goodbye alex

Both of our cats have had their share of troubles this year. It took us some time to determine that Zoe likely has cancer. She is on steroids right now in case the problem is something else. Once we had her squared away, Alex started into a decline. The root cause is still unclear. He had a bad infection, and secondary GI problems, but heavy doses of antibiotics didn't bring him back to health. The vet suspects either an infection in the heart or cancer, neither of which is open to treatment without extreme measures.

He's seen the inside of the Vet ER two or three times this year. The most recent time was when Susan was in SD for the Festival of Books and Sam and I were still in Rochester. I came home to find him still, back arched and head cocked as if in pain. After six hours in the ER he was a limp dishrag, but disaster had been averted.

Each time he rallied. A few weeks ago he was his old self again, eeping and trotting up happily to be fed or scritched. By this past weekend, though, he was slowly shuffling around the house and looking very sick--but still eating. Yesterday that ceased, and he simply lay in one spot all day, his head cricked back, unable to move more than a little.

Last night we put him down around 7 pm, while Aunt Ruth fed Sam dinner and showed him funny youtube videos of a dog with human hands eating breakfast. When I held him on my lap at the vet's he wasn't at all scared (he usually shivers nervously--not surprising given the treatments he's had there). Just seemed peaceful and tired.

The vet has given us a pamphlet talking about helping your kid when he loses his pet. Both because it's unreal to Sam, and because Sam's life is mostly parallel but non-interacting with Alex and Zoe, Sam took the news just fine.

Sam has always been good with the cats. We've trained him to be gentle with them, which at this age mostly means leaving them alone. For a while Sam had the endearing habit of putting his head on Alex's side, which I think both of them liked. Susan told Sam ahead of time what was going to happen, and when we returned she did an Andy-Griffith-worthy job of telling him what had happened. At one point later in the evening we were talking and he started numbering the people in our family, making me 1, him 2, mommy 3 and gave me a significant look and made Alex 0. Sam is apparently completed unfazed, which is great.

It's a shame, though, that Sam didn't grow old enough to bond more with Alex before Alex died. The allergist strongly advised us, due to Sam's cat allergy, not to replace the cats. We also would like our house not to be repellent to people with cat allergies, like our family in Mitchell. So when Zoe dies it'll just be us. Us and our memories.