Feline Palliative Care
Chima is dying. She has lost about 4 pounds, almost half her body weight, and nothing we do seems to help. She is, however not suffering. We stopped giving her the antibiotics, because they clearly weren't doing a thing (there were only a couple left), and she hates getting pills more than any cat I have ever met. So now it's just the slow decline until the end. We feed her with an eyedropper, and wonder when the time is going to come to take her to 'the farm'. I keep hoping it won't be on my birthday, but I guess that's a little selfish.
In the process however, have been some rather bright rays of sunshine. Clearly, Chima knows something is not right. She can't feel one side of her face, and can't eat properly. But she doesn't seem to be too hungry, and is content to just get smaller and smaller. But the funny thing is, she doesn't meow all the time, like you would expect her to, and she is purring louder than ever.
She is the only cat I have ever known, who purrs so forcefully, that her purr backfires on her, and she does this wierd snorting noise, and has to pause for a breath. She is doing that all the time right now. Especially at night when we are trying to sleep. She comes in and sits on Noelle chest, and purrs like crazy and kneads my armpit. It's driving us nuts (ok, Me nuts), but I don't feel like I can do anything about it, because I know in a week or two I am going to miss it like crazy.
I know buried in there somewhere is a message about seizing the day. Carpe Purrem, or something. When the whole thing is going in the commode, sometimes all you can do is hunker down and purr. Not a bad lesson.
One of our favorite comic strips of all time is an episode of Pooch Cafe where the main dog character says "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." He then hands a glass of something to another dog to drink, who spits it out and shouts "That's disgusting." The main dog shrugs and says "Life gave me parsnips."
Life, in the last month, has given Chima a big bag of parsnips, which she is handling with amazing equinamity. I hope dearly that when the time comes that I know I'm not going to last much longer, I will have the presence of mind to look back on this week and go and purr and knead someone's armpit. At least that way I'd get to spend my last few days in a room with nice soft walls.
Chima is dying. She has lost about 4 pounds, almost half her body weight, and nothing we do seems to help. She is, however not suffering. We stopped giving her the antibiotics, because they clearly weren't doing a thing (there were only a couple left), and she hates getting pills more than any cat I have ever met. So now it's just the slow decline until the end. We feed her with an eyedropper, and wonder when the time is going to come to take her to 'the farm'. I keep hoping it won't be on my birthday, but I guess that's a little selfish.
In the process however, have been some rather bright rays of sunshine. Clearly, Chima knows something is not right. She can't feel one side of her face, and can't eat properly. But she doesn't seem to be too hungry, and is content to just get smaller and smaller. But the funny thing is, she doesn't meow all the time, like you would expect her to, and she is purring louder than ever.
She is the only cat I have ever known, who purrs so forcefully, that her purr backfires on her, and she does this wierd snorting noise, and has to pause for a breath. She is doing that all the time right now. Especially at night when we are trying to sleep. She comes in and sits on Noelle chest, and purrs like crazy and kneads my armpit. It's driving us nuts (ok, Me nuts), but I don't feel like I can do anything about it, because I know in a week or two I am going to miss it like crazy.
I know buried in there somewhere is a message about seizing the day. Carpe Purrem, or something. When the whole thing is going in the commode, sometimes all you can do is hunker down and purr. Not a bad lesson.
One of our favorite comic strips of all time is an episode of Pooch Cafe where the main dog character says "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." He then hands a glass of something to another dog to drink, who spits it out and shouts "That's disgusting." The main dog shrugs and says "Life gave me parsnips."
Life, in the last month, has given Chima a big bag of parsnips, which she is handling with amazing equinamity. I hope dearly that when the time comes that I know I'm not going to last much longer, I will have the presence of mind to look back on this week and go and purr and knead someone's armpit. At least that way I'd get to spend my last few days in a room with nice soft walls.
posted by Jason Allen at 8:43 PM
1 Comments:
Oh! :( *hugs*
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