My elderly cat is the singularly most irritating creature who ever padded on four paws.
She lies at the top of the stairs outside our bedroom every morning waiting for the first faint sounds of my stirring so she can burst into the room miaowing like an accordion possessed by the spirit of a dying elk, waking both of our kids before I have even half-a-chance to ninja-slide the hell out of there.
She always tries to trip me up as soon as I enter the kitchen, perpetually circling her food-bowl with her tail held aloft like a hairy shark’s fin. A few times she’s almost sent me flying down the stairs to my doom in the exaggerated manner of an A-Team stunt-man.
She licks my hand whenever I pat her, which sounds like it might be kind of cute, but not when it happens every single time I pat her, and certainly not when her tongue is as sharp as sand-paper and her breath is as foul as a hundred decomposing chickens.
She does night-time shits in the litter-tray outside our bedroom so foul that they snap me awake, forcing me to stagger out of bed to snatch up the poo-encrusted cat-spatula as fast as my sleep-leaden legs can carry me. I inevitably spill six tonnes of kitty-litter over the carpet in my haste to reach the toilet with the boufing, scooped-up jobby.
I’m mad at her at least once a day, and dream of a time when I’ll no longer be a slave to her licks, trips, mews and poos. She’s a broccoli-scented, past-her-prime grandma who for some reason I’m not allowed to shove in a home. And she stubbornly refuses to fucking die.
Until yesterday morning.
When she fucking died.
Our cat, Candy – inexplicably named after a 20-year-old Las Vegas stripper – was already middle-aged when we invited her into our home, which was the third she’d lived in. She’s always been a sweet, gentle and affectionate little creature – a cat who never once in her life yowled, hissed or clawed – so she wasn’t constantly re-homed because she was slashing people’s cheeks like some low-level drug-enforcer or anything like that. People loved her.
She was just unlucky.
In home number one her owner fell pregnant and developed serious pet allergies; in home number two she was bullied by the cats who already lived there; and in home number three she was our little baby, at least until our human babies came along, at which point she was relegated to the position of a suddenly inconvenient foster-child. Despite us having to shift the lion’s share (or the cat’s share, if you like) of our attention to the kids, Candy was always loved and looked after. One of the team.
She was the perfect cat to have around our kids, whether they were inside or outside the womb. Both times Chelsea fell pregnant, Candy stuck so close to her middle that she was practically gestating along with the fetuses.
Once they’d been born, Candy was unceasingly tolerant of the children; she was the sort of cat you could grab by the ears, squeeze by the tail and chase round the house without risk of counter-strike, which is a good job, because the kids grabbed her by the ears, squeezed her by the tail and chased her round the house. At least to begin with. Over time, Candy taught them how to be kind, soft and gentle. Well, okay, she didn’t teach them that at all. It was us. We taught them that. By shouting at them. A lot. But having a pet around the house undoubtedly helped our kids learn how to love things unconditionally.
Candy had been poorly for a while, but we chalked most of it down to her advanced years. Besides, she might have been less nimble, pickier with her food, and skinnier and scragglier, but she still purred away like a motorbike riding pillion on a motorbike that inexplicably was being ridden by another motorbike.
But this past week, though the purring continued apace, it became clearer and clearer to us that a battle was raging inside of Candy’s body, and one that she was losing. Her breathing became more laboured, to the point where we could hear the clanking mechanics of her failing respiratory system; see her sides puff out and collapse back sharply, like someone was operating a stiff set of bellows inside her rib-cage. The evening before last, one of her front legs and both of her back legs became swollen, lending her the appearance of mild gigantism. Walking became a serious effort for her.
I called the out-of-hour vet service. I gave my partner the phone. The vet told her that Candy was most likely suffering from an over-active thyroid that was putting strain on her heart, hence the struggle to breathe and the fluid retention. Although it might be possible to limit any further damage and lessen the severity of her symptoms, the vet went on to say, her prolonged life-span would probably be measured in weeks rather than months or years, and there was no guarantee that her condition would improve. I heard the inflection rise in Chelsea’s voice as she parroted the words ‘a thousand pounds or more’, which caused me to parrot her words, six times louder, and completely involuntarily, this time adding my own