Gracie

She's gone. Gracie went to sleep very peacefully this afternoon at 2 pm. Her x-rays showed a very large mass that had pushed her esophagus down almost into a v-shape and her lungs were full of what we can only assume was a very aggressive cancer that had metastasized throughout her respiratory system. Her eyes remained open right through to the end, which I felt was so characteristic of how she had lived her life- on the alert in an attempt to be ready for anything that might want to cause us harm. Slowly her forehead slumped down onto her paws and she was done.

One thing I had forgotten about was how once I started writing on this site, I would sit cross-legged as I am now, in front of my coffee table with the lap top at eye level and Gracie would get on the sofa behind me and stare over my shoulder at the screen for hours at a time as I tried to craft a sentence or two. Sometimes I would lean back and touch my head to hers so she would know I wasn't completely oblivious to her presence. She wasn't crazy about this move, but she always tolerated it. I would think of the Cone Heads on Saturday Night Live when I did it and it gave me a laugh. Of course it's hard to accept the fact that she's not sitting here behind me, especially since I've only now been finally able to start writing again, but it is because of her, in part, that I have found my voice again. It's strange to feel that there's no life other than mine in this apartment. It makes the quiet that much quieter. In the six years that she lived here, I never heard Gracie meow once. She was the original Stealth Kitty. Now that she's no longer here, this ocean of silence is so vast and so overwhelming that I could almost drown in it. It is so very still in this room.

As my friend David said, this hard part is how we take care of our pets, too, and just as important as what we do for them in life. She'll never have to struggle to take another breath. I won't have to force another pill into her. Her pain is over and now mine is just beginning. I'm going to promise myself that I will temper it with thoughts of all that I had, and not just dwell on what I am missing. Thank you all for being so supportive; my old friends as well as my new ones. You've helped. You truly have.

The Sense Of Humor Is The Last Thing To Go

And I plan on keeping mine for a very long time! (I am, however, starting to worry about our friend, Mr. BEK.... just a bit)

The High Price Of Pets

I've spent the last week or so watching my cat, Gracie, becoming weaker and weaker as she's battled some unknown illness that's aggressively robbing her of her strength and taking away her ability to do the simple, funny things that I've grown to love about her so much in the six years that have passed since we rescued her from her life of living on the street. Gracie came into my life a few months after we put our other cat, Mina to sleep. After having a cat for 15 years and spending the last three tending to her various ailments as they developed, I was heartbroken when Mina died. I had only been in Seattle for two weeks and the day after the movers left, it became apparent that she was going into severe congestive heart failure and nothing could save her. The discomfort she was feeling was palpable. She crouched in a corner, unable to move and just stared at me. After she was gone, I was crushed. Here I was in this new city; displaced and feeling very much alone. Mina had been a very resilient character. When I brought her home from the shelter at the age of two, I had been advised that she'd probably hide under the bed for a few days until she got acclimated to her new surroundings. I opened the carrier and Mina hopped out and got right on the sofa and stayed there, defying their predictions. This was a time when I could have used some of her bravado.

Knowing the tender state I was in, Jeff hesitated at first to tell me about Gracie. He saw her every day, sleeping under a car in front of his apartment and occasionally coming up on the porch to eat some of the food that belonged to the kitties that lived in his building. Her days were numbered. She had to be rescued, and so she was. I put aside the sadness I felt and took her back to the same vet I had found to take care of Mina when we arrived in Seattle. Gracie had a punctured ear drum and all sorts of other problems. I cried in the waiting room as I felt all of the sadness at losing Mina welling up inside of me. After countless surgeries and procedures, Gracie recovered. The fur grew back on her previously naked and bat-like ears. She learned to trust me, somewhat grudgingly and finally began to sleep on my head, like a sentinel always on the look out for trouble. She'd sneak up behind me while I was talking on the phone. I'd turn around, look down, and there she was, because of course I was talking to her, wasn't I?

After spending thousands of dollars to prolong Mina's life; after all of the extraordinary measures I had taken- including giving her subcutaneous fluids while I held her on the bathroom vanity in the hotel room where I stayed until the movers came- I'm struggling with the decision to fight this battle once again. Hope is the thing that lives inside of all of us; after making the decision to put Gracie to sleep on Sunday night, and then finding myself unable to do it, I took her to the vet to see if anything within reason could be done. They gave her fluids, she ate a little food; hence the road sign- "You are now entering the land of false hope", I told myself as I left the doctor's office. Amazingly, her blood work and her vital signs are practically normal. The illness remains undiagnosed. Whatever is wrong with her must reside deep inside, just like my hope. She's on some medication and will probably be getting re-hydration therapy to see if we can jump start some kind of recovery. Her personality is returning, little by little. She jumped up on the bed. She watched me talking on the phone. I want to do the right thing. I hope I'll know it when I find it. These road signs are so confusing.

Woman Awakens For 3 Days After 6 Years

Slips back into vegetative state after speaking with her family

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A woman who went into a vegetative state more than six years ago awoke this week for three days and spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back.

“I’m fine,” Christa Lilly told her mother on Sunday — her first words in eight months. She has awakened four other times for briefer periods since suffering a heart attack and stroke in November of 2000. “I think it’s wonderful. It makes me so happy,” Lilly told television station KKTV-TV. She also got to see youngest daughter, Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.

Before her relapse on Wednesday, Lilly told the station her biggest frustration was learning how to talk again. After years of being fed from a tube, eating was no problem. “I’ve been eating cake,” she said. Her neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said he couldn’t explain how or why she awoke.

“I’m just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states,” he said. A vegetative state is much like a coma except Lilly’s eyes remain open. Bjork said that he’s never seen a similar quality of awakening.

Bjork said that unlike the much publicized case of Terri Schiavo, Lilly is minimally conscious. He said she could awake again. After Lilly relapsed her mother and caregiver Minnie Smith said: “The good Lord let me know she’s alright, he brings her back to visit every so often and I’m thankful for that.”

When I saw this article today, of course I knew that I had to post it. It's kind of ironic, considering how it echoes my current difficulties with being able to communicate, albeit in a much more profound manifestation. For her, it's a very real and very serious situation, unlike my mere inability to assemble my thoughts into a coherent piece for this site as often as I once did. Whatever would it feel like to exist in her world? I do love the fact that she got to have cake and I hope she was able to savor every bite. It kind of reminds me of Warren Zevon's philosophy at the end of his life: "Enjoy every sandwich". Perhaps some day soon she can come back to her family and stay for a very long time and have a sandwich AND cake, and feel the love that surely surrounds her.