I’m not dealing well with my cat being sick. She is sick and I don’t know how bad, but it really worries me. I don’t know if I can handle it. I feel like I’m doing a bad job and she’s going to die. I know this is my mind exaggerating things, but that is the way I think. Last week, I noticed that she had lost some weight and so I took her to the vet. Apparently, her mouth problems flared up again making several of her teeth infected and she was having trouble eating as a result. The vet wanted to have several of her teeth removed at a cost of six hundred to a thousand dollars. This would be preceded by an ultrasound to check her heart to see if her pre-existing heart murmur condition would allow her to be put under anesthesia during the procedure to remove the teeth as well as a series of blood tests to check for liver and kidney damage at the additional cost of four to five hundred dollars making the ground total somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000-1500 dollars. This was not even counting the cost of the initial visit. The alternative, which I’ve opted for in the interim, is to keep her on a ‘pulse’ therapy of antibiotics every two weeks to keep infection at bay.
At any rate, I’m really starting to feel overwhelmed. She doesn’t seem to want to eat much anymore and seems so listless. She comes up to me and seems to want something but I can’t tell what it is. I have to keep her on this special high-fat anorexic diet so she can put on some weight before any type of surgery, as well as shoot pills down her throat twice a day before she claws me.
Tonight, I came home from work and fed her and sat down in my chair so she could jump up on my lap. She kept trying to come closer to brush my face and purred. She seemed so gaunt. I just thought about how I am so bad at dealing with this type of thing: with people being sick or dying, with the possibility that someone or something you care about can just wither before you until they’re just a pair of distant watery eyes set in a sack of bones, how death treats no one with dignity or respect, not only taking life but slowly leeching and draining it. It also made me think about how at my grandmother’s funeral, when the rest of my family was crying and clutching each other that I stood off to the side by myself and beat back any sign or stirring of emotion, because caring means accepting this harsh reality and I had no strength to accept that. Love means allowing yourself to be truly vulnerable to pain and loss. I can think of few things I find more scary than that, and yet the alternative is a life distant from others and alone which is sometimes what I think of the life I choose. I’m just afraid that when I unlock that door it will fly off its hinges and everything I try so hard to keep standing will fall down around me.
Believe me, I know what you mean about death. I had to deal with losing both my father and maternal grandfather (okay, I hated him, but still) during my pregnancy, and continue to be faced with the gradual deterioration of Eric’s maternal grandparents, whom I love dearly.
I’m sorry about your poor little cat. I still miss my beloved guinea pigs, which died several years ago, and my dwarf rabbit, which my ex-husband had put down practically immediately after I left him. *sniffle*
friend, from personal experience: 1) hope for the best 2) be prepared for the worst.
lost my beloved canine friend of fifteen years last year, to similar symptoms. i understand the love and the pain and the fear. sending you positive vibes.
I sympathize with you and poor little Sarah. You’re doing the best you can, my friend–and it’s not like you can afford the more expensive treatment for her. Just show her all the love you can. It’s all any of us can really do, in the end.
Thanks. This stuff is hard, but it’s good to know I have such good friends.
Beautifully and courageously written. There are feelings, there are depths of love that I simply did not experience til a certain age. I was pretty frozen until my early 30s. When I did start opening up more, though, the door didn’t wind up falling off its hinges, perhaps because (relative) maturity and perspective have had a way of softening the blows. Not to say all these feelings are not intense! Anyway, I can tell you love your cat, and being able to feel and give that love is a huge thing. Cats have small brains but she knows she is loved. A stray kitten came into my life last spring, and I love her more than I’ve ever loved any nonhuman being. KInda scary because yeah, they (or we) can get sick and die anytime. But as you say, the alternative to love is a life distant from others and alone. We’ve just gotta plunge in.