Jazz Is Gone...

I now realize that Jazz had an aggressive form of cancer in her digestive track somewhere– it became obvious the last 3 days of her life. My poor baby wasn’t in pain until the end, but she was uncomfortable, and I’m glad we had medication to give her to ease that. I’m glad I got an extra week to have my cat in my room (where she didn’t come in very often due to my allergies) and be spoiled and loved on as much as possible.

This is really hard to write. I’m bawling my eyes out!

I’m glad that from illness to death was less than a month. I’ve had cats that were in poor health in old age linger for many months to almost a year. It made it harder to see her go, because it was so fast I barely saw it coming before it was too late, but for her sake, I’m glad it was fast.

I realized she was getting worse, and in a way that would cause suffering, so I made arrangements to take her in to be euthanized. The night before I took her to the vet, I went to the bathroom (because the last couple of days she couldn’t be in my bedroom) and just held her on our “cuddle blanket” and pet her and talked to her. She’s been too weak and feeling icky to purr the loud purr she always gave me until a couple of weeks ago, but at one point she was purring loud and hard, looking into my eyes for over 20 minutes. I knew she was letting me know that even then, she loved the heck out of me. And that cat really did! To the point of being fucking annoying much of the time! But I loved being loved– who doesn’t? It’s going to be hard not to have that loving being around and devoted to me like that.

When she got tired, I let her sleep– but I checked in, often crying, for the last few days of her life. I couldn’t sleep much. When she was in my room, I was up when I heard her move. She wanted to be on my bed to be next to me, but couldn’t jump up the last few days, so I picked her up. And I had to help her back down off my bed as well. I fed her, pet her, checked on her… and tried to distract myself the rest of the time, so I wasn’t just crying non-stop. My sinuses have had a workout for the last few weeks, including right now!

The day of, she was very weak and tired, but still concerned when I put her in her cat carrier for her final journey. Rhonda once again stepped up to help me with both transportation and expenses! OMG. I don’t know what I would have done without her! I’ve thanked her so vigorously! We got to the vet and they were great. I held Jazz in a blanket and they gave her the shot to make her sleep, and she quietly purred until she was out. Then they took her to the back and gave her the final shot and brought her body back out in a box.

The remarkable thing about this incident was that, though I was crying– I was NOT having a panic attack! In the past, I couldn’t handle putting a pet to sleep (that is, I couldn’t be around) because I would scream-cry and freak everyone out! I mean full-bore publicly humiliating panic attacks. I have come far enough in my healing process over many years that I can actually do this thing that had to be done. Rhonda was with me, but I was able to talk and ask for what I wanted and the deed was done.

I’m keeping her in the basement tonight, and tomorrow we’ll bury her. Right now, I have to sleep for a long time to make up for the lack of it over many days.