To Be Titled

What can I say about a four-and-a-half-year-old cat that I had to euthanize? Anyone who spent any meaningful amount of time with my family knew two things. First, that Pancake was a spirited cat—he loved to spend time with us, but when he was angry he also let us know, usually with his teeth. Second, that he and I had a special bond—he visibly loved me like he loved no one else, and in many ways he was my first “child,” as this writing demonstrates.

Ever since Pancake grew out of his kitten phase, he had an aggressive side that became increasingly more so as he got older. Visits to the vet’s office and his behavior there certainly eliminated any doubts about his tendencies based on his actions at home. I’m sure his file at the Humane Society vet clinic had a sticker to indicate his special status. Earlier this spring, we decided to take some long-overdue actions. Upon consulting with the vet, we first put him on Prozac, which was found to have some effects on stabilizing aggressive pets. Although that worked about 75-80% in calming him down, there were still times when Pancake got angry and showed it with his teeth.

So, we took the next step. As soon as spring arrived, we let him go outside. That was a difficult transition for both him and me. I was constantly worried about his safety outside. To confirm it, he came back with a bite wound (from a fight with another cat?) within the first few weeks, and some days he didn’t come home until the next morning. One time he came home after having been sprayed by a skunk. Over the summer, things settled down. Pancake’s schedule became regular—wake up at home, have breakfast, ask to go outside, sometimes come home for naps, and come home for the evening and go to sleep at home. He stopped getting into troubles.

As fall arrived and signs of winter appeared, I wondered if the change in the weather might affect the regularity. Then the big snow storm came last Tuesday night and into all day Wednesday. Wednesday morning, Pancake woke up a little earlier than usual, had breakfast and asked to go outside. We let him out, and to my surprise, he trekked across almost-one-foot-deep snow and left the house. I figured he would come back earlier than usual, and he did. Within less than ten minutes, he came bounding back upstairs, his paws dripping wet. He shook to dry himself. He had some breakfast, used the litter box (for the first time in months) and went back up to the bedroom to go back sleep. He ended up staying in the whole day. Thursday was somewhat better. It had stopped snowing, and it wasn’t quite as cold. He got to go outside couple of times, although the conditions were not quite what he was used to.

Then it was Friday. The day would end very differently from how it began. Pancake went out after breakfast, as usual. I went to work after dropping Xander off at school. A little after noon I got a call from Susanne, which I couldn’t take because I was at a talk. When I got back to my office, I saw messages she left on Skype: “Pancake just attacked me / worst ever… / big bites.” Upon reading those lines, I knew his day had come, and the decision was a fait accompli. As difficult as it was, I did not want to prolong the inevitable any longer than necessary. Susanne initially made the appointment for Saturday at 9am. I saw no point in extending the agony. I asked to move up the appointment. It was set for 3:30pm in the afternoon. I even showed up early. As always, the veterinary technicians at Boulder Valley Humane Society were very nice. By 3:50pm, I was back in the car, with an empty cat carrier.

The summer was great for all of us, especially once Pancake had fully adjusted to being an indoor-outdoor cat. After spending the afternoon outside, Pancake ran home to greet me when he heard the sound of my bike pull up and the garage door open. On days that Xander and I played outside, Pancake came back from wherever he was playing to hang out with us. Sometimes he would chase a fallen apple Xander would roll for him on the ground. But most of the times, he just stretched out on our driveway and watched us play. He even went on short walks with us, when the whole family would go for one. He never followed us more than a block (except one time he persistently followed us and eventually made us turn around and come back home), but he tried. On numerous occasions he proudly brought his prey home—mice, chipmunks, lizards and birds. Frequently he consumed them. We grudgingly but willingly put up with this toll of him being an indoor-outdoor cat.

Despite the dramatic improvements, however, he was never a 100% calm cat. Throughout the spring, summer and early fall, we did give him numerous “time outs” when he misbehaved and tried to get aggressive. When Xander got excited and jumped up and down around him, leading him to get scared, his instinct was to try to bite, although not deeply. No solution was perfect.

