Mr. Oliver

As my orange tabby cat, Oliver, took his last breaths on our bathroom floor, I covered him in a warm towel and held him for awhile.  I tried to meet his eyes, and let him know I was there, but I could tell he was in too much pain to even know what was happening around him.  My sweet little old man, sixteen, almost seventeen, had lost weight seemingly overnight, and felt just the way Sassy had felt in my arms that last time at the vet:  no more than a bundle of sticks.

Sassy had been silent and aware, so weak she couldn't lift a paw, but trading messages with me with her gaze for all she was worth.  I love you, Mom.  Don't leave me.  She died in my arms, and I was completely devastated, grateful to have been there for her, and upset that I had not been there for Cory in her last moments.

Oliver was not silent.  He cried, and struggled to breathe, and it was another of those horrible pictures you wish you could unsee, but once seen, must own for the rest of your life.  He couldn't support his own weight or move at all, but his limbs occasionally spasmed on their own.  I sat on the tile beside him with my heart in my throat, just crying to see him suffer.

There was no last moment of recognition.  There was only his concave side that stopped moving and his mouth flung wide open, in the extremity of his pain and anguish.

If you are a pet person, you already know that I sobbed my heart out, and knew not another wink of sleep that night; that I covered his precious face that no longer looked familiar and crawled my way out of that room, leaving my husband to move his wasted body to a more appropriate placement.

I went back to my bed for the last hour before my alarm went off for work, and went back and forth with thoughts of Oliver and Cory.  A song lyric came to mind, "Love is watching someone die."

Yes, it is.  But the more I considered this hard truth, the more I realized it may have been better than I didn't run down my street in time, after all.  What I saw of Cory on the road haunts me.  It was the most horrendous thing I've ever seen.

 I remember when my cat, Sassy, died, and I held her as she went gently away, thinking  I'd been cheated those moments with my Cory Girl.  But what if her death had not been quiet?  What if she had been in extreme pain and struggling to breathe?  What if she tried to speak, but couldn't say my name?  Or worse, what if she wasn't even aware that I was there, and that she was not alone in this unthinkable time?

I don't think I could have seen those sort of things, and continued to live.  So at a most unexpected time, I find myself grateful for something I never considered a blessing.

What's that saying?  "What is healing, but a shift in perspective?"