Molly and After Molly
Well, it worked to a degree, writing Molly's obituary before she died after her first trip to the vets and the devastating news of her condition. We spent the next four days willing her to live, to improve just a bit, please eat, Molly, please drink, Molly, don't spit out the concentrated vitamins the vet gave you, swallow that cat milk I just syringed into your mouth..........they rehydrated her bit style, gave her appetite stimulants, vitamins, Tatiana the vet is almost as soft hearted as a lot of her clients and we hoped against hope she would start eating, regain some red blood cells and have some quality of life again, but no. She spent her last days in the kitchen in solitary confinement with tempting tasty morsels which she barely licked and endlessly changed bowls of water; I even held her up so she could drink from the tap since she tried a couple of times to get up there again. She stayed in her cat box with regularly changed blankets, but when I took her outside to sit with me and enjoy some sun and fresh air she struggled to get down.
We just never were that close. I didn't really get to know her that well and whilst I liked her and cared for her, I'm not sure I loved her in the warm way I do some of the others.
On Monday I learned she had leukaemia and was so severely anaemic she was probably going to die but that it was just possible her appetite might return enough to eat and keep her alive. Mario told me afterwards he said we should try because he thought it would give me the chance for one more day at home with her for both our sakes. But on Tuesday she just didn't look ready to die and I really didn't want to let her go without another chance. Tatiana did her best and a small improvement like a miracle happened, but not for long. On Thursday I had to acknowledge that after another round of injections from Mario, this would be her last chance, not only was she not better but he thought she was worse but not suffering as such.
On Friday I knew what I had to do and I figured I would cope since I'd already faced this earlier in the week.
Nope. Still in bits and if I'm truthful this was grief for Molly for her short life and for my total failure to realise how ill she was becoming before it was impossible to treat the anaemia. No guarantee it would have worked, but I didn't see how thin she was. Guilt this time and it doesn't matter how many times people tell me not to blame myself, I still do and I have to live with that. There is always something we could have done better be it animal or human concerned. I knew it would happen, after the news on Monday, just didn't want it to be so soon and without her having some chance.
There are not too many vets where you get hugged all round and they know when they see you wearing sunglasses in the surgery that it's not good!
Today, I'm exhausted but more at peace, it's over, the poor love isn't going to suffer any more and can't blame me either. Yes I tried with her but not hard enough.
The biggest problem for me which made her different? That this is the first time I gave in and said yes to taking a cat from someone else. I've always had too many and been reluctant to inflict deliberately a stranger on my lot, and perhaps more importantly, inflict my lot on some unsuspecting newcomer. I waver over this kind of decision, to have or not to have, when sad appeals are made as they frequently are round here, let alone friends who beg me to take their cats for a variety or reasons and if I have time to think, I say no. But Molly would be homeless within 12 hours of me reading the post and it would all be done more or less as soon as said so no time to change my mind. It's not just the compatibility with the gang which worries me though, it's the sense of responsibility. This lot and all previous cats in Spain found me and moved in, rather than me finding them and inviting them. So they take their chances accordingly, their choice to live with me. But to take on a cat by agreement, that is a whole new ball game and a big responsibility I fear, and doubly so now I've done it and it kind of backfired. The next time I see another cat with nowhere to go, I'll still feel a pull and guilty for doing nothing.
Which is how, the day after Molly's death and before I have even dug her grave (assigned to the afternoon tasks list) I find myself saying I will take in the old cat belonging to my elderly neighbour who died in December and whose cats are still there as the family don't give up the house until April. I'm not judging, the cat was old and sad without Irene, and the mother of two boys who are not friendly to humans apart from their former owner, and the family have had no luck getting anyone to offer to rehome, so the mum was going to be taken off to the vets on a one way trip as everyone's advice was it was for the best as she was too old to settle in a new home. Huh. Not before we try, at least, I said, when you find her bring her round.
Unfortunately, Nelson kept telling me there was something wrong in the orchard which is disputed territory between my mob and Irene's boys, and the only way to see was from my roof terrace. One dead cat. So not quite the solution I'd offered and not the way the family had thought. Meanwhile the boys are nowhere to be seen and now banished from the house to be fed outside and take their chances. I can only hope the long running territorial dispute and male posturing, which even castrated males find essential, can be overcome as it seems fairly logical that they will turn up here for meals at least. I'd already got some of their old bedding here ready for the mum............
So I'm not the only one grave -digging today, my lot are subdued, Irene's boys are very unsettled/absent, and still no sign of Patch my stray since last weekend, I could quite believe she was deliberately bringing them here and then going without them so they would learn to stay, which they were doing, but no sign of them last night or all day until one turned up for tea, skirting the dead cat carefully and clearly as upset as all the others.
Please can we get back to normal, whatever normal is??