I wrote a little something a few days ago, but couldn't decide if I actually wanted to share it. After all, I didn't really write it to tell a story, I really just wrote it for me to be able to express my feelings and try to make myself feel a little better. It didn't. But, here goes:
Every now and again I come to the realization that my sometimes extreme (sarcastic, sadistic, or cynical) forms of expressing myself are not a funny way of looking at or dealing with things, even though I think it is at the time.
After telling my wife for the last year or more that I am tired of her cat leaving all types of bodily fluid on various floor surfaces throughout our house, and threatening to have her put down or simply throw her out of the house to find a new home - my wife finally agreed and made me do it.
Here I am, the hard-ass man who spent three months or so on my hands and knees replacing all the carpet and linoleum on our main floor with oak hardwood and ceramic tile, bitching at my wife about the damage that is happening to our investment. I'm not wrong - there is damage, and I know that I am the one that is going to ultimately have to fix it which is part of what made me so mad, but I really wasn't prepared to finally do what I had to do.
First of all, Gus has been with my wife longer than I have. I've been with my wife for ten years, and this cat has been with her for nearly sixteen. Please don't think that I was being outrageously cruel. Sixteen is quite senior for a cat, and she has been declining for a long time. I have spent many hundreds of dollars every time she had to go to the vet, and I have taken care of most of it. The vet appointments and tests. The medications and administering them. Claw trimming and filing. The cone. The clean ups. The skin work. Whatever we had to do.
I told my wife when we moved in together that I didn't like pets, and I wasn't going to be responsible for them, but I was wrong. You do what you have to do because, well... they are family.
In hindsight, it wasn't really all that difficult to have the rational discussion about what needed to be done. There was no argument. It may not have been completely clear that she was suffering, but certainly her quality of life was not what it should be. It's easy to say that cost shouldn't be a consideration, but let's be real - it is - and more importantly, what can it realistically achieve?
What really was tough - was actually doing what needed to be done.
The decision was made, and of course I was the one who had to take care of it. I couldn't even speak when I got to the counter. I just put the carrier down on the counter and looked at the ceiling for a while. There were two young ladies that were waiting for something, and I had to take a really long pause and when I could finally muster the words to say "It's time", the one ran outside crying, and her friend followed. I know - I'm a monster.
How is it that you do what you need to do? How do you be a man, and look another human in the eye and tell them that this life needs to end? And how do you justify that what you say is right? How the (expletive) do I know?
I do what I do because that is what I have to do. Sometimes the enactment of the decision is harder than the decision itself, by a significant margin. Life, and death, is tough. Especially when it is in your hands. I can only hope that when the time comes for someone to make that decision for me, that it is easy to say "Git 'er dun!".
Farewell ol green eyes. Even though I couldn't sleep with your broken diesel purring noise on my chest, I appreciated your warmth and it always felt good to have you there when you knew I should be somewhere else. I don't know how they know, but they do. I enjoyed watching you fall off the arm of the chair and not landing on your feet like the tales say, and I appreciate you cleaning those ice-cream bowls so that I didn't have to put them in the dishwasher. I don't know who is going to clean up the area in front of the stove now, or what I am supposed to do with all the turkey leftovers, and who will hedge back my pepper plants?
Maybe I need to get another cat.
No (expletive) way.