Kindness: A Porttrait in Blue
On Tuesday, July 15th at around 12:15, we said a final goodbye to our beloved cat Blue.
“Blue-Blue”, as we called him, had been with us for about 9 years. We adopted him and his sister back when they were about five.
In June of this year, my wife noticed that Blue’s breathing had become much deeper and laboured, as if he were taking sharper breaths more frequently. He was also weaker than we’d ever seen him, walking slowly and no longer jumping up onto our couch or chairs.
Our vet checked him out, and X-rays showed a lot of fluid in his chest cavity and around his heart, which are all signs of advanced heart disease where blood is leaking out of the arteries and settling into the vestibular areas around the heart and lungs. That accumulation of fluid creates pressure on the lungs, causing them to decrease in size. His heart was weaker on one side too, and more fluid had built-up in the sack that surrounded his heart, causing pressure there too. Basically, his heart was struggling and breathing had become difficult. In typical cat fashion, he made no noise to show his discomfort. A cat’s instinct is to hide weakness and illness from others in order to not be seen as easy prey for predators. They also tend to isolate themselves if they are feeling very unwell.
The Animal ER hospital put him on oxygen and removed over 200 milliliters from his chest, and more from the pleural lining around his heart. After a scary few days in hospital, he came back home and started taking diuretics and blood thinners to help manage his condition. After that first day or two at home with the pressure relieved and the sedation worn off, his spirits bounced back and his smile returned. He looked more like himself again. If we could keep him on his regime of meds (4 pills, every 8-12 hours), we could manage his illness and keep him living a happier life. Unfortunately, Blue discovered the bitter pills that we’d been hiding in his soft treats, and he got wise that we were grinding other meds into his wet food. He refused any food that smelled of his medicine. The prospect of forcing pills down his throat against his will felt like elder abuse to me. If he saw me coming after him with a pill popper, he’d just learn to run under the bed and avoid us. We didn’t want him to fear us or have any anxiety about us, so we made the hard choice to let him eat whatever he wanted and to avoid the meds altogether. It meant that we were in more of a palliative mode with him now, accepting that his life would soon come to an end, one way or another. At best, the fluid extraction and meds had bought him 2 more weeks, but he wouldn’t accept any more meds.
The fluid extractions were done by inserting a big syringe into his chest on each side. We didn’t want to submit Blue to any more invasive procedures, scary separation, or sedation. We just decided it was best for him to live as long as he could in his peaceful, familiar home.
Blue’s decline over the next week was steady and noticeable: he got slower and seemed uncomfortable, appearing somehow both restless and tired. He would lay in our bedroom closet for an hour, and then come out to the main area to lay on the carpet. We tried to feed, brush, and talk or sing to him whenever he was up and about. In spite of his regular mild activity, we worried that he might not last very much longer. His cardiologist confirmed our fear, telling us that he might only have days left. We knew what we needed to do next, and we scheduled an in-home euthanasia from a local vet. It was so difficult to have Blue take his last-ever breath while laying in my arms, but letting him nod-off peacefully was a dignity that our gentle old boy richly deserved. I felt like we had taken on the crying and the suffering so that he wouldn’t have to. Today, Blue’s remains are in a blue urn on our mantle, along with his paw prints. He sits up there next to his sister Peaches in her little pearl-coloured urn.
Every time I looked into Blue’s face, I saw the face of a smiling little friend. In fact, he didn’t seem so little to me at all. His importance in our lives made him a major figure in our home. He made a huge impact.
Blue’s affection was always sincere and unreserved, ever since our very first introduction in 2016. With Blue, the act of being itself seemed like a form of communication. Every pose or move he made told us something about him. Over the nine years he was with us, he taught us to understand him and he watched us closely to learn how we behaved too.
Blue was a good communicator. His eyes, whiskers, and ears told us everything that the word “meow” could not. He used his whole body to communicate, pointing his eyes, his face, or even his entire frame towards whatever thing that he wanted us to pay attention to. His tail was a living punctuation mark, a barometer of his moods, pointing up when he was happy and excited, down when he felt sad or scared, or twisted into any manner of loops or shepherding crooks when he felt intrigued and delighted. I’ve never really paid enough attention to human body language, but I have learned to read “cat” quite fluently.
If I had to sum up Blue’s personality in a word, “kind” is probably the best one I could use. He watched over his sister Peaches in the months when they were stuck in the animal shelter system. Peaches had a lot of fear and anxiety at first, and really relied on her brother to feel safe. They were all each other had. By the time we met them at the SPCA, they were five years old, and had been in the animal shelter system for months. Thankfully, they’d always been together.
Blue had originally been named Epo. He and Peaches had come to the Chilliwack shelter from an owner in Langley. Their owner was moving and couldn’t take them to the new home, so had put them up for adoption. They were about five years old when they entered the SPCA in Chilliwack, then the “Catfe” cat cafe in downtown Vancouver, before going to the shelter in East Van where we met them. We all got along pretty well from the start, but they were a bit overweight and had noticeable fear and anxiety. They needed a quiet, loving home with lots of room and sunshine where they could feel secure and safe. After being cat-less for four years, we were more than ready to welcome a pair of bonded kitties into our life again.
I’m sure it was was difficult for Blue when his sister Peaches died a few years later. She’d developed a huge tumorous mass all around her heart and lungs, and it was basically inoperable. Poor little Peaches had no future ahead of her. We had to have her euthanized. Blue seemed to understand what had happened when we’d taken her to the Animal Hospital but had come back later empty-handed. We cried as we vainly tried to explain her passing to him. His pupils just went huge and he started shadow-boxing like mad on our glass patio door, “bump bump bump bump!” with his front paws.
The easiest consolation we found from losing Peaches was that we could still pour the excess Peaches portion of our love and care right back into her big brother. Over the next nine years, Blue bounced back, prospering emotionally, returning that extra love back to us ten times over.