It Really Doesn't Matter Any More:
Yesterday I put down the second pet in a year. Like others I try to comprehend the meaning of it all. The pet, a cat named Cordial, doesn't really mean anything to anyone but me. And, after all, he is just an animal, not a human being. Maybe so, but then why do I tear up when I put a pet down and seldom tear up at human deaths?
Cordial was a kitten someone dropped off in the neighborhood where I used to live. He hung in my garage for months busy catching mice, birds, and climbing to the top of the tallest trees. He weaseled his way into the house with my two other cats, a most unwelcome addition in the eyes of one of my other cats, Irridessa. But Cordial could handle her and his behavior was exemplary, as if he understood the consequences.
I think it hurts so much when you put down a pet because they are dependent on you for their welfare. They expect you to protect them, to make things better if they are sick or hurt, to be there when they are happy or sad, hungry or cold. No matter what, they look to you for protection and in return they give you unabated affection. There probably is no other role in life where you are really the King of the Hill than in your relationship with a pet. With your pet you are never a jerk, ignorant, ugly, untalented, or a horse's ass of any ilk. Of course you are at times, but never to your pet. Other relationships blow hot and cold, are hard to keep on the same page, but the relationship with your pet is like etched in stone from the beginning.
Cordial was only sick for like three weeks at most, as it turned out from the beginning stages of plasma cell myloma. He began to lose interest in food and his energy level was a little less. Animals know when things are not right and they expect you to do something. Sometimes, early in the morning, he would meow an eerie kind of distress call and his eyes told me he needed me to do something. But something about what? He was still eating at that point. When I took him to the vet I sensed he tolerated it because he thought whatever I was doing was going to help him. But it didn't. For the first time in his life he came to me for help and I couldn't help him. Other times there was always a solution.
Cordial could have lived for several months. Anti inflammatory drugs could have enabled him to eat food. But a pet can't talk and cats are notorious for tolerating pain in a solitary nonreactive fashion. Unlike most humans, cats like to suffer in solitude and disconnect with others around them. You simply cannot assuage their suffering with your affection for them. They prefer to suffer alone. I am not one of those who believes God is busy controlling who dies when and how, not with humans and not with any of His creations via His created evolutionary process. I can't accept reducing God to that kind of mentality.
The night before I put Cordial down he slept under the bed and didn't want to come out the next morning. If he were an outdoor cat as soon as I let him out he would have probably gone off in the woods and never have come back. That is how they like to die, alone and hidden away in some desolate spot. That is just their nature. Taking a pet in to be put down is unbearable to me. I tear up because I am the one making the decision. And I am the one who understands the finality of it all. Cordial did not. A technician put a catheter in his leg and Cordial rested on a blanket and relaxed when he realized I was there. He fixed his gaze on me trusting once again that I would make things better for him. It is that trusting look which makes me tear up. This is, after all, our final communication, and he still had that look which says we are buddies forever. But forever is now at an end. The vet asks if I need more time. I can't even talk now and just shake my head no. The decision is made, the plunger in the syringe moves in and Cordial almost instantly just stares vacantly into nowhere and the bond which Cordial thought would be forever is gone.
No one outside myself could possibly give a damn whether Cordial is alive or dead. When a human dies I did not make the decision. I wish all humans could control their own dying process. In the near future I suspect they will gain this right. Suffering is not a dictate from God as I believe God to be. But that is another story. I cry not just because I made the decision, a decision I felt saved Cordial from months of senseless bad days, but because unlike most humans, his was a lonely death, a very private goodbye between him and his Protector.
I am thankful he had no concept of death. I am glad even at that moment he thought I was going to make things better for him. He never knew otherwise, never knew that, for once, I was about to let him down. I did save him from senseless suffering and in that knowledge I feel I did my duty, kept the bond of trust to the end and ensured he had a good life right up to the end. The total package was good, the end brief and necessary to keep the bond of trust intact.
We die a little with each death of friends, family, and pets. Evolution is a process of unending changes, some of the changes beyond our control. God created that process, it is a good process, and that process gave me, by chance, a chance to be a participant. And I too, like Cordial, after a generation or two, will be erased from the memory of the living. Cordial was lucky----he never knew life is short, that he would die someday. I am glad, in the end, he never knew it was the end. Knowing that there is an end is no blessing.
The vet was kind, took me out the back door, I got in the car, drove to the racetrack where I could be alone and yet be distracted from pointless grief. You would think with time, endings would be easier, but they never are. Fortunately, with time, you cannot re-create the original emotion and reason prevails and you accept the reality. I am saved by the reality of having done the right thing---if I couldn't save Cordial I could at least prevent his suffering. I think if he could understand and talk he would say, "Thanks buddy".
