Suddenly you were gone

When I left for the pet store where I would drop off leftover food, treats, and the like I looked at the couch and said aloud, "See ya later, Piper. I'll be back in a little bit." Upon my return I diligently washed Piper's carrier, dried it by hand, and put it into a closet. Piper was a house cat so I never traveled with her meaning that the carrier was exclusively for trips to the vet. Which she hated.

The rest of her stuff such as food dishes and toys were already safely stowed away in the basement storage. She had urinated on her cat beds and in her cat house so those were thrown away along with the blankets that I put in her carrier when it was time to go for a ride. All that's still out of hers are her cat trees and I have a couple takers on them.

When, not if, but when I adopt a new feline friend, I shall get them a new tree. And new beds. And a new plush cat house.

Her dishes may be in storage, but I still see them next to the refrigerator with her last supper that she never ate. Her cat house is in the garbage but I still saw her lying in it behind me today as I worked. She slept in it a lot but would come out and meow at me when I was in a virtual meeting or a call. The sound of my voice drew her out of her slumbers and I missed that dearly today.

She would sit next to me on the floor and meow, saying she wanted to be on the desk. While she would jump on my lap and then up to the desk occasionally, I would normally pick her up and place her before me. As I bent down, she would meow in protest but always stand up so that I could grab her easily.

Looking at the clock and seeing that it's a little past 5, my brain reflexively says, "Ooh! Time to feed Piper." Wherever I sit I expect to hear her coming around the corner to me; whenever I am in the kitchen or living room I expect to see her relaxing on the couch looking at me with those lovely yellow eyes. I bought her stairs just a couple days before she died so she could get onto my bed more easily. Yesterday she didn't lie on my bed as I changed the sheets and today she wasn't there to hunker down on my clean laundry as I folded it.

I can recall all the ways she smelled over the years. When she was younger she had a pungent musky scent. As she grew older, it mellowed into something like sweet leather.  

About a month ago I decided that, when my divorce was finalized, I'd come home, if I had to attend court, or just walk into the living room if my marriage officially ended by phone, pick her up, kiss her, and tell her that it was over. That we'd survived my wife. Treats would then be liberally applied and dinner that night would be one of those expensive ones with pumpkin and chicken.

Last week I was searching my inbox for an email exchange my wife and I had and I ran across the email in which she "officially" disowned Piper. "She is all yours" it read. I've always felt that comment to be callous but, thinking of it now, it seems cruel.

Piper was born on 6 April 2013 (looks to be the fifth now) and I had been so looking forward to celebrating her 13th birthday next month.

My wife adopted her at 6 months and she was this little ball of curiosity and energy. She loved lying on our bed and early on she developed the habit of lying next to my head or on my shoulder as I slumbered. As she got older and bigger, she would come onto the bed, stand next to my head, and plop down on my face. After repositioning my nose so that I could breathe again, major cuddling would ensue.

I watched the first 4 episodes of True Detective season 4 with her snuggling up against my thigh as she always did when I sat on the couch. I watched the final 2 alone. Never again will I have her next to me as I read or watch TV or just relax on that couch.

Piper was my companion and a source of great joy for me as my marriage collapsed. When my wife disowned her, Piper was a font of happiness for me in a house that had ceased to be a home. During those dark times when I was sad and anxious and tired - tired right down into my bones - of marital conflict, of seeing scowls on the face of the woman I had loved for so long and the contempt in those eyes that used to be so full of love Piper was there to comfort me. I think that, with my relationship with my wife over for all intents and purposes, I felt a great urge to care for my cat. I no longer had a wife to care for and so I directed my attention at Piper. She felt even more precious to me.

Before bringing her to the new apartment last fall, I setup her beds, her plush house, her litter box, and her food dishes with care so she would have everything she needed ready and waiting when I brought her over. This apartment is merely a way-stop and has never truly felt like a home to me, but Piper made it homey, made it a place I was comfortable in. It is where we both started new lives. And now it feels so empty. Prior to moving here I had never lived alone, well, without another human, and Piper breathed life into this place. She had her favorite spots in every room and she made this apartment feel like something more than a way-stop.

The trouble started a couple weeks or so ago.

I found Piper poop on her cardboard cat scratch bed. It happened a couple days in a row and then it stopped. A couple days or so later it occurred to me that I have not scooped any poop from her litter box and now had to find something to relieve her constipation. I made a trip to the pet store and came home with some laxative. It was not to her liking.

Piper seemed normally despite her constipation and I recall watching her drink a lot of water one day. I loved watching her little pink tongue descend into the water bowl and her slurping up the fine Madison tap water. I took this as a good sign.

