Armand
July 20, 2007, 10:48 p.m.
I should write more. I really do have a lot of things to say... I just get tired of saying them. Philip is on his first trip. I miss him, but I'm also enjoying my alone time. I think it will be a little harder on his next trip, because that's to an exotic foreign location and I'll be jealous.
I've also been enjoying my kitty cat, who is SUPER rambunctious. She's just the cutest cat in the world. I should really post her picture.
Oh, and I've been on a diet. Which has actually been going fine. I've been eating tons of veggies and working out, so I'm not hungry but I've lost about five pounds already! Of course, I've gained and lost that first five pounds about a billion times.
On a sadder note, one of the things that's been dragging me down (well, THE thing) and making me wish I had Philip with me even more is Armand. Armand is my kitten. I got him when I was nine, but he'll always be my kitten. He lives with my parents. He got really sick last year, which I'm sure I wrote about, but he had seemed to recover. And maybe he did, we really don't know. Basically, he was on a course of antibiotics and he recovered in terms of personality. While sick, he'd been vague, sleepy, listless... he didn't seem to recognize anyone. The medicine made him respond to attention, climb into laps, and ust generally resume his old habits. But physically, he's been weak since last year and that hasn't changed. In fact, in the last couple of months, he's gotten worse. And I've been home to see him, so I knew that- I've seen him struggle to get up on the couch, and I've seen him limp. But the decline has recently gotten pretty steep.
My parents called me about two weeks ago to tell me that Armand had a seizure and was dying. He didn't die, but he did get even more frail. Since then, he appears to have gone blind and he's had several more seizures. I was there for one of them. I held him, and he seemed to appreciate it, but he was obviously very scared. He curled up and slept on me for hours which he never used to do. He was needy, which he's never been before. I think he wanted me to make him feel better. And I couldn't. I mean, I can pet him, and hold him, but I can't make him see. It was awful. I just feel like I let him down.
Anyway, we're putting him down. At first I fought my parents on it, mostly out of shock. I mean, when Bill died, I had literally years of warning. I knew she had congestive heart failure. But if someone had asked me about Armand three weeks ago, I would have said "Oh, he's fine. He'll live to be 20". I kept trying to get my parents to visit the special cat neurologist, or try the specialy kitty anti-seizure medication. I even told my mom to hire a local college student to be Armand's live in aid, and I was only sort of kidding. But the neurologist can't tell us about any problem they could fix- she could tell them it us it's a brain tumor, but she can't perform brain surgery. And the anti seizure medications are so dangerous that they aren't prescribed unless the seizures occur once a week or more. Armand's don't happen that often, and they're still unbearable.
Now, I've basically come to grips with the fact that it's unfair to keep him around. I'd be doing it for me and not for him. His condition is so bad that I doubt he'd make it long anyway, and it's better than he die at the vet's while someone he loves holds him than alone and scared during some painful convulsions while my parents are at work. When I say come to grips with, I mean, of course, that I understand we have to do it. Not that I'm really ok with it, or quite sure yet how to deal.
I want to be there, but it might be hard. With Philip away, I have to take care of Thatcher, so my parents would have to schedule the vet appointment for a time I can make it home. My dad wasn't being very accommodating when I talked to him about it last. He claims he doesn't want Armand to linger, which I understand, but I was talking about putting it off for one day. I think he just doesn't really want me to be there. He's said outright that he doesn't think it's a good idea.
When I was little, and Bill died, he didn't want me to be there. I fought to go and I won, and it was very important for me to be the one who held her and petted her while she went. It wasn't scarring. It was good. I thought that after that Dad would understand that I need the closure, but I guess in a lot of ways I'm still his little girl and it makes him uncomfortable to see my having to confront death. I would have pressed the issue with him, but we were at a restaurant and I would have cried.
Ah, that was a long entry. I guess the point is that my cat is sick and so we're going to kill him and I'm not entirely comfortable with it but I guess it's better than torturing him and then letting him die.
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