Ghosts

Just after we took Habanero home from the vet, Paul found a comic book at the library and was reading it. One of the comics featured a cat sitting looking sour, and the caption: “Upon finding out that he would have to eat that special veterinary food for the rest of his life…” and the cat is saying, “Kill me now.”

Aaaand…that’s pretty much Habanero’s attitude to eating the special kidney food that the vet prescribed. Which is to say by the time we took him back to the vet to have his teeth cleaned and two extracted, he had apparently lost an entire pound. Nothing to sneeze at when you’re already on the edge of emaciation. To add to his misery, although Harriet had been cuddling with him before he went in for the dental work, she wanted nothing to do with him afterwards, and though it’s been weeks she hasn’t changed her mind yet.

So Habanero spends all of his time sitting in the kitchen. He’s too weak to get onto the kitchen table by himself now, so he sits underneath it instead. When he stopped eating, Todd and I sat down and talked about how to deal with the situation. It’s obvious that Habanero has no interest in getting better. Being with Harriet was what got him through the weeks before the dental appointment, and now that he doesn’t even have that, he’s given up the fight.

Here’s what I think: I think cats have planned obsolescence, just like cars and people. I think the reason most cats run into kidney trouble when they hit twelve, thirteen years old is because after they’ve freakishly lived that long (by dint of being housecats instead of living in the wild and eaten by coyotes by the time they hit six) their bodies are like, “Okay, if there’s no danger here, I’m going to have to run this thing on my own,” and the kidneys start to fail.

I can’t see hauling Habanero back to the vet so that he can get poked and prodded and fed more food he hates to buy him another two months during which he can stare longingly at Harriet and wish he’d been allowed to die in June.

In other words, we’re going to leave him be and let him go at home, on his own time, peacefully. I don’t feel sad about it. I mean, I won’t pretend I haven’t shed a few tears in the past week, but I don’t feel like, “Oh, cruel world, damn you!” He’s lived a really good life and although I’m glad he doesn’t have to get through his last days with kidney problems and a toothache, I regret taking him to the vet in June. His spirit has been gone for months. It’s only his body that’s still here.

Maybe Harriet’s known that all along.