Bullwinkle & Jezebel

Bullwinkle & Jezebel

Today, March 21, is the 5-month anniversary of Jezebel's death, and the 2-month anniversary of Bullwinkle's cancer diagnosis. Jezebel was 19+ years old when she died -- the oldest any cat of mine has ever lived to be. She was a perennial kitten until she was 16, when she got old almost overnight: she got wobbly all of a sudden, and frail, and stopped chasing her tail. From then on, it was a slow, steady decline for her.

She hated Bullwinkle with a passion. And truly, had I not seen Bullwinkle in action with Jezebel, I would have thought Bullwinkle was perfect (as opposed to simply being very close). He was just horrible to her -- he treated her as if she were his prey. We lived for a while in a place with mirrored sliding closet doors; the bed faced the mirror. Jezebel would slink around under the bed, while he would sit on top of it, watching her in the mirror. When she got right beneath him, he'd jump down and ambush her. So I got a bedskirt -- I figured he wouldn't be able to see her under the bed any more. He just changed tactics and started hiding under the bed -- so he could ambush her as she walked by.

He was relentless in his pursuit of her. It didn't help that she was an incredibly shy cat (the apartment manager at that place called her my "imaginary friend" because she'd never seen her -- if I remember correctly, Jez hid in the closet most of the time then). Later, Jezebel became almost totally deaf and stopped being so shy -- I think noises must have been problematic for her. She was much more outgoing in her older years. I know the photo above looks as if they were best friends, but they weren't -- that cozy domestic scene was so unusual that I gave the photo a title of "Miracle." I saw this only 2 or 3 times in the entire 11+ years they lived with each other. (I think they must've just been really cold -- note that their backs are to each other.)

After Jezebel died on October 21, I was shocked to realize that Bullwinkle really missed her -- he seemed somewhat depressed for the rest of his life, actually. I realized I had only ever understood their relationship from her point of view: I had done a lot of maneuvering to protect her from him over the years. For a while, they each even had their own litter box, their own food, their own water. A friend joked that Bullwinkle thought that Jezebel had 5-star cat litter and bottled water -- and that was when they both had exactly the same thing. Later, I gave her canned food because her stomach wasn't doing very well with the dry stuff -- and he was really jealous. (I didn't give Bullwinkle canned food until he started having trouble eating; shortly after, he was diagnosed with cancer. I told him he was finally getting the 5-star stuff and wept to myself -- because he was suddenly as old and infirm as Jezebel had been.)

In retrospect, his depression over Jezebel's death and his illness blended into one another; I'm still not sure where the depression left off (if it did) and where the cancer took over. I do remember giving him some of Jezebel's canned food right after she died -- and him being totally uninterested. Now I wonder if it was because he was depressed, or because it was hard to eat -- once he was in the grip of cancer, it became clear that hard food was actually easier for him because he could use his teeth -- whereas with soft food, he had to use his tongue, which didn't work.

And part of the cruelty of his death was wrapped up with Jezebel's decline -- for months before she died, Bullwinkle and I would have our cuddlefests at the top of the stairs (which Jez couldn't climb by then), and I would hug him and say to him, "There's nobody like you, there's no other cat like you." After she died, our cuddlefests continued and I remember doing the math in my head: "Jezebel was 16 when she got old, but she was probably exceptionally healthy; Bullwinkle probably has at least until he's 14 before he gets old like that, so we have at least three more years...." Bullwinkle was my solace during Jezebel's decline and death.

And now they are both gone, and life continues. Next week Zendi, a beautiful calico, will come to live with me -- I'm looking forward to a new furry companion. The house has been really lonely without any troublemakers in it.

Here's a video of Jez, taken in the fall of 2006. I think it's really funny -- to me, her shyness totally comes through her looks of concern at the camera.:)

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.:)

Good Night, Baby

Bullwinkle's last morning in the sun

I said my last good night to Bullwinkle yesterday. There were so many ups and downs throughout his illness that I sometimes felt as though I were watching a ping pong game -- he's winning! he's losing! he's holding his own!

And he did indeed seem to be holding his own earlier this week. But his last descent was sudden and steep: from trying to eat shrimp Wednesday night to a bleeding mouth that was starting to smell bad again on Thursday evening, to what appeared to be unbearable pain last night, even after pain meds.

I will write more -- but not right now. Thank you all so much for your support for both of us -- it has meant more than I could ever express.

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

I've had this song ("And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda") running through my head all day. I'm guessing the first time I ever heard it was in Cambridge, MA, probably in the early 80s. One of the radio stations (WERS) put on a folk festival each year, and the concerts ran to 4 or 5 hours each night -- not a moment of which was dull. I heard a lot of really fine musicians at those concerts (including Nanci Griffith, Pierre Bensusan, and Malcolm Dalglish) -- and I think I must've heard Eric Bogle sing this song one of those times. (It's a gorgeous song, very sad, and is the ultimate anti-war song, in my opinion.) In any case, the line that's been most prominent in my mind today is: "I never knew there was worse things than dyin'."

Bullwinkle was in terrible shape when I got home this evening. We ran out of buprenex -- his pain meds -- yesterday, and he was without any at all for about 24 hours (I got some tramadol for him today). He was in a lot of pain this afternoon and quite miserable -- it was obvious his mouth was really bothering him. I got some of the tramadol into him almost immediately, and it started working within half an hour -- blessedly. Had I needed an illustration of the value of ongoing, consistent pain control, his experience today would've been more than enough to convince me.

The other evening, a neighbor stopped over to meet Bullwinkle (I think she's a regular reader of this blog but hadn't met him personally). She said, "He doesn't have that I-wanna-die look in his eyes." Well ... this evening he did. It's gone now ... but I'm keeping a close eye on him. This cancer has been a terribly long road for him and I think he might be running out of steam.

There are worse things than dying -- and extreme, ongoing pain is one of them.

More Bad Luck

Bullwinkle's been taking a med called Buprenex for pain. I won't go into a lot of detail but I kind of upped his dose over the past week (on the advice of not one but two vets) and I think he's done really well with it. Today he ran out of it -- and I learned there's a shortage of it, maybe even nationwide? I know there must be some other kind of pain meds he can take -- but I need to find out what they are.

In other news, he tried very hard to eat some shrimp tonight -- but wasn't able to. He sure was interested though.:)

Cheese

I opened a can of chicken tonight and Bullwinkle started yelling at me. He was very excited about how it smelled, so I poured some of the juice into a dish and encouraged him to try it. But he knew that his tongue wouldn't work -- so he didn't even try. A little later, I opened a bag of shredded cheese and let him sniff it (this was all in the process of trying to prepare some food for myself). He seemed really interested so I pulled out a sticky little clump of cheese and put it on the stool next to him -- and he picked it up with his teeth and ate it!!!! It turned out not to be a very good experience, 'cause I think it got really sticky in his mouth and he wasn't able to use his tongue to unstick it (he was even trying to use his paws to get everything unstuck) -- but it was so cool that he tried to eat something. I guess next time I'll have to give him the actual bits of chicken -- it does seem he can use his teeth fairly well. (Probably just a clever ploy on his part to get me to finally give him the human food which he feels he's deserved all along.)

Otherwise, Bullwinkle seems fairly stable right now -- he doesn't feel great, but he doesn't seem to feel awful either. And we've had some lovely cuddlefests the last few days. :-)

Brave Troopers

Bullwinkle and Auntie Martha:

Is that her left shoulder?

(We were all younger then.)

Bullwinkle seemed very anxious this weekend every time I left the house, and he spent as much time with me as he possibly could while I was home. Today was another 13-14 hour day for me, and even though Aunties Martha and Lina came over to feed him dinner, Bullwinkle seemed very disgruntled by the time I got home: he was crying piteously and wouldn't come over to see me. I picked him up and he climbed onto my shoulder (the left one of course) where he has stayed ever since. I am actually flushing his feeding tube as I write because he will not be dislodged.

He really doesn't feel very good -- yet, it still doesn't seem to me as if he's ready to give it up. He's been a very brave, stoic, and heroic trooper; if I'm ever in his situation, I hope I behave even half as well as he has.

Auntie Martha (photo above) is quite the brave trooper herself: she gave away one of her kidneys to a perfect stranger, in an historic 3-way "paired donation" a couple of years ago -- and KRQE aired a show about her experience this morning. You can see it here. Bullwinkle & I are very proud that she's our friend.

Back to Bullwinkle: I'm worn out worrying about him and grieving for him. When I woke up this morning, he was curled up in a tiny, tight little ball and was very still. For a moment I thought he had died in his sleep -- and then I saw him breathing and realized he was still alive. The relief I felt for that short moment made me understand that what bothers me more than anything is the prospect of actually putting him down. I so wish he would die peacefully in his sleep....