses of human hands.
She could spend hours peering at the street through the vent in the garage door and wishing she were an outdoor cat, if only for a little while.
At the end of 2018, Allie developed a ravenous hunger that could not be sated no matter how much she ate. The vet said it wasn’t an overactive thyroid, the typical suspect, but maybe her liver. Nothing could be done.
She wolfed down double servings at each meal, but still she lost weight. Whiskers Shreds and Nine Lives pate traveled straight through her, from feeding dish to litter box. She squawked for milk relentlessly.
One day about a month ago she gave up trying to make her routine 3-foot leap from the dining room table to the kitchen counter. A week later she could no longer climb onto the couch without help.
How does one know when it’s time?
Allie didn’t seem to be in pain, but she was steadily growing weaker. This much was certain: The disease wasn’t letting her be a cat anymore.
I signaled the vet’s assistant, who took her to another room where a catheter was inserted in her foreleg. She then returned her to the examination room, placed a blanket on the table and left.
The veterinarian entered the room and explained that a barbiturate would be injected through the catheter. He said that after Allie fell asleep, he would administer a drug to stop her heart.
“I know it sounds strange, but this is one of my favorite things about being a vet,” he said. “It shows how much a person loves and cares about a pet to end their suffering. … But also so sad.”
It took just 15 seconds for the barbiturate to do its job. The vet injected the second drug. The whole process lasted less than an minute.
I choked back a sob under my mask.
Back at the house, I lifted Allie from the carrier and cradled her to my chest. Her body was already stiffening. She felt so light.
I thought about how she would chirp in response when I talked to her and how she helped dress me every morning by nuzzling and rolling around on my feet before I put on socks and shoes. I remembered the way she would rest her head on my arm while she slept. I didn’t want to let her go. Finally I took one last look at her face and gently placed her in the plastic — three bags, the vet had said. “There are a lot of animals in Pacifica.”
Then I got the shovel out of the garage.