the old cat

My old cat is dying. We've known this for a while, as we've watched him become increasingly thin, tired and cranky. Of course, he has always been thin, tired and cranky, so we're really just talking relative degrees here. Lately, though, Minou is skinnier than I have ever seen him, and now complains even when I pick him up, which he has never done before.

So it is time.

It was time about a month ago, the appointment set, a plan made for someone to watch Axel. We even took the last photos. Earlier that week I had watched him have what I thought was a seizure and I fell apart. It turned out he'd just fallen and couldn't get up, but I cried anyway. The day before the appointment I canceled; just not ready.

I thought I would be readier. This too is a relative thing. I've talked about his death for a couple of years now--when he turned seventeen, I thought, surely, it's around the corner. And then eighteen, now nineteen. If he makes it til August, he'll be twenty.

I wasn't even that old when I got Minou. One October evening when I was fifteen, my mother and I drove through a torrential downpour to pick him up in Culpepper. I'd found the family of cat breeders in the classified section in the newspaper--remember those days? The house was crawling with kids, kittens and grown cats, of various siamese hues. I don't remember why I chose Minou out of the bunch.

According to the papers, Minou is purebred and he's got crossed eyes to prove it. My brother noticed this right away, but it took me years to believe him.

Minou has lived in ten different homes with me. He followed me to California (drugged, on a plane). He moved to Oakland with us, wailing the entire trip from Berkeley in the front seat of our tiny Miata. And most recently, the three blocks to our home where he can bask all day on the sun-warmed bricks.

Only he doesn't. He's too tired to go out on even the sunniest of days. Instead, he curls up in his plush basket that Mychal bought him, in front of the heat vent, under my sweatshirt. It takes this much to warm him, even on these unseasonably warm days in February.

Axel is sweet on Minou; he runs his fingers through Minou's fur while he nurses, asks for him when he wakes up, and offers him cookies, milk from his sippy cup, and brings him books. He learned how to be gentle with Minou, but he also learned how to be rough. Lately, he's been picking Minou up to bring him to me, which is terribly sweet, but probably not that great for the old cat. Friends comment that Minou is so tolerant with Axel, but, really, I think he's just too tired to move.

Selfishly, I want him to sleep, because I'm pinning my hopes on death arriving while he's asleep. And perhaps death is just around the corner: he has kidney failure, it doesn't get better from here for a nineteen and a half year old cat. But I know that waiting for a gentle death is almost as futile as waiting to be ready. Even though my friends tell me that I will know when it's time, I don't think that when that moment arrives I will be any readier. Some day soon, though, I know that it will be my job to take him back to the vet. No canceling, for his sake.