Spread Your Wings and Be Free

It was 6 days ago that I put Bullwinkle down. I basically overdosed him at home -- his diagnosing vet had told me how to do it and given me the drugs. I think it was the hardest thing I've ever done -- it took all the courage I had and then some. I don't think I could have done it at all if Bullwinkle hadn't been in such extreme pain.

I doubt that I will ever euthanize an animal in this way again. I gave him the drugs through the feeding tube and it seemed to go OK at first. They took effect quickly and Bullwinkle sort of stumbled over to a box that I'd lined with a towel, and lay down in it and basically went into what looked like a coma. But after a while, he started having convulsions -- his eyes were wide open but I don't think he was there. I really hope he wasn't, because he had many, many convulsions -- far too many to count -- over the next 3 1/2 hours.

Early on, before the convulsions started I think, a very clear image -- of a pure white bird flying straight up into a blue sky -- came into my mind. I was pretty sure the image was of a card in the Osho Zen Tarot deck, so I got the book out and looked it up. To my surprise, the card was similar to what I'd imagined but definitely not the same -- the white & blue were different, there was more than one bird on the card, and the wings were in a different position than what I'd seen. I read the meaning of the card anyway (it was the page of water). The very last sentence said, "Spread your wings and be free," and that seemed topical. So that phrase became kind of a mantra for me as Bullwinkle convulsed over and over again.

I like to think that Bullwinkle left his body around the time that image came to me -- that his little soul flew away like a beautiful white bird into the sky -- but in all honesty, I had no sense of it then. My main perception was that his body was going through something very terrible and violent -- and that this home euthanasia wasn't going nearly the way I'd hoped it would. (I really hoped he would just go to sleep and never wake up. In a way that did happen, but it sure didn't seem peaceful.)

Somewhere in there, Martha called and offered to come over -- I accepted, and she & Lina arrived about 45 minutes later. After a while, I carried Bullwinkle's convulsing body up to the top of the stairs -- since that was our special place, I thought maybe he would feel more comfortable (in some subconscious way) about dying there. He just kept having convulsions though.

Martha came up and the two of us sat on the floor at the top of the steps, and passed Bullwinkle back and forth to each other -- and his convulsions continued. The two of us wept and talked about what a great cat he was, and how we couldn't remember other cat deaths being this difficult. Finally we went back downstairs and put him back in his towel-lined box. And still he convulsed.

At one point, Lina asked if she could hold Bullwinkle and I handed her the box. I was really hungry and had a roaring headache -- I hadn't eaten anything for hours, since before I started giving him the drugs -- and I went into the kitchen to try to find something to eat. While I was there, Lina called in and said, "I think he's gone." I went back into the living room and he had finally stopped breathing -- and convulsing. I was almost overwhelmingly relieved that he'd finally died.

The last six days have been a little foggy -- and very sad. But then again, most of the days since he was diagnosed on January 21st have been foggy and sad. I can hardly bear the thought that I'll never kiss his furry little head again, never hug his round tummy again, and never feel him draped across my shoulders again. At the same time, I very much feel ready to move on. I'm grateful that his death was more or less concurrent with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time and the warmer spring weather -- in my inner world, his illness was in the winter, his release (and mine) in the spring.

And I'm hanging onto the thought that he did finally spread his wings and become free as he flew up into that blue, blue sky I imagined. Maybe he even got to chase a few birds along the way.:)