I hate the night, and I mean the deep night. The time of night when, if I can’t sleep, if I have something I need to say, there’s no one to talk to. My husband sleeps so deeply that he could miss the ball drop if sleeping in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The streets are dark (my street is particularly dark, with no street lights and lots of trees), so not only do I feel alone, I feel a little creeped out. My anxieties seep out in the middle of the night. Things that don’t bother me when the sun is up can totally freak me out in the dark of night because it’s as though I’m the only person in the world.
I definitely need more friends who live across the world so I could at least write to them at those times when I’m awake.
Anyway, tonight I sit up waiting for my cat to die. I suspect as soon as the sun comes up, I’m going to be taking Fiddlehead for his last visit to a vet, and sadly, to one whom he’s never met because it’s Sunday. I can’t bear to make him suffer another day.
This is my first cat, the cat I always wanted when I was a kid. He’s been a great cat for the past 13 years, and now he’s dying. He has congestive heart failure. I knew he was going to be the first to go. He always seemed more vulnerable than the others. But he was my favorite at times…a great lap cat. A cat that had to run into the bathroom with “dad” to get a drink from the sink. A cat who loved to eat and would try to bat food right off of your fork. He stole an entire pork chop from the kitchen once, right out of the pan! He was afraid of EVERYTHING. If you turned the newspaper page too quickly, he’d bolt out of the room. Sometimes he’d just see something, like my foot, and look at it like it’s a serial killer. Any false move, and he’d run.
I hated traveling and leaving Fiddlehead with strangers. He wasn’t comfortable with many people except my brother-in-law and the elderly neighbor across the street who he’d only met once. That was shocking.
He was the only cat of my three who WOULDN’T jump in bed with us in the morning. He’d always try to sleep on our laps if we were sitting in the living room watching TV, but he wasn’t interested in sitting in bed with us. I never understood that.
Every morning before we were up, we could hear him say what sounded like a long, extended Hellooooooo? Helloooooo? Sort of like “Is anyone there? Who’s going to feed me?” But right now he’s not eating, and we always said that once he stopped eating, we’d know it was serious. He hasn’t moved from his spot on the couch for over 12 hours (although he has turned around). I know taking him in this morning is going to be the right thing to do, but I also knew this wasn’t going to be easy.
I know that some people, those without pets and those who don’t, in general, just LOVE animals, will not understand why I would write an entire post about Fiddlehead, but I don’t have kids and I DO love animals, and I just hate seeing him uncomfortable.
In fact, that way I feel about my cats, I can’t even IMAGINE what it’s like to have a kid. I’m nearly 40 and I have no plans to have any kids (had the tubes tied for my 30th birthday present), and I just can’t imagine having one…a real little person counting on me. I see overprotective parents, and although it’s easy to say “they’re nuts,” I’m hovering over a cat! What’s it like if someone’s child is sick. That must be just a terrible thing to go through.
I have a friend whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia when she was just six months old. And her son has hemophilia. She and her husband were really happy to have a girl because it meant she would be free of hemophilia. But to then be told that she has another, much worse blood disease? They’ve been through so much in the past 18 months. Their lives changed overnight. They spent months in the hospital. And the worry must have just been incredible.
So I know this isn’t like having a kid, but I just want Fiddlehead to be at peace. Maybe that will come today as soon as the sun comes up and the husband wakes up. Time will tell.
I’d like to take him to the vet right now, at 4am, but I have to wait for that log of a husband to wake up because (1) I don’t know that I want to do this alone and (2) he might resent me for doing it.
