On Wednesday Badtux had to say good-bye to George [AKA Mencken]. Knowing when to administer a coup de grâce is one of the responsibilities of living with furry friends. It isn’t easy, even when you know it is the right thing to do.
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9 comments
Thanks, Bryan.
George was with me for a long time and I have many memories (and photos!) of our time together. He actually was a star on my first blog back in 2002, which is two blogs before my current blog, where he was King George The Cat, Undisputed Ruler Of My Household. Which he was. Even after I brought TMF home, who eventually outweighed George by several pounds, George bossed him around until the last month or so when he was just feeling too bad to do that. When he couldn’t even join me in bed last weekend because he was hurting so much was when I knew it was time, I called the vet on Monday to make the appointment then tried to make his life as pleasant as possible for the short time remaining. His last day he ate a little kibble, drank a little water, used the cat box, then slept. The last thing he did at home was, when I sat on the futon, he got up from the corner by the vacuum cleaner where he was sleeping and painfully dragged himself up on the futon and curled up against me for one last kitty massage. Two hours later I took him to the vet for a peaceful exit.
He lasted a year after his stroke, which was more than everybody expected, and most of that time was pleasant. Just the past two weeks he went down fast, it was an explosively growing carcinoma. It’s a trip we all take in the end, I guess. Too bad it’s illegal for someone to take me gently on that same trip when it’s my own time :(.
BTW, it is Mencken, as in, H.L. Mencken, acerbic commentator on Boobus Americanus a.k.a. the Republican base. George had much the same opinion of pretty much everybody else on the planet with the exception of me. His early experience with humanity wasn’t positive and he wanted nothing to do with it, with the exception of me of course.
So sorry, Badtux. Letting go of a friend is one of the hardest things we must do in life. RIP, George the Cat.
Sorry about the typo, Badtux, I knew it was a reference to H.L. Mencken, the writer who took over the mantle of Ambrose Bierce as a social/political satirist.
It’s the cats with the somewhat sour attitudes that really get to you and are missed the most, especially when you are the only human they tolerate.
Yes, we treat pets better than we are allowed to treat people.
He didn’t just tolerate me, Bryan. That cat pretty much worshipped me. He’s one of the few cats I’ve ever encountered who would let me rub his tummy without it being a trap. He’d just wriggle in ecstasy. As far as he was concerned, I saved him from a life on the streets so I was the bestest person on the whole planet.
But anybody else? Yeah, right, whatcha tryin’ to pull, bubba? Nobody else would have gotten that close to him, in the first place. And if they’d tried, it woulda been Mr. Claw.
TMF, on the other hand, loves everybody. Someone comes to the house and sits down, within minutes they’re feebly saying “help?” because they’re being mugged by this giant cat that just jumped in their lap and is now crawling up their chest to get a hug. But don’t you dare try petting his tummy even if he’s flat on his back with all four paws in the air. It’s a trap!
You must have had a single cat household for a bond that strong. That’s the relationship I had with Koshka, my first cat. I rescued her and her brothers from a suspended ceiling after their feral mom was hit by a car.
The brothers were adopted because they were solid grey and fluffy, but Koshka stayed with me, and slept with me her entire life. Most of my friends didn’t know I had a cat because she usually hid whenever I had visitors.
TMF may react to the absence of George. There is no way of predicting for certain. Even if they don’t interact much, cats like company.
George was my only cat for about five months before I got TMF. TMF had to get The Paw a few times for being overly friendly to George before he got the message that George was the boss and not to be toyed with.
TMF is definitely reacting. He isn’t eating as much as usual and he’s following me around going “Meow? Meow?” for no real reason. When I watch him on the cameras from work, he occasionally gets up and checks out locations where George typically lurked, as if puzzled that there’s no cat there. That said, cats aren’t pack animals so it’s not the all-out grief like when a member of a dog’s pack dies. He’s just… confused.
In general cats do not like changes in their environment, and this is a major change. Toms tend to be more solitary than females, but in a close environment they react to a loss.
my deepest condolences, badtux.