Death touches everyone – in the game of life, it’s undefeated. If you’re lucky, you get to live a lot of your life before it touches you, but it comes, and it never stops coming until you’re the one people are mourning. That may sound morbid, but it’s true. And no, I’m not dying – I mean, I am dying, we’re all dying, but I’m not about to die, at least as far as I know. But one of my family’s pets is, and that is really horrible. It will be the first time my children will be old enough to comprehend, and it has prompted me to think about many things.
First, pets truly are the best. This cat was a 6-week-old girl when I got her 14 years ago; I’ll always remember the little head popping up from inside the carrying box when I got back to my apartment from the animal shelter in Baltimore. I named her Veruca after Veruca Salt, both the character and the band, but quickly began to call her Batistuta after the retired Argentinian soccer star. Don’t ask; I don’t know why. It just got in my head and stuck there.
She’s the sweetest cat, but she has cancer. It’s everywhere, and there’s nothing they can do, or else I’d have them do it. It’s a matter of time now, how much no one can or will say. She’s on pain medicine, antibiotics and an appetite stimulant that is working – she’s eating often, which is a change from a week ago.
But all of this is temporary, I know, and at some point, the drugs will stop masking the reality of what is happening.
My daughters know she is dying, but I don’t know if they know what that means yet. They’ve cried, of course, we’ve all cried, but the finality of it does not seem to have registered.
This is not the first death they’ve experienced; my mother died when our oldest was 1, and my father passed away almost 2 years ago, and they did not want funerals or cremation, so they never saw death up close. This will be the first.
I don’t know how to prepare them for it because I don’t know how to prepare myself for it. I am the one the cats follow everywhere – I am the treat giver and chief petter – my office required a cat door cut in it because they all wanted to be on the opposite side of it, no matter what side they were on. It was just easier, and quieter, this way.
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There is nothing that can prepare you for making that decision for any living creature, unless you’re a sociopath.
I’ve heard all the arguments – this is the compassionate thing; it’s the loving thing, blah, blah. And I know it’s true, but true and easy don’t seem to ever go hand-in-hand. I’ve had the internal arguments – still am, or else I’d be writing a different column right now – is it better to go a day early or a day late? I get it, and I’ve been here before, having had to make this call more than 15 years ago with other cats. But experience doesn’t make it easier, and having kids complicates things more.
At least, I think it does. Maybe I’m using them to justify my emotional state? It’s one of those other things you can never know for sure. We humans have a remarkable ability to fool ourselves into thinking we’re doing the right thing when it’s obvious we are not. It’s doubly so when the right thing is impossible to know with certainty.
You bargain, you pray, you bargain in your prayers; you try to rationalize it and question the vet like they somehow stand to gain from lying to you. It’s horrible, is the only way to put it.
But it is the final act of everything living on the planet and it never gets easy. My father had to make the call to pull life support from my mother when it became clear she was only “alive” because of machines and she was unambiguous about her feelings about that. Even then, when it was obvious, it was an impossible situation – his wife of 57 years and he was the only person who could give her what she wanted against everything he desired.
Death is horrible, but necessary, I guess. At least, that’s what they say. I could do without it.
As a Catholic, there hasn’t been a whole lot to get excited about when it has come to Popes since John Paul II, but was heartened when the Pope declared that pets go to heaven too, because how could it truly be eternal paradise without the creatures that make all our lives better and share what is likely to be the first non-family unconditional love we experience?
Pets transcend that divide and become family. My younger self never, ever wanted kids, my cats were as close as I cared to get, I would jokingly say. Now that I have them, I can’t imagine life without them and would love 100 of them. And while there is nothing like the love for a child, the love of an animal you’ve raised and has been with you through the highs and lows of life is a bond and love that cannot be overstated.
Part of me feels sorry for people who’ve never had pets – they remind me of me and my old attitude toward kids – and part of me envies that they will never find themselves in the marinade of suck I’m in right now.
Ultimately, however, the good times and the great years are absolutely worth it. It sucks, and you’d trade it all for a different outcome, but they make our lives better and we make their lives better – keep them alive much longer than they would in the wild.
It’s all of no comfort right now – I suspect I’m writing this more to convince myself than anything else, not of the love they bring but that I will ultimately be able to do the right thing when necessary. She’s sleeping next to me as I type, she slept a lot this week, and I stop every few sentences to just pet her.
She’s been there for almost all of the columns I’ve written over the year, pushy and demanding attention or treats while I work, and she got them. I will miss her more than I can say and I hope I do her justice in her final time on the planet. I genuinely believe I will be reunited with my parents one day, all my family and friends who have and will pass too, and my pets. Veruca will be there, meowing for treats and climbing on my lap with all the others.
Until then, I don’t know how my kids will handle the reality of now. Hell, I don’t know how I will handle it either. And while eternity in paradise with all that we love is, obviously, very appealing, the getting there can sometime really, truly suck.
God bless anyone who’s going through it, and God bless Veruca Hunter. God, I hope you have a lot of Temptations treats or you’ll hear about it.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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