This is one of the hardest pieces I’ve ever written, and yet I want to reach out to anyone who might find themselves in the same position, to say that although you probably feel very alone at the moment, please know that there are others out there who care, and who will understand at least a little of what you’re experiencing right now.
Writing about this is also part of my process of adjusting to our loss and of celebrating the life of our very special little friend.
Last Tuesday evening we made that most difficult of decisions – to have our beloved cat, Kali, put to sleep. She was almost 13 years of age, which is pretty good for a Cornish Rex, and she’d been experiencing some health issues, but still it has hit us even harder than we were expecting.
We had noticed that she was finding it more of an effort to breathe and so we took her to the vet who confirmed that she was going into heart failure and her lungs were congested. Due to the coronavirus distancing rules, we couldn’t go into the surgery and had to wait in the carpark while the vet examined Kali. He then brought her back to us and allowed us some time to sit with her while we weighed up the options, but deep down I knew that they would at best be a temporary solution, and might even just prolong her suffering. At one point she turned to look at me, and in her face I could see that she was tired, and that this struggle was getting to be too much for her.
It’s that moment that every animal guardian dreads. We face those unanswerable questions of: How will I know when the time is right? How will I be able to make that decision?
Tomorrow I’ll share a little more of Kali’s story.