Luckie Kitty's Tail

I think I knew then that the time was closing in on us. Luckie came home and seemed to bounce back for a couple of days. She was eating, and she seemed more active. But by the end of the weekend, we noticed a decline again. We started supplementing her water via oral syringes. It’s not easy to get the amount of water she needed into a cat in that manner without feeling like you’re performing water torture on the cat. I tried to prepare myself to what was becoming painfully clear—Luckie was not going to be with us for much longer. You’d think that having a year of knowing that the disease would likely take her from us prematurely, you’d be able to prepare yourself for that time. I wasn’t prepared. I tried not to think about it on Monday and Tuesday and I told myself that I wasn’t going to cry at the vet’s office on Wednesday. I was crying before I even got to the office that day. They put us in an exam room, took Luckie out back to draw some blood and then brought her back to me. I held her in my lap waiting for Dr. Sanfilippo to come in with the results.

Her blood work was still wacky. There was obviously something going on with her, but without putting her through more tests, it was unclear what that was. Her kidney values were still not as alarming as they had been the year before, so it didn’t seem that her condition could be blamed entirely on the kidneys. So, we had the discussion that I’d been dreading. Dr. Sanfilippo described what would happen and answered all my questions. I, of course, couldn’t make this decision on my own. I called Renée when I got home and she immediately came home from work. We were both on the same page and knew that the time had come. If we wanted Dr. Sanfilippo to be there with us, it was going to have to be that day because she was going to be out of the office for a week after that. So, I called Dr. Sanfilippo and arranged to bring Luckie in at 5:15pm. The remainder of the day was torturously long and too short at the same time. Luckie curled up with each of us for part of the day and we gave her lots of love and attention. Her last “meal” was some of her favorite treats.

The actual experience of being with her as Dr. Sanfilippo helped her pass was different from what I would have ever imagined it to be. First, Luckie was given a sedative and allowed to fall asleep in my arms with Renée petting her. We spent some time talking to her gently and telling her how much we loved her. And when it was finally time for the last injection, we stood by her and petted her until she was gone.

I think after it was all over, we both found a sense of peace very quickly. While we will be mourning her loss for a long time, making the decision and following through on it was the most gut-wrenching part of the experience. It was one of the most difficult things I have had to do in my life. It is an awesome power that we wield when we make decisions about life or death.