Nine lives well spent: the death of the last pet standing
Moe lay in the grass and watched us dig his grave.
His eyesight wasn’t as sharp as in days past and he was having trouble holding his head up, but to the end, despite the fact that all his organs and systems had broken down, that he had been on IV fluids for four months, that his quality of life had passed the point of any good return, he managed a few last moments of cat curiosity in our direction.
The only way Barb had gotten through the morning, knowing it was the last day in the life of a pet we had loved and pampered for almost 20 years, was alternating tears and gallows humor. As she took her turn with the shovel under the clothesline, she looked over at Moe, so bony and frail, who once had been the biggest, longest, heaviest tomcat in the neighborhood, and she said to him, “I’m planting begonias, Mr. Moe.”
And then a moment later she answered herself, as she has for years in the voice I recognize as Cat: “Wrong season, Miss Barbara.”
Very wrong season. There may be a time to love and a time to die, but there is never a season when it’s easy to bury a beloved pet. No matter how much you can see that they are at—or even beyond—the point that they need to be put down, it’s a hard, hard thing to decide upon, and a harder thing to do.
Barb and I fought that decision all summer. This cat was our last pet standing and, for the past five years since our children grew up and moved finally out of the house after college, our baby. He had outlived his sister cat, found alongside him under a neighbor’s garage in the summer of ’88, having been dropped on the street from a passing car as kittens so young and tiny that their survival was in doubt for days. Barb nursed them along with hand feeding and love, and when the kids came back from summer camp two weeks later, they each found they had been granted a pet kitty in their absence.
They named them Nibbles and Muffin, the female a calico and the male a gray with a snow-white vest and paws and a black Hitler mustache. Over the years the cats acquired several nicknames as we learned their personalities, and finding out how pugnacious Muffin was, Barb dubbed him Moe. Sometime in ‘89 I wrote what I thought was a very funny column about Muffin’s trip to the vet to be neutered, and a reader wrote me back that when somebody gave him a sissy name like Muffin, they had insured he was destined to be neutered.
Muff was no sissy. He’d fight any cat that turned up in his territory, and many a time he limped home with a slashed face and a bleeding paw. Once he ran headlong into the side of a passing car and never stopped moving, returning hours later with knots and scrapes from the car door, walking stiffly but with eight lives still intact. He needed them all.
Sometimes we called him Puppy, because he was such a dog-like cat. He would meet me at the car when I came home from work. He would put his front paws up on my knee and wait for his head to be petted. He would almost always run away from you instantly after swatting your leg or overturning a vase, hiding until the moment had passed. He didn’t wait for you to yell at him—he was gone before you could react. Very smart cat.
On the morning that his sister Nibbles was killed a few years back by two neighborhood dogs that came upon her as she slept on the front porch, Muffin had been sent to the basement for just that kind of affront. Barb can’t remember what he had done—maybe put a paw in the birdcage or climbed on the screendoor, but on that day she had deposited him in the basement and slammed the door. That may have saved his life. Nibbles was outside alone. After the chaos of that morning, the growling and snarling of the dogs, the screams of his sister cat and of Barb as she rushed out the front door, the confusion as neighbors gathered in the yard, Barb saw Muffin in the basement window, eyes wide.
After that day, after Nibbles was buried under the same clothesline where Muffin would be destined to rest, his personality changed. He never hissed at us again, he never swatted or scratched, and he seldom ignored us. After that, he was appreciative of a kind word or the touch of a hand. After that, he wanted to sleep in the bed with us at night and stay close to our heels by day.
He still wanted to be near us at the end as we dug his grave, so ill he could manage only a slow, stiff-legged walk that had him lying down to rest every few feet. Barb and I took turns digging, and when the rock and roots and sadness became too much for us, our neighbors Tom and Karin came and took over the job, and we retreated with Muffin onto the back porch to wait for the vet and say our goodbyes.
No more pets. This is it. In our life together we’ve buried two dogs, three cats and two birds. No more. Saturday was too hard a day. And Muffin was just too good a cat.
