Time

There is a very old cat who has been coming in for subcutaneous fluids for the last two weeks. Somehow, I've always managed to be the one around who holds her when she comes in for the procedure, and every time she buries her little face in my arms and sits good as gold ; she purrs, takes her needle, and leans into me.

She's 18 years old and is skin and bones. She's stopped eating. Today, the doctor who saw her said that she gives her to Monday, at the latest. This evening, while they were waiting for their appointment, one of her owners talked to me about the life this little cat has had.

When they found her, she had been abandoned outside with four kittens. Her owner wondered aloud how anyone could have lost a pregnant cat. "She couldn't have come far, the people who had her must have noticed!" and I didn't have the heart to tell her that some people are horrible. Some people want a mother with new kittens to die. Or, at the very least, they don't want it to be their problem. So, instead, I said "she must have chosen you."

They took her in, but all of the kittens died within a week. They were heartbroken. They spayed their kittenless stray, and she spent over a decade and a half with an easy, happy life. This was the end, and it should be okay, after a long easy life, but I could tell that it wasn't.

"I just wish I had a sign about the right thing to do" she said to me. I wondered what she thought I was thinking. I wondered if she thought I was desensitized to this and that I was just feigning concern. I wasn't. I told her that she was a very sweet little girl, that I imagined that she would have been a very good momma cat, in her day, and that these things are never easy.

She said "thank you" and we booked an appointment to see her again on Monday. We booked it in the last appointment slot of the day.