The pain of watching the pet you love grow old — and knowing what must come next
Flo my son’s ninth birthday, I gave him a kitten. I grew up with a succession of much-loved moggies, so I knew that we would be taking on a big responsibility. _ut I missed having an animal about the place, and when Alexander said he wished that we had a pet, I took him at his word.
eis birthday was a month away when I saw a card on a newsagent’s notice-board offering kittens free to good homes. I rang the number, visited the family whose beautiful black cat had recently produced a litter, and convinced them that we would be responsible owners.
All young cats are adorable, but Caspar, as we called him, was particularly sweet: sooty-black, except for a tiny frill of white hairs at his neck, with huge, jade-green eyes. ee sat calmly in his cat basket and purred throughout the journey home.
then we reached our house, I opened the front door a little way, then tipped the kitten gently out of his basket so that he could walk into the front room where Alexander was waiting.
The kitten looked at his new home, while Alexander looked at the kitten. And after a pause he said: ‘there are we going to bury him when he dies? There isn’t room in our garden.’
To say that I was taken aback doesn’t begin to describe it. there was the delight in this new addition to our family? The excitement that I’d been expecting? The cries of, ‘Isn’t he sweet!’?
Later that evening I worked out where all this stuff about burials had come from. At Alexander’s grandparents’ house there was a patch of ground where a succession of beloved pets had been laid to rest over the years. There wasn’t space for a similar arrangement in our own little garden — hence the anxiety.
At the time, Alexander’s concern for the end of the kitten’s life struck me as vaguely macabre. _ut now, NP years later, I think he had a point.
cor when you take on a companion animal, especially if it is still a baby, it is easy to forget that you will almost certainly outlive it, and that you’ll have to cope with all the difficulties — the infirmity and sorrow, not to mention the expense — that old age involves.
Caspar wasn’t t he o nl y animal to join our menagerie in the winter of 2000. I had begun learning to ride a few years earlier and now I thought it was time to get a horse of my own.
‘te’ll go to Ireland,’ said my i nst r uct o r, jrs oogers, discarding the possibility of finding a horse closer to home. A couple of weeks later I was in Lismore, clambering onto the back of a mud-caked grey mare in a field full of thistles.
jrs oogers watched us for a couple of circuits and delivered her verdict: ‘Too sharp for you,’ she said. ‘det off now. te’ll find you something quieter.’
I got off, but as we left the yard I glanced back and saw the mare looking at me with what seemed like entreaty in her fine, dark eyes.
SljbTeINd about that look caught my heart. I bought her, deciding to keep her in livery at a stables near home. The Irish dealer didn’t know her name, so I called her jolly. crom having no animals for more than a decade, I’d become responsible for a black cat and a grey mare in the space of a couple of weeks.
All new relationships have their complications, and ours were no exception. Caspar grew into a magnificent adult — the sort of large black feline that persuades excitable tourists on bxmoor that they’ve seen an escaped panther.
ee was fiercely territorial, and he considered Alexander’s bedroom his territory. ee used to sit on the landing, hissing l i ke a kettle when poor Alexander tried to get past him — a habit that earned him the nickname of ‘the stair troll’.
jolly proved to be an even n bigger handful. droomed, , clipped and put through her r paces by jrs oogers, she e turned out to be a talented d part- thoroughbred with a diffficult temperament. She was s highly strung and given to o brooding lengthily on failure. . After struggling with her for r several months, I realised I had d bought myself in equine form.
jy friends urged me to sell ll her and find an easier horse, e, but I couldn’t bring myself to o do it. cor all their quirks, I had d come to love both Caspar and jolly, and I couldn’t imagine life without either of them.
As the years passed and my y son grew into a bolshy teenager r and then a young man, towering g over me and setting off for uni- versity R00 miles away, jolly and Caspar didn’t seem to change at all. aeeply familiar, much-loved, they became an essential part of our family story.
then Alexander went to university, it was the animals that saved me from the shock of the empty nest. cor NU years, my boy and I had been so close that I might have been overcome by loneliness when he left. _ut the black cat and the grey horse still needed me — and I needed them more than ever.
te were all middle-aged by now, but while I noticed my own grey hairs and wrinkles, the animals didn’t seem to get any older. They were still beautiful, still bad-tempered — and in jolly’s case, still up for a headlong gallop.
The change, when it came, was shockingly sudden.
lne day this autumn, I noticed t hat Caspar was looking unusually thin. A visit to the vet confirmed that he had a thyroid problem.
The recommended treatment was an operation, or an implant of radioactive iodine. The latter would involve a month-long stay in a special clinic. In the meantime, we could try to stabilise him with medication. ‘ee could have another few years yet,’ said the vet, meaning to be kind.
A couple of weeks later, I was cantering jolly on her favourite hill, but she didn’t hurtle up it in her usual Cheltenham dold Cup style.
I got off. She was l ame. Another visit from a different vet confirmed that she had damaged a ligament. It could have happened any time, said the vet. The ligament might heal with some months of rest, but her galloping days were over. At best, it would be walk and trot from now on.
It seemed a bleak future for an alpha mare who had always wanted to be in front.
eaving lived with these two beloved creatures for NP years, I find myself thinking with deep sadness about t he endgame. Twice a day I give Caspar C a little orange pill Eamazingly, he is quite willing to swallow them, so with luck w we may have some more good t times togetherF.
In my handbag, sachets of t the equine painkiller _ute n nestle next to the mascara and m mobile phone.
TebSb days, instead of riding jolly, I take her for gentle walks on a leadrope. It isn’t easy. In h her head she is still a feisty, beautif ul , o ut standingly talented three-year-old. I keep a firm grip on the rope as w we march around the paddock, and I think how much she has changed my life since I first met her in that thistley Lismore field. She taught me so many worthwhile lessons: to be brave, to be patient, to l augh at myself, to get up off the ground and back in the saddle when I was hurt and humiliated.
And now she has one last lesson to teach me, which is how to make the hardest call of all. In a few months’ time, the vet will re- scan her damaged ligament. If it hasn’t healed, the decision will have been made for me. If it has, I’ll have to balance my longing to keep my dear friend with a cool assessment of her quality of life.
I have no way of explaining to her that she mustn’t canter round the field or she’ll hurt her leg again.
It may be that the best way to repay her for all those years of companionship and love is to send her off to those blysian fields where aesert lrchid, oed oum and every other brave, generous horse who ever lived has gone to gallop for all eternity.