When my efforts to give her relief at home failed, I took her to her normal vet the next morning. The doctor took an x-ray and showed me all the poop backed up in her system. She advised an enema to get moisture in her GI tract and I consented. Piper stayed at the vet near a litter box for 10-15 minutes afterwards but she didn't poop. I took her home and within 10 minutes she had let loose a normal Piper poop.

I went out that afternoon and returned to find Piper not well. Although fairly sedate, she'd move from place to place. I set out dinner and her medication but she didn't touch anything. She moved to my bed and I laid there with her for a long while.

Her condition had not improved by the next morning so I took her to the kitty ER. Treatment began with another x-ray. The doctor showed it to me and noted that, while Piper was constipated, she did not have an exceedingly large amount of poop backed up. The lines were full but not bursting at the seams, if you will. Instead she drew my attention to a cavity between her spine and intestines. There was this weird, jagged dark line there that indicated air when there should be no air in there. She made a comment that perhaps something went wrong with the enema, though she couched it in niceties, in that "mistakes were made" kind of way. No medical procedure is without risk, after all.

The doctor didn't know what the issue was and performed an ultrasound which didn't reveal anything new. A blood panel would be next.

This took 45 minutes or so and the doctor came in and immediately said, "I have bad news". My heart sank. These were the exact same words the vet used as she approached me with a carrier in hand that held Grabby's lifeless body. And it was the same pet hospital. The doctor held several sheets of numbers and she patiently explained what the ones in bold meant. In short, her body was fighting a massive infection.

The doctor went into her assessment.

"...widespread sepsis..."

"...$10,000-$20,000 to deal with this..."

I immediately thought that I would max out my credit card for Piper, I would withdraw from a 401K if it meant healing my precious sweetie. 

"...but there likely an underlying ailment that we won't be able to cure..."

These wicked words were like daggers, and each one a tiny stab to my heart. I started to cry. Through my tears I told her that we need to put Piper to sleep. The thought of her in pain made me ache. My whole body ached for her. I don't know if cats' lives flash before their eyes just before death but Piper's life sure did as I asked the doctor to end her life.

I saw her jumping and playing with her toys; I saw her play fighting with Grabby; I saw her rolling onto her side so I could pet her belly; I saw that pointy eared shadow next to me on the bed in the middle of the night.

She was prepped and this included turning her around in the carrier so that she faced me. I put my face to her but her lovely cat smell was gone, replaced by an antiseptic stench. Petting her head, I looked into those lovely eyes that had cheered me so over the years when I needed it as the doctor applied the injections. I thought about how I'd never see them glowing in a dark room from the streetlights again.

When Piper died, her eyes, her beautiful yellow eyes remained open. As I took two finger and closed her eyelids, I felt a great loneliness. It wasn't simply an end of an era, so to speak, but it meant I'd have to change how I went through life and how I would find happiness and resilience as my marriage moves to its end.

Piper's death feels like an extension of my divorce. It was, after all, my wife who adopted her. The 3 of us - 4 if you include Grabby - had many wonderful times together. The cats made our apartment and our house into homes. Piper fell astray from my wife's affections and so did I. Her passing feels like a mini ending within the larger death that is the end of my marriage.

Today the doctor who performed the enema wrote me.

"I just saw the report from VCA about Piper, and was shocked to see what happened yesterday.  I am so very sorry for your loss, and can't believe how quickly this all happened.

I have looked back at the X-rays from her visit here, and gone back through her visit in my mind.  I personally performed her enema, and it was very routine with nothing out of the ordinary." 

She offered to call me if I thought speaking with her would be helpful. I declined. We don't know what happened to cause Piper's illness and, if I were to assign blame, it would be for me. Why I don't really know. I suppose that, in the end, I was her cat dad and the buck stops with me, if that makes any sense. Piper's time had come and I was there to usher her gently into that good night. I am content to let things be as they are.

I replied, in part:

"I had 12.5 wonderful years with Piper, have tons of cute photos of her, and learned a lot about being a cat dad. She's at peace and I am grateful to have been able to be with her when she was put to sleep."  

I have so many wonderful memories of Piper that I want to tell the world, so many ways to say I loved her that I feel like I could burst. But, alas, even a blog post has only so much room. 

When I first moved into this apartment, I kept one of the windows in the room where her litter box was open a crack for fresh air. Despite the onset of winter I kept it open but it was never a problem as I am on the second floor and the room stayed warm.

Tearfully I have finally closed that window.