The last days...

When you know it's the end of days, you stop and take the time to notice things. Now that the decision has been made, and Colby is flying home, certain things have come into focus.

He's just a cat, some might say. But, Stimpy has been with us for eighteen years now. I sometimes jokingly refer to him as Colby's little brother, since Colby never had one of those.

Stimpy moved in with us so long ago, to that big house on the beach. He had all those rooms to explore! He was lord of the manor. He moved out with Colby and I years later, after the divorce, into that apartment downtown. He moved with just me for the last time this past summer, back to the island.

This latest apartment was the first place where he seemed at home from the first day. The last move, to my apartment downtown, sent him under Colby's bed for three days. He was petrified. When he finally came out, he found a new life in a new house, in a new backyard, with an upstairs porch where he seemed quite content. There were the yapping dogs downstairs to contend with, that my landlord kept adopting more and more of. But, he adapted. Eventually, not even the dogs disturbed his afternoon naps on the sunny table overlooking the back yard.

He aged into his twilight years here, once falling into such a deep sleep that he fell off the porch rail and broke his tail. The tail was amputated, and we joked that we were changing his name to "Stumpy." He didn't care. Cats teach you things, like not taking yourself too seriously.

Lately, he has been looking more and more frail, and doesn't seem to want to bother cleaning all that fur anymore. I comb out the mats, and watch him drool. He sleeps a lot. He has a lump near his chest that is growing larger. He wheezes and yowls at night. The vet said he is senile.

I knew I didn't want to wait, like we did with Emily. She was twenty when she went off to die under the house of our next door neighbor. Her lumps surfaced rapidly, and I spent tearful moments trying to figure out what to do, under the vet's guidance. We waited too long. She wandered off that rainy, cold February morning and never returned. About a month later, that smell of death hit me as I was walking, still searching for her, in the backyard.

That kind of thing will not happen to Stimpy.

Colby and I will take him on Friday, in the late afternoon. He will drift off and away. Having to do it seems the saddest thing, yet the kindest. To choose to go, well, would any of us ever do it? It makes you wonder. If you knew you were going to die, and it would be painful, could you choose to go? I say I would, but faced with this, I cling to every moment. I take him outside every afternoon, and watch him in the grass. He steps carefully, as if feeling every strand of prickly grass. He is looking out at the afternoon, and I suddenly feel like I am giving him a way out, and yet taking everything from him, all at the same time.

I want to change my mind, but I know this is selfish. It is so hard, this whole living thing, when you love so much.