You know how sometimes a family member will go through horrible medical issues that they don't deserve?
My first cat went through this many years ago - and she's probably the reason why I could never be religious in anyway.
When my mother was pregnant with me, they adopted an un-named cat. This cat used to play with the buttons on my mother's maternity clothes. Justly named, she was Buttons.
According to my parents, she was very curious about my mother's growing stomache.. and used to cuddle up to said stomache - aka Me. One day I kicked her.. and she kicked back purring happily. From that day on, she was a guardian to my mother. After I was brought home from the hospital, Buttons spent every night at the foot of my crib.
If I ever so stirred, she was right there to make everything better - at times, she'd alert my parents to my stirring. She was even the one who got my parents' attention when I fell out of my playpen and broke my collar bone. When I got into a walker, I used to grab her tail and drag her around the house by it. She'd never hiss, spit, scratched, or bitten me -
ever.
As I got older, she was always my cat. Always watching over me, always trying to "protect" and guard me while I slept. When I was 15, I noticed she was acting weird. Watching her carefully, I exclaimed, "Dad, Buttons is blind."
To which he replied that I was being a hypochondriac. Needless to say, 2 weeks later, he acknowledged her being blind. After a while, her other senses caught up to her lack of sight and everything was ok. Everyone adjusted to how things had to be for her - I got used to cleaning up her accidents.
At 16 years of age, I noticed something more peculiar, "Dad, I think Buttons might have joint problems." At the vet's office, they came to the conclusion of arthritis. We get medication to assist her with the pain.
Then things took a turn for the worse. One night, 16 July 2003 - Buttons managed to pull herself up the stairs to the bedrooms. Despite being blind and in pain, she pulled herself to the front of my bedroom and awoken me with a cry I'd not heard before. It was awful.
I got out of bed and to my horror, there was a trail of blood where she'd walked. I screamed and cried until my father woke up, from the blood and the horrifying cry she made. We took her to the emergency room veterinarian. Her liver and kidneys had both shutdown - hence the blood. Also, one of her lungs had collapsed from the strain of getting up the stairs..
I made the most devastating, but necessary, decision of my entire life. I held her and she was purring as they injected her.
As her body got cold, my entire belief in a higher power ceased to exist. My most precious friend went through so much pain and agony for no reason. There was no reason for this to have happened to her. It was 4 1/2 years ago now... but I know for a fact that I've never gotten over it.....
R.I.P Buttons - July 17, 2003
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