His eyesight wasn’t as sharp as in days past and he was having trouble holding his head up, but to the end, despite the fact that all his organs and systems had broken down, that he had been on IV fluids for four months, that his quality of life had passed the point of any good return, he managed a few last moments of cat curiosity in our direction.
The only way Barb had gotten through the morning, knowing it was the last day in the life of a pet we had loved and pampered for almost 20 years, was alternating tears and gallows humor. As she took her turn with the shovel under the clothesline, she looked over at Moe, so bony and frail, who once had been the biggest, longest, heaviest tomcat in the neighborhood, and she said to him, “I’m planting begonias, Mr. Moe.”
And then a moment later she answered herself, as she has for years in the voice I recognize as Cat: “Wrong season, Miss Barbara.”
Very wrong season. There may be a time to love and a time to die, but there is never a season when it’s easy to bury a beloved pet. No matter how much you can see that they are at—or even beyond—the point that they need to be put down, it’s a hard, hard thing to decide upon, and a harder thing to do.
Barb and I fought that decision all summer. This cat was our last pet standing and, for the past five years since our children grew up and moved finally out of the house after college, our baby. He had outlived his sister cat, found alongside him under a neighbor’s garage in the summer of ’88, having been dropped on the street from a passing car as kittens so young and tiny that their survival was in doubt for days. Barb nursed them along with hand feeding and love, and when the kids came back from summer camp two weeks later, they each found they had been granted a pet kitty in their absence.
They named them Nibbles and Muffin, the female a calico and the male a gray with a snow-white vest and paws and a black Hitler mustache. Over the years the cats acquired several nicknames as we learned their personalities, and finding out how pugnacious Muffin was, Barb dubbed him Moe. Sometime in ‘89 I wrote what I thought was a very funny column about Muffin’s trip to the vet to be neutered, and a reader wrote me back that when somebody gave him a sissy name like Muffin, they had insured he was destined to be neutered.
Muff was no sissy. He’d fight any cat that turned up in his territory, and many a time he limped home with a slashed face and a bleeding paw. Once he ran headlong into the side of a passing car and never stopped moving, returning hours later with knots and scrapes from the car door, walking stiffly but with eight lives still intact. He needed them all.
Sometimes we called him Puppy, because he was such a dog-like cat. He would meet me at the car when I came home from work. He would put his front paws up on my knee and wait for his head to be petted. He would almost always run away from you instantly after swatting your leg or overturning a vase, hiding until the moment had passed. He didn’t wait for you to yell at him—he was gone before you could react. Very smart cat.
On the morning that his sister Nibbles was killed a few years back by two neighborhood dogs that came upon her as she slept on the front porch, Muffin had been sent to the basement for just that kind of affront. Barb can’t remember what he had done—maybe put a paw in the birdcage or climbed on the screendoor, but on that day she had deposited him in the basement and slammed the door. That may have saved his life. Nibbles was outside alone. After the chaos of that morning, the growling and snarling of the dogs, the screams of his sister cat and of Barb as she rushed out the front door, the confusion as neighbors gathered in the yard, Barb saw Muffin in the basement window, eyes wide.
After that day, after Nibbles was buried under the same clothesline where Muffin would be destined to rest, his personality changed. He never hissed at us again, he never swatted or scratched, and he seldom ignored us. After that, he was appreciative of a kind word or the touch of a hand. After that, he wanted to sleep in the bed with us at night and stay close to our heels by day.
He still wanted to be near us at the end as we dug his grave, so ill he could manage only a slow, stiff-legged walk that had him lying down to rest every few feet. Barb and I took turns digging, and when the rock and roots and sadness became too much for us, our neighbors Tom and Karin came and took over the job, and we retreated with Muffin onto the back porch to wait for the vet and say our goodbyes.
No more pets. This is it. In our life together we’ve buried two dogs, three cats and two birds. No more. Saturday was too hard a day. And Muffin was just too good a cat.
Posted by in 20:48:05
