I hope that someday, hopefully someday a long time from now, when I get old, ill and / or too feeble-minded to know what’s going on, that someone has the compassion to not take any measures to prolong my life. To me this is humane, just and caring. It’s love. And it’s love that I hope to be able to show towards those in my life, when necessary.
This past weekend I got a lesson in how hard compassion can be. After returning from two weeks away in Africa, and traveling for 20 hours to get home, Wonder Boy and I set down our bags and headed straight to the animal hospital where our cat Newton was being treated.
Newton, who has been in renal failure for about 18 months, had done well for most of our trip but on Thursday his health began to fail. We are lucky to have awesome friends and cat sitters who knew what to do, so Newton was promptly taken to the vet and then, the next day, to the hospital. What we saw when we got there was not the Newton I know.
Newton, who Wonder Boy adopted when he graduated from college, was one of the sweetest cats I had ever met. He loved to be near you and would do biscuits (kneading with his paws) on your lap all the time. He is the reason I love cats, the reason I volunteer every week to care for rescued cats and the force behind my advocacy for adopting rescue animals. (All of this is not to ignore Newton’s brother, Addy, who is grown to be sweet in his old age. Addy was just a little ornery when I first got to know him.)
The Newton we saw at the hospital had a mouth full of ulcers. He couldn’t eat. He was being given fluids via IV. His eyes were recessed and glazing over. He was shutting down and clearly neither happy nor comfortable.
And so Wonder Boy and I, who both adore Newton, had to make the compassionate choice to euthanize Newton. It was possibly the hardest, saddest choice I have ever had to make. I am grateful, though, that I was able to be part of that decision and to hold Newton while he left this world.
I will always remember Newton as the cat who liked to be shaved and rolled around during the process as if getting a massage. He always looked like cheap corduroy afterwards but was so soft to pet. He was the sweet cat, always too nice to mess with. He had a way of exploding into your presence that resulted in the nickname Kool-aid Man. In the last year or so of his life, Newton became my sleeping buddy. Every night he would hop onto my side of the bed, curl up between my arm and body and stay there for the night. I will miss that. I miss him.
