Compromised

I turn around in my chair to find the outdoor/basement cat sitting on the chair behind mine. He does that quite often. I will talk to animals even though I suppose they could give a shit about something they cannot understand and I say, "Why, hello there!" I reach over to scratch his head, of which he is quite fond, and he takes a swipe at me. The scratch doesn't break the skin.

I might have let him dig in and draw some blood, for by 1630h this afternoon he will be dead.

The reasons and their details may not matter with such finality of an injection into a kidney like the proverbial light switch. I could merely write "quality of life," and leave it go at that. Yet, to look at him, you might be inclined to protest that the cat has some good years left in him. My response could very well be that we're not talking about just his life. The irony is not lost that a guy with a dog's name has made the decision.

Granted, the cat is old, has had diabetes for three years and is now in the early stages of renal failure. His tail hasn't work since he was shot by a neighbor ten years ago, and he is somewhat unsteady on his right rear leg. Although neutered, he still sprays, sometimes in the basement, and the litter box is frequently an afterthought.

Full disclosure would include the two injections of insulin I give him daily. The treatment for the kidney failure is a low protein diet and 50cc of IV fluid delivered subcutaneously daily in his neck and back, a diet not fit for a carnivore and a procedure I have refused to administer on the grounds that he need not be more of a pin cushion that does not understand why.

In that he and I spend a good deal of time in the same vicinity — the dungeon — he has become more or less my cat and my call. This has greater significance than one might think; yet, in that my outlook on such things as pets differs from the wife's, I will restrict my comments to my views alone, even though in doing so, the other is certainly implicated.

The cat has a name by which he is known. It was given to him by the people who lived here before us. As he was their cat, when time came for them to move up the road a couple miles, they took the cat with them. Twice he returned here and was retrieved. When he came back a third time he first stopped along the way to catch a vole, which he brought to me. He has not left since.

But his hunting days have been pretty much over for the last three years, due more to a restricted area to roam more than a lack of ability or desire. He fell seriously ill, his recovery was slow, and to keep an eye on him hence, I built an enclosure attached to an old shed, and this is where he spends much of his day when weather permits. Every once in a while a squirrel or shrew or vole makes a wrong turn, and it has been my wish the last few days that this happens one more time. But time grows short.

I've built a box and dusted off the Dremel. Brass tacks aligned in the shape of a single letter adorn a fir one-by-six that will be the marker. I have yet to dig the hole in the spot chosen, and the poor fuck gets to watch me dig it.