My Cat Is Sick And I'm Not Feeling Too Good Either

24 August 2009
Monday Mid-Morning

I’m doing it again.

Waiting for someone to give me permission to do what I know needs to be done without anyone having to tell me.

Specifically, it’s about my cat. It’s time to have her euthanized. I know it even if my mother doesn’t (and really, she might). Lizzie is diabetic and her disease is being exhibited in all kinds of heartbreaking and exasperating ways, from the constant thirst that has her harassing me for milk nearly every time I walk into the kitchen let alone open the refrigerator door, to her opting to lie down in front of her water dish, her chin propped on the edge of her bowl, as she drinks and pauses, drinks and pauses, drinks and pauses. She’s always hungry as well, though it doesn’t seem to matter how often or how much I feed her; her appetite is never sated. She wakes me as early as 3:30am, pleading for the first in a series of feedings, though so far I’m able to hold off until at least 4 or 4:30am.

Then there are her deteriorating elimination habits.

For months now she’s been having trouble keeping both urine and fecal matter insider her litter box, the urine leaking or spraying out of the box chiefly because of the way she angles her body when she steps inside it to pee, flooding the floors and sometimes soaking the wall, bathroom rug and anything else nearby. She’s also pooping outside her box. Regularly. Sometimes on the bathroom rugs but most often on the living room carpeting, usually—though, to our horror, not always—in the early morning hours while we’re still asleep. This even though I have stepped up the care and cleaning of her cat box—which means I’m cleaning the damn thing religiously and still having to clean up after her elsewhere.

Her coat is another area of concern. It badly needs detangling—again—and she probably could benefit from another bath. She will not allow me to comb out even the smallest of tangles, though she does like my “’grooming” her with wadded up soft plastic newspaper sleeves and petting her in the evenings after “we’ve” emptied the trash (she always follows me into the hallway and sits patiently, waiting for my return from the garbage chute). In these bonding moments I have detected what feel suspiciously like tumors here and there on her body; some time ago I began to notice her apparent discomfort whenever she’d try to roll over on her side.
Lizzie also hides a lot now, crawling under my bed even when I’m home and in the room with her. That’s worrisome because I’ve learned that hiding is something many animals do to protect themselves when they’re scared, ill or in pain. She also vomits more often than I’m sure is normal.

Somehow none of this registers with my mother, or barely does. She seems especially unaware of how frequently the cat is peeing and pooping elsewhere probably because I am almost always the one cleaning up the mess, often before she’s seen any evidence of it. Mom is unaware of the tumors, if that’s what they are, because Lizzie resists all my mother’s efforts at physical affection, and she doesn’t notice the hiding behavior because it happens in my bedroom rather than hers and because she’s become accustomed to the cat’s disappearances when I’m not at home and its preference for my company when I am. We’ve talked about the diabetes and she has seen the ramping up of appetite and thirst, but she has (apparently) acclimated herself to that reality such that its larger meaning—the animal is seriously ill and will not get better—doesn’t fully register with her anymore, if it ever did. I don't think she really wants to know.

As before, with another beloved pet some 14 years earlier, it’s becoming clear to me that the burden of deciding the time to end things will fall to me; Mom cannot and will not say goodbye on her own. Her inability to do that comes from heartfelt affection for Lizzie, yes, but also because the animal has come to represent something else to Mom, something more than just a pet. It’s almost like she and I are a couple in a faltering marriage—I know how bizarre that reads but that’s how it feels—and the cat is the child that has been keeping us together. I don’t want to trivialize or ignore my mother’s feelings, but neither do I want to be ruled by them. Dealing with this animal’s problems is becoming stressful; this is a quality of life issue for me, too. I can’t leave the decision to her—she doesn’t want to know.

All that said, what do I do and when do I do it?

My mother says we shouldn’t have Lizzie euthanized until we’re sure she’s in pain, but the problem with that logic is at least twofold: first, when would someone as generally unobservant as my mother notice when that particular threshold had been reached, especially given the cat’s tendency to hide? And second, how much silent suffering should the cat have to endure before finally Mom could bring herself to agree that she should not be allowed to suffer anymore?

The last vet visit was back in March of this year. That was when Dr. W. laid it all out for me, after Lizzie’s blood and urine lab tests came back. He suggested daily insulin shots would likely help Lizzie’s symptoms and buy her more time, but the realities of the treatment and ongoing costs make that an unworkable solution. Euthanasia was all that was left and though I felt terrible for even thinking it, I was tempted right then and there to say to Tom, “Let’s just do this and get it over with.” Had I still been living alone, I probably would have.

But I’m not, and this living arrangement with my mother has complicated things. I know she wants to believe this is “our” cat and thus “our” decision to make though in her heart she must know the cat is really mine. This is as true now as it was 11 years ago when, after making it brutally clear to my mother that there would be no more pets, period, I did a guilt stricken about-face and brought Lizzie home to the Hyde Park apartment we shared. Though Mom became quite fond of Lizzie, she was content to let me be the pet mother, the one who actually tended to its needs, from keeping the icky litter box clean to ferrying it back and forth for check-ups, grooming and yearly shots; Mom loved the pleasure of the animal's company but not, particularly, the nitty-gritty of its care. Not surprising, it was with me the cat most strongly bonded and when, after another few years, my mother and I parted company and I decided to take Lizzie with me, Mom gave no argument.

But a few years later my financial fortunes changed for the worse and we all moved in together again (Lizzie surprising us both with her steadfast refusal to accept my mother’s determined attempts at getting reacquainted), and… here we are, faced with this, or rather me faced with this.

Faced with doing what I know needs to be done without anyone having to tell me to do it.