A Heartbreaking Week

Mingus began to look under the weather last Friday.  I kept a watch on him.  He ate some on Saturday morning, but that was the last time we got food into him.  I tried everything, two kinds of treats, what has been his favorite wet cat food, baby food, everything I could think of.  He declined further on Sunday. Monday, I kept him with me and called the vet.  I got an appointment Monday since I said it was an emergency.  I was very worried. The vet said his kidneys were failing and gave us two kinds of medicine, one of which was an appetite stimulant, and she hydrated him.  But still he would not eat at all and stopped drinking any water. I stayed up all night holding him Monday night.  He would sometimes stop crying when I held him, but then he would start again and get restless but too weak to do much more than stumble around.

I gave him the antibiotic and the appetite stimulant but Tuesday, nothing had improved. He cried and moaned all Monday night.  Tuesday, he cried and moaned constantly.  He was obviously in pain.  Our regular vet saw Mingus on Tuesday and said his kidneys had shut down.  He was dying painfully of uremic poisoning, so we agreed he should be put down.  They do it very gently and well there.  It’s a woman-owned, woman-run vet office.  They do things differently.  Cats and dogs are treated in different wings.  They light a candle in the reception room when an animal is being euthanized to keep people quiet.  The vet looked at his records to see why she hadn’t caught his kidney problems, but all the blood tests this fall came back normal.  It was a sudden and complete kidney failure.

Woody dug a grave through the frozen crust down to soft earth and buried him.  Today I’ll order a caryopteris bush for his grave.  It’s a small hardy bush with intense blue flowers that attract pollinators. He’s buried next to the cat he loved best, Sugar Ray, one of the great ones.

We’ve having storm after storm, like much of the country this January.  Mingus was a small cat but feisty and strong willed. He could hold his own with Schwartzie and Willow in spite of both of them being about three times his size. As recently as last Wednesday, he was running around playing or making demands: time to feed me, time for treats, time to pay attention to me. Willow, who treated him as her kitten, washed him, slept with him in the bed, was desolate. Schwartzie didn’t seem to notice until two days after Mingus died, he started looking for him.

Cats are resilient, so I think Willow is coming along.  I miss him.  We all do.  He was a strong and vocal presence in our lives, a very friendly cat who especially like women.  Friends who come to the house, poets from my annual juried intensive poetry workshop remember him fondly.  He was dark brown and sleek with a loud purr.

I really have nothing else to write about today. I’m under the weather, got sick yesterday, today just mostly weak.  I know it’s a reaction.  I was trtingn so hard to help Mingus and it was hopeless.  He just suffered terribly. It was an easy decision although a painful one to have him euthanized.