Dear sweet pets! Our elegy for our cats is this poem by Garrison Keillor:
In Memory of Our Cat, Ralph
When we got home, it was almost dark.
Our neighbor waited on the walk.
“I’m sorry, I have bad news,” he said.
“Your cat, the grey-black one, is dead.
I found him by the garage an hour ago.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for letting us know.”
We dug a hole in the flower bed,
The lilac bushes overhead,
Where this cat loved to lie in spring
And roll in the dirt and eat the green
Delicious first spring buds,
And laid him down and covered him up,
Wrapped in a piece of tablecloth,
Our good old cat laid in the earth.
We quickly turned and went inside
The empty house and sat and cried
Softly in the dark some tears
For that familiar voice, that fur,
That soft weight missing from our laps,
That we had loved too well perhaps
And mourned from weakness of the heart,
A child’s weakness — to regard
An animal whose life is brief
With such affection and such grief.
If such is weakness, so it be.
This modest elegy
Is only meant to note the death
Of one cat so we don’t forget
His face, his name, his gift
Of cat affection while he lived,
The sweet shy nature
Of this graceful creature,
The simple pleasure of himself,
The memory of our old cat Ralph.
A sad day here.
Our 17 yo cat has been in failing health for a while... now 5.5 lbs last time he was weighed a couple weeks ago vs 9 lbs last fall. He has a sizeable tumor, likely cancer and has been lethargic, lost all bladder control, etc. We didn't have him tested further because at 17 yo even if additional testing confirmed it was cancer we were not going to put him through chemo or radiation or whatever that would likely just make him feel worse.
Last night I put him on a pillow on the bed with DW and a couple minutes later he fell off the pillow and off the bed... that has never happened before. Also last night, I was walking in the dark while DW was sleeping and tripped over him... he usually is nimble enought to get out of my way long before I get near him. He is moping around and just lying in corners here and there but he does nibble a bit here and there and at least his head is still up most of the time.
Anyway, we just decided that the time has come and I made an appointment to take him to the vet tomorrow to be put down. I have some pine in the woodshop to make a small casket and he'll be buried next to his buddy Jameson under the flower pot up by the road.
Not looking for sympathy but it is helpful to just type it out.