evie
talking about pet loss
today is day 6, or day 7 from when we first learned the situation last thursday and made our decision to let go of Evie for her quality of life. Right now, we are doing as okay as we can be. Evie was a cat who was always around us or in our shadow, so her not being around hits pretty hard just because her behavior and where she liked to hang out was predictable. The situation was that Evie had a dental cleaning just before we flew to Philly for a good friend's wedding a few weeks ago. She has not been grooming lately, but we and the vet suspected it was because she needed a lot of dental work done. During the dental cleaning, they found a mass under her tongue and did a biopsy. When we got back we got the news that the biopsy revealed it was a squamous cell carcinoma which is a highly aggressive tumor and apparently the most common kind to affect kitty mouths. We met with a vet oncologist last Thurs who examined her and found that in just the time since the biopsy one week before that the tumor had actually grown at a pretty alarming rate. E was not able to eat or drink on her own almost all of last week and was hiding/not very active, though she still was sitting with us and purring with pets and love. The treatments available for the tumor were all basically pretty extreme….chemo pills (which she had to be able to swallow whole on her own, which she physically could not do) and a feeding tube. And we had a long talk with the vet who explained (really well) that basically any treatment would have the goal of just keeping her where she currently was vs it getting worse, and obviously… the place where she was was not a good quality of life. There was not any treatment for E that was actually a bridge to having a healthy cat back--it would just basically buy her more time at a really poor quality of life until eventually she would die in a lot of pain and suffering because she couldn't eat or drink. The week before was the most stressful week of my life because of how much I was worried about her not eating. She lost a ton of weight in just a few days. The choice of course is not easy, but there was no other choice we could make where we would have done right by her. So we talked with the vet and brought Evie home Thursday night and scheduled her appointment for Friday morning. We got one last evening with her and her last morning she hung out in all the sunniest patches of the house, even laying on her side for a bit and relaxing. She's only been kind of tightly loafing lately because it was obvious she was in a lot of pain, so seeing her relaxed just felt like... she might have known it would be over soon and could accept it. When we came back to the vet Friday and it was time, i was able to hold her in my lap for the whole time, in one of her blankies, as she fell asleep and then right up to the end. The moment was actually very peaceful and it felt right and beautiful that i got to hold her. they had a white noise machine in the room that i have at home, which i use every night, so i turned that on to the setting we use at bedtime, and we played Asleep by the Smiths and I held her so tight. She was so calm and peaceful, and I felt such a weight off my chest even though it was over. We were so lucky in many ways with this. We got a very certain picture of her diagnosis and her outlook for treatment, a really great vet staff who were compassionate, honest, and helpful in every step of the road and careful to explain everything to us. Most people don't have the luxury of one more night with their pets, or of knowing that the choice to put a pet to sleep is the only right one versus having to choose not to pursue expensive courses of treatment. It's been a weird couple days because occasionally i get so sad, but i also have not felt like the sadness was insurmountable
She was my best friend and my soul cat, she slept with me every night so the first night without her was so hard. I held the blankie so tight. This morning was tough because Luna has really seemed to realize that she's gone. She woke us up early and spent hours running around the house checking all the spots where Evie has been hiding while sick. This destroyed me. We tried to explain to her the whole time, because I don't know if she can understand us, but we try to explain it to her. It's been about 6 days now. It feels like a lifetime, and also like it just happened yesterday. There's two things that still punch me in the gut everytime--getting back and opening the front door and only having one cat run to greet me, and then going to bed every night alone makes me feel like I'm going to puke.
Losing Evie just feels so soon. It was such a fast decline from the biopsy news to the vet appointment to the final day. It sounds kind of bad--but Luna is so much older that i thought we'd be on this hell ride with Luna first because we've only had Evie for about 9 years and she was only about a year old when I got her. I wish she was with us longer. I miss her so much, but im also glad and honored that like, i could be the one to take on all the pain she was feeling so she doesn't have to suffer anymore... But it also really fucking sucks to lose my best friend no matter how hard I try to be stoic about it. Its been up and down, for a while im doing like so okay, and I forget, but then like I do a goofy run to the bathroom to shower, and forget that she wasn't there to chase me like she always does, and then I cry my eyes out in the shower.
She loved to sit on me while i was gaming on my laptop or during meetings at work. She always liked to scratch the back of my work chair and if I put my desk in standing mode or get up to go get a drink, i came back to her sitting in my chair like it was the throne. She loved to be on camera, so playing DND on Discord this week was so hard. I had a lump in my throat the whole time and it was hard to focus. Same with work meetings.
And it was so fast how bad she got? It was such a decline like just over the week in how she was feeling, and then it was so fast from the vet oncologist to the end, but also like... she was doing so bad Friday morning as far as eating/drinking that if i hadn't scheduled it already i would have called them and been like, we need to do it today. I couldn't bear another week of her not eating and hiding. She could hardly move or respond to things. There was a moment Thurs night that i got up in the middle of the night and i was a little afraid she was already gone, she was so still.
Evie and I had a bond literally almost from the first moment we met; we were visiting some cats because we wanted to get a buddy for Luna and we picked her up--she had just arrived in the shelter, and she put her chin on my shoulder, hugged me and purred like a 747. And that was just how she always was ever since, even at the very end she was so happy to be held and so at peace in my arms. Sharing the last picture I took of her the morning of. I love this picture. She was so relaxed that morning, enjoying watching the lizards outside from the sunniest patch. She laid on my chest and purred, like she always did.
the world is so much grayer without her in it
