“… When You’re Making Other Plans”

07-24-94, 01-31-08Sorry I was offline yesterday. I really wish it hadn’t been necessary, but, well, see subject header.

The cat in the photograph was named Nathan. He was thirteen and a half years old; he was, as I used to indicate in my bio, my dog’s cat. She died about a year and a half ago, also aged roughly thirteen and a half; he died yesterday, peacefully, after a short illness.

Cats are not dogs. This is a simple statement of fact. But Nathan was raised, since the age of eight weeks, by a yellow Labrador retriever, who did her best to shape his feline instincts into something more relatable to humans; in the end, she got about halfway there, which was pretty amazing.

Late last Sunday night, he started acting a little weird; early Monday morning, he’d progressed to something that’s tastefully called “severe distress”; when I brought him in to the vet’s, he was unable to walk in a straight line, stricken with vertigo, and really upset.

Treatments were tried. Results were not encouraging. Diagnoses were put forward. And, in the end, it all came to nothing. Whatever the cause of this “cerebro-vascular accident”, the damage wasn’t clearing up.

We were with him at the end, just as we were with Avery. Just as I was with my grandmother, as it happens, under very different circumstances. It’s what you do for love.

Some movies are opening today, but I can’t say I really care about them.

4 thoughts on ““… When You’re Making Other Plans””

  1. Norm, my sincere sympathies for all of the losses you’ve experienced over the past couple of years. When we faced that awful decision with our 18 year old cat Demelza last January it helped me get through it by thinking about your description of how peaceful it was for Avery, though not for you. Though I have enjoyed your writing for years, I appreciated that piece more than any other when the time came.

    Look after yourself.

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