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I had the unpleasant but necessary duty last week of accompanying my wife Maureen and our cat of almost 18 years, Yuri, to the vet. We were having him “put down”, a euphemism if ever there was one.
When we arrived at the vet’s office there was no one in the waiting room, a rarity. The staff was very sympathetic and the vet saw us right away. We took Yuri into the examination room where we let him out of the carrier. We usually had to drag him out, but he was too weak now to resist. The vet took him into the back room (the lab, I guess) to insert a catheter, and then he brought Yuri back to us. The time had arrived.
The vet first gave Yuri a strong dose of Valium, which affected him right away. He stopped squirming and lay down. Maureen and I held and stroked him. We were his family, after all. A moment later the vet inserted the lethal dose into the catheter, and within a few seconds, Yuri was gone. It was very quick and very peaceful, and even though it was very necessary, it was a crushing moment for us.
We went home to a suddenly quiet and empty-feeling house. We knew Yuri’s time had come. He had grown old and crotchety, and he whined all day. I used to tell him, “Yes, Yuri, I know, it’s a ***** getting old, but whining doesn’t help…” Maybe it did help him, though. He sure did enough of it.
He ate ravenously but he didn’t keep anything down. He was slowly starving. His eyes ran and he had a bad case of ear mites. He had become deaf, and he seemed uncomfortable, even on Maureen’s lap. In the last year or so, we would think it was time for that final visit to the Vet, but Yuri would rally and become himself again, so we kept putting it off. But then he started to use the bathtub as his litter box. It seemed like he couldn’t remember where the litter box was. We knew it was time.
Yuri came to us from the North Shore Animal League along with his sister Sissy. Yuri was an orange tabby and Sissy was a black tuxedo cat with a splash of white on her chest. They were the perfect Halloween cats. Sissy was quiet and shy, not at all like Yuri, who was curious, outgoing, insistent and friendly. She developed a terminal disease a few years ago and we took her to the same Vet when her time came, and we held her while she passed. We gave thanks then that we still had the great Yuri, our wonderful feline friend.
When I get home from work I go into the bedroom to change my clothes. More often than not, Yuri would follow me in and jump up on the bed. He’d start poking at me with his head, wanting to be rubbed. I’d sit on the bed and give him one of his favorite things, a belly rub. I don’t know which of us enjoyed that more.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I get up and go into our little office and spend some time at the computer. Yuri would follow me in and rub up against my legs and wait for me to pet him. Sometimes he’d jump up into my lap, in effect telling me to forget about the computer and bond with him instead, a winning tactic, at least with me. I have thought many times while staring at my computer at work that having a cat or two around the workplace would make work life so much better.
At night he’d jump onto Maureen’s lap, content for the evening. Sometimes he’d decide that he wanted my lap instead, and it didn’t make any difference how I felt about it. If I shooed him away, he’d immediately try again, on the feline theory that I couldn’t have meant it. If I continued to shoo him away, he’d sit in front of my chair and stare at me until I’d start to laugh and finally invite him onto my lap. What a cat.
He could be insistent to the point of annoyance. Whenever we cooked, he was underfoot all the time. He wanted his share of the food and he was quite insistent about it. He was crazy about roast turkey and roast chicken. Even when he had just put away a large portion of cat food, if he smelled either chicken or turkey, he turned into one stubborn cat. The only way to get rid of him was to give him a large portion of the bird. Then he’d go take a nap.
He had his moods on occasion, but he was a gentle and friendly cat all his life. We were his family and he trusted us with everything. He came to us for assurance, for warmth, for food, for sustenance. Even when we took him on a hated trip to the Vet, he trusted us. He sometimes would act up at the Vet’s office because he hated it so much. Once, one of the technicians told Maureen to watch out, that he would scratch or bite her. She said, no, he’d never scratch me or bite me. And she was right. To Yuri, we were his cat family.
In looking back over my relationship with this great cat who we found at a shelter, I realize that he taught me a lot about life, more than most humans I’ve encountered. He displayed pure love, pure trust. He was always there, and even though he might get mad at me for a minute, he’d get over it right away. He made it clear that the best thing in his life was being around us. We were his family.
What a wonderful and moving eulogy for your special boy. Your words clearly reflect the love you had for him. I've had that loss more times than I want to think about, and I've never been able to write an appropriate tribute to them. Always too painful. Yours was obviously an exercise of love, and hopefully it helped you. Thank you for sharing Yuri's story with us.
I am sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences to you and your family.
Thank you for your thoughts. In coming to terms with the loss of our friend I am slowly coming around to the thought that instead of mourning his death we should give thanks for the time we had together. We were all lucky, at least for a time.
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