2001-11-19

Waiting

I'm having a lot of trouble dealing with the very real possibility of Whitey's having to be "put down" in the very near future. In a lot of ways, she's perfectly fine: she still loves a good lap, she hollers for her breakfast every morning with the precision and accuracy of Swiss clockwork, her nose is cold and wet....but in many more ways, she's clearly a very sick kitty. Her back legs have started to atrophy; she can't jump up on the sofa anymore, she takes a few steps and then has to rest. Her bad moments far outweigh her good ones.

What's terrifying is how quickly this all came down. Aaron theorizes that little cats have it harder than big'uns, and I suspect he's probably right. Whitey was the runt of the litter -- she's always been puny -- but her zeal for life far surpasses whatever she clocks in on the scale. Whitey pretty much loves everyone, but is particularly fond of my bandmate Geissler, and her devoted surrogate uncle, T. Max, who never fails to bring her a Christmas present every year.

More than anything in the world right now, I want her to be around so that her Uncle T. can give her one more present. Just one more present. Last night I sat in bed, with her dozing fitfully beside me, and prayed the Rosary.

I don't expect Whitey to live forever; I just don't want her to go like this.

Not this way. Not like this.

She's the quintessential rock-n-roll cat. She loves to sit on the futon in our "office" and listen to the Pixies (believe me, we've exposed her to all kinds of music, and thus far, the Pixies render her astonishingly soothed). She's big on sniffing our guitars and breaking into the closet where we keep most of them. She also has a serious leather fetish.

Right now, though, she doesn't do much of anything. I want to believe that this is fix-able, that after enough time on her myriad medications she'll bounce back and be the pain in the ass we know and love.

On the other hand, I don't want to keep her barely alive, if she's not taking any pleasure in anything anymore. It's so difficult to override your initial selfishness when it comes to a creature who can't flat out tell you when it feels like shit. I remember several years ago, when I was in graduate school, having to give my folks the OK to have my boon feline companion since high school, Santiago, "put down." The night before he was to go in, I wrote in my journal: "I make all his decisions for him. Render him sterile. Decide when and how he dies. I want so much to believe that I am doing the right thing, playing God with The Emperor (this was my nickname for him, due to his prissy and semi-regal bearing)."

All we can do is wait and see. I won't keep Whitey going if there's no chance of her being comfortable.

lisamcc at 12:40 p.m.

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