Posted September 24th, 2003 by Michelle

My days have been filled with inanity and alcohol, late nights and nightmares, and today, just now, I watched as a vet gave my sweet cat Zooey a shot in the throat that stopped his heart.

They couldn’t do it in his leg, because he is, was, so decimated that they couldn’t find the vein. He’d already had one shot, to help him “go into a deeper sleep” but he never shut his eyes. I watched him go seconds without breathing and then gasping, without moving his face, filling his lungs. The vet and her helper left the room because the first shot needed five minutes to work. I knew, as I sat there looking at him, talking to him, petting him althogh he hasn’t purred in days, that it was too late to go back, he could never recover from that first shot, that he was really about to die. And all I could think about was how I failed him, how he had to live in a cage most of the time in the last months of his life, how my cat Fezzik demanded all of the attention while Zooey was happy rubbing himself on your foot, or if that wasn’t available, the phone book or my stack of CDs.

Zooey was born in California, and moved four times while still living in that state. Next was Iowa (only one move) and then Decatur, Illinois (two moves) and then New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and then finally back to New York. He’s seen more of the world than most people. He was the last living animal of the Class of ’87, outliving Sergie the ferret and Kije the dog. He is up there with the funniest and coolest animals ever, giving even the infamous Cap’m of Chapel Hill fame a close contender in the halls of transcendent animals. He was afraid of exactly nothing and was generally so fat he tended to fall off anything he was sitting on as soon as he fell asleep. The fat would start to roll and he’d wake up only when he hit the floor.

But today, laying on a the table wrapped in a pink towel, he was nothing but skin and bones, literally, only skin and bones. When I’d put him down, he’d flopped over, and not moved again, even when he was given the first shot. He didn’t notice when the vet returned, and didn’t flinch when they started looking for veins.

But then, Christ, when the vet put the needle in his throat, and slowly started pushing it in, then he knew, and all he had strength to do was blow out through his nose, several times, the weakest protest, and when she was only halfway done I cried, “He can’t feel that, can he?” and she just made a noise as she concentrated on getting the last of the killing liquid inside of him. She finished, pulled out her stethoscope, listened to his chest, and said, “He’s gone.”

I sat there alone with him for some time. I didn’t know what to do, but this lump of open-eyed cat was not my Zooey, and I didn’t know how to say goodbye to what was already gone. I kept trying to leave but then staying, petting him and talking to him. I told him I was sorry he had to die here in this metal room instead of somewhere beautiful outside. I told him he was the best cat ever. And then I told him to go find Kije.

I know he was miserable, I know he was dying, but I can’t help but wonder how selfish my act was today. Was it that I couldn’t bear to see him so miserable? Did he want to die naturally, curled up on my bed? Or was he truly half-dead, blind, unknowing, ready to go? I don’t know. Zooey was sixteen years old, and had found me when I was still in high school. I’ve know him longer than I’ve known all but one of my friends. I’m baffled by the life I’ve created where I have to do something like this alone.