What I’m still reeling from is the rapidity with which all this happened, even though it did not come out of the blue. Back in February when we first visited the vet clinic about Pancake’s aggressiveness, euthanizing was already put on the table by the vet. The vet had suggested medication and letting him outside as options we might try before taking the more drastic measure. But once we made our decision, things moved quick. One of our friends suggested that we take twenty four hours to spoil him before putting him down. I thought that would be cruel for me and useless for Pancake. Xander didn’t get to say goodbye to Pancake, as I took him to the vet clinic during Xander’s nap. We wouldn’t have given him a chance to say goodbye anyway.

Even on a smaller scale, things happened quickly. At 3pm, I was struggling to put him in a carrier at home. By 3:45, he had passed away. It was striking to witness his such spirited life force taken away so quickly yet peacefully. The last fight he put up was against getting sedated. I actually didn’t even get say goodbye to him properly. The vet technician had promised to bring him back out to me once he was somewhat sedated. The sedatives were supposed to take about seven minutes to kick in. When they brought him back out, he was fully sedate and totally limp. The technicians apologized to me saying that the sedative took much shorter than expected to affect him. They stepped out to give me some time. His eyes remained open but he was completely unconscious. I realized that he wouldn’t be able to hear me anymore. In some ways, I was as much thankful that he was unconscious as I was sad. I didn’t think I could deal with him staring up at me, making me wonder whether I was violating the implicit trust he placed in me to take care of him. I tried to close his eyes, but that didn’t work. I didn’t have much to say to him. I think I apologized a lot and pointed out what great several months he had being able to play outside. The technicians came back a few moments later, this time to shave a part of his hind left leg to find a vein and to inject him with sodium pentobarbital. The process of injecting seemed to last forever. Pancake didn’t move at all. He was fully sedated. Once the chemical was fully injected, a few moments after that, the lead technician checked Pancake’s heartbeat. She told me it had stopped. He didn’t look or feel any different from when they brought him back after the sedation. They left again to give me some time alone. I saw his last breath exit his body with the fall of his torso.

I miss him dearly, as does the rest of my family. Good and bad, he was such a presence around our home. It doesn’t help that Xander—who has been told the conventional “our pet went to a special farm story”—keeps asking questions about why Pancake had to leave and when he was going to come back. Before I returned home from the vet clinic, Susanne tried to clean out all Pancake things from the house. The crib tent from Avi’s crib was taken off. Pancake’s beds and food items were moved into the garage. His toys were put away. But it’s hard to erase his history in our house. Literally, there is not a single corner of the house that Pancake did not spend some significant time in. The first evening without Pancake at home, we all kept expecting him to come inside and jump up to his food bowl in the kitchen. That night, I woke up to a hallucinatory tinkling of the tags on his collar. Throughout the weekend, when I noticed the lower water level in the vase containing the bamboo plant, where Pancake drank from, I subconsciously moved to refill it. Then I stopped myself.

I do not regret the choice at all that Susanne and I made on behalf of our family. We are certainly better off overall without an aggressive and unpredictable cat at home. At the same time, I keep thinking about Pancake’s potential. I would always use the quality of life criterion to assess whether a pet needed to be put down. Pancake certainly affected our quality of life adversely—I’m not sure if his quality of life was so bad. He was young for a cat. I wondered what his potential in his feline life was and whether he fulfilled it. I can make up a role ex post that Pancake was supposed to play in his life and say that he fulfilled it, mostly to make myself feel better: He helped a young couple from California transition to a new place. He provided joy and excitement in the house, until the house became even more full of life with two boys. That’s a potential that he fulfilled successfully. I do wonder if he could have done more, grown older and mellower as the boys grew up. I’m now down from three boys to two—two certainly far more important boys.

Sunday was a beautiful, warm and sunny day. As I was writing part of this story, I thought about how much Pancake would have enjoyed playing outside in that weather. It was a day quite unlike the snowy and cold, wintry days he endured and upset him. I looked over at the trundle bed in my home office, where Pancake used to love to nap. The office was warm, and the sun was streaming on to the quilt on the bed. I could vividly imagine Pancake sleeping on it, positioned just so to get the warmth of the sun, his legs tucked under him, his chin on one of his front paws, his tail curled up around him. We rewrite histories of all kinds all the time. Now with Pancake’s aggression in the past, I’ll take the liberty to remember him as a good cat—happy, healthy and sleeping peacefully.