It was a usual Saturday morning. The heatwave was still glaring and the garden had become so dry the cats had stopped eating cat grass and started on clipped pieces of hay, leaves and, in some cases, soil. They were getting sick.
We had already made three midnight trips to the animal hospital after cats had brought up stones and bile. Enough was enough. Hosepipe ban or not, this was edging into a life-or-death situation. One pebble in the wrong place can mean an incredibly dangerous obstruction.
So, we had to clear the garden. Dead leaves and plants removed. New topsoil laid. Everything watered. Fresh cat grass planted. When I say we, I mean Matt. I had promised to help, but instead I made him a fresh strawberry and vanilla cheesecake-filled sponge. By the time the garden was being watered and the paths washed down, Matt’s cake was ready.
I ran upstairs to get him some dry socks and found Kimchi on the bed, luxuriating on her back. You know the way cats sometimes become squirmy and slinky, almost flirtatious, as though they know exactly how beautiful they are? Her purr was louder than usual. I jumped on the bed for a monster cuddle. We butted heads. She stretched her whole body out as I stroked her from head to tail. She purred like a machine gun. It was bliss.
Then I heard something underneath the purr. A whirring. Her purr was extending into a strange little squeak. I looked at her face. She was panting. I jumped out of the bed. Then I saw her paws. They were bent inwards, completely lifeless. I tried to stand her up and she collapsed.
I called Matt, because perhaps I had got it wrong. Perhaps I was panicking. He came upstairs, took one look at her and grabbed her. The panting became louder in the car. The strange noises became more violent. She was clearly very sick. The vet took her straight from me.
“Could she have been hit by a car?”
“Erm, no.”
“Could she have run into a wall when the water in the garden went on?”
I looked at Matt.
“Okay,” the vet said. “Well, that must be it. But we’ll check her heart, kidneys and bloods anyway. There may be a chance it’s a stroke, but the pain she’s in and her limp foot feel like a break.”
We left her overnight. When we called before bed at 11pm we were told she had brightened up, although she was on strong pain medication. We were sad and scared, but relieved. It didn’t sound as though she was at death’s door. We went to sleep expecting to take our cat home the following day.
But at eight the next morning, the vet called and we were told we needed to get there immediately. She used phrases like “putting her to sleep” and “end of life”. I called my ex, Dean, who I am still very close to. We have a business together and he still looks after Ponzu and Kimchi when Matt and I go away. We all arrived at the emergency vets at the same time.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Kimchi was standing up – or trying to. Her enormous eyes were wide open. She saw us and started purring. I realised, with a kind of horror, that the cat I was apparently going to have to put down did not look as though she was dying. She looked awake. She looked present. She looked like Kimchi.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the vet. “You want me to kill my cat while she is standing there looking like that?” Yes. Her heart was failing. She had a large blood clot in her paw, which would almost certainly progress deeper, causing heart failure. Further clots could come. Her death would be painful.
I was hysterical. I didn’t understand what had happened. I looked at my beautiful girl and she looked back at me – coherent, completely in the room, her eyes wide. She didn’t look halfway to death. In fact, she looked dramatically better than when we had brought her in. Yes, she was on methadone. But the panting had stopped. She was purring. She was herself.
By this point Kimchi was in my arms. We were cuddling as though both our lives depended on it. She gave me her classic Kimchi head-butt again and again. We were told we probably wouldn’t be able to leave the room with her, but that we could take as much time as we needed.
Adrenaline was pulsing through my body. My heart was pounding. I was filled with panic. I turned to the boys. “They want us to kill her.” We were all in shock.
Yesterday our cat had been running up and down the hallway with her siblings, doing zoomies. She looked healthy. Yes, she had lost a little weight and some hair during the heatwave. We were already monitoring her because her back legs had started to bow and look a little thin.
But she still climbed the highest. She ran the fastest. Two days earlier she had danced with me to “APT” by Rosé. She had always been the most engaged of all the cats. She ruled the roost. She let everyone else eat first and made sure everyone was asleep before she settled down herself. She was 13.
And then there was Matt. His relationship with Kimchi had become, in some ways, more critical than mine. She had been there every night while he dealt with his sobriety over the last four years. On the nights I had to work, Kimchi and Matt were joined at the hip. She watched him. She made sure he was okay. If Matt said it was time, it was time.
Dean signed the release form. I was crying hysterically, snot and tears running down my face. I held Kimchi. Matt held me and Kimchi. Dean held her paws. Our strange modern family, together. The doctor injected her. Within seconds, life left her body. She was gone.
I started shaking uncontrollably. My whole body became a dead weight of heartbreak, displaced adrenaline, confusion and disbelief. This wasn’t meant to happen.
A week later, the shock is beginning to soften. The pain hasn’t. What has stayed with me is the question of whether I shortened her life. I had always imagined the end differently. I imagined illness. Frailty. An animal so diminished that death becomes a kindness. Not this.
Not an alert, seemingly well animal looking directly at you. Not a cat purring in your arms. I wondered whether I should have let nature take its course. And perhaps that is part of grief: the mind keeps returning to the door that has already closed, trying to find another way through it.
The more I read, the more I understand Kimchi was not going to recover. Her heart was failing. The clot was a manifestation of something much bigger. Even if we had bought her time, there was a very real possibility that her next crisis would have been catastrophic. There was no good choice. There was only the least cruel one.
There is a condition called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, sometimes known as broken-heart syndrome. It can occur after extreme emotional stress and can temporarily weaken the heart. The heart can change shape under unbearable pressure. Mine feels as though it has.
I have suffered in my life. I have known loss. I have known the particular physical violence of grief. I have never felt this. I have wondered, irrationally, whether I might actually die from it. We are expected to know the difference between a pet and a person. I don’t.
The other cats are looking for her. They search the places where she used to sleep. The pack feels quieter. There is an absence in the architecture of our home that I keep expecting to disappear. It hasn’t.
That’s the thing about grief. You don’t get over the person or the animal you have lost. You simply become accustomed to the space they have left behind.
Hence then, the article about my cat died and the grief is eating me alive was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( My cat died, and the grief is eating me alive )
Also on site :
- ‘I’m a Hepatologist, and This Is the One Thing I Tell Every Patient With Fatty Liver To Start Eating’
- 36 Years Ago Today, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Final Concert Ended in an All-Star Jam—Then a Helicopter Crash Changed Everything
- ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Cast and Crew Held a ‘Funeral Screening’ After the Movie Was Shelved: ‘Was Emotional in So Many Ways’