December 30, 2003 - Cat Valhalla

The Warrior in peak form

But Mom had given him another week to see if he'd do any better. He ate listlessly, if at all, fell over when he tried to clean himself and was clearly sick. This was a far cry from the Warrior of old.

Sylvester had always been the Warrior. He was the supreme mouser, who could catch anything. Once, he even caught a neighbor's dove, much to everyone's chagrin. And he worked tirelessly to defend our property from strange cats. It is a sign of his ill health that, of late, strange cats roam casually across the property, munching on the food Mom always left outside for Sly.

The Warrior wore his war wounds with pride: a torn ear, a broken fang. The vet told my mom his file was one of the thickest, since he'd been in frequently for antibiotics to recover from infected cat bites, also known as "cat cysts."

But his Warrior days long gone, he was a pale shadow of himself, and clearly beginning to suffer. So we gave Mom a couple hours to make the decision, and when she did, The Gryphon and I met her at her place to help her go to the vet.

She wanted me along, she said, because she liked the things I said when Snyder was put to sleep. Snyder had been the family dog for many years and at the end of his life was suffering from seizures which could no longer be controlled, a condition caused, we suspected, by a brain tumor.

I'm not sure any more what I said when Snyder died. I just said what I thought was right, and I did the same this time. When Mom started to cry, I reminded her that she'd taken care of him over the years. In fact, he'd had 17 extra years because of her.

My sister found Sylvester when he was about a year old. He'd had his leg broken by a car and was stumbling about in the cold, fur matted.

Luckily for him, he happened by my sister's Girl Scout meeting, at a nearby church. She saw him and could not turn him away. She insisted that Mom take him home and get him medical care. A snow storm was coming, and he probably wouldn't have survived the night.

When they first brought Sly home, my brother and I were not that thrilled. To us, he was a matted lump of brown. My brother said, "You've brought home Bill the Cat." He wanted to name him that, but my mom refused.

She said, "As soon as we clean him up, he'll be beautiful. You'll see." Wouldn't you know it? She was right. Once cleaned up, Sylvester became a beautiful, white long-haired cat. But if you'd called Sylvester pretty, he probably would have scratched you.

For awhile, he was ill-tempered because none of us knew he had an infected tooth. But as soon as that was removed, he became more good-natured. He always used to run up to greet us when we pulled into the driveway. Sly would run up to me, his beautiful white coat home to numerous little green burrs, picked up in the woods where he loved to roam. I'd always try to pick as many off as I could before he gave me his warning mew.

When we got to the vet, they only had us wait in the waiting room for a short while before they took us into an exam room. In there, we opened the cage so Mom could pet him, that fluffy white coat he'd always had such trouble keeping clean.

The vet came in and asked Mom how he'd been doing. After Mom's report, the vet said this was the time to do it, before he was in agonizing pain. My sister knew what kind of suffering could result from this condition, having just known a human who'd died of a similar cancer. "It was horrible," she'd said to Mom on the phone that morning. "You don't want him to go through that."

Sylvester lay on his favorite polar fleece comforter, which was covered with his long white silky hairs. Mom and I held him gently and talked comfortingly to him as the vet prepared the injection. The vet called in an assistant, who happened to be my Kiddie Kaper Classmate, whom I'd seen at my high school reunion earlier this year. He met my eyes with a comforting smile.

I heard the vet say, quietly, to the assistant, "Just because he's a bad cat."

And then, so soon, he was gone. It struck me how many years we'd worked so hard to keep him alive and happy, and in a moment, it was over. Final. Gone.

But I didn't say this. Instead, after the vet left us alone with him to say our good-byes, I said, "He's not a bad cat. He's a good cat."

We all said our silent prayers for him. Mom wanted to stay long enough so that she felt that his spirit had moved on. We talked quietly until she felt ready to leave.

As we stepped outside the vet's office, I leaned in to The Gryphon and said, "It's a Walk Through Fire this weekend, to see how serious you are." He held me close.

When we drove away, I could sense that everyone felt a little relieved. As difficult as this moment had been, it had been even more difficult to watch him suffer.

"Hey," I said."Do you suppose they get to be anything they want, in Heaven? He'd be a big, white Siberian tiger. 'Finally, my true form!'" Mom smiled. We could all picture that, our Warrior in Cat Valhalla.

 

More of the Wilson family Christmas:

December 28, 2003 - Sugarplum Family

December 29, 2003 - An Armadillo Antler Christmas

December 31, 2002 - Mega Media

Moral:
Weary warriors go to Valhalla, regardless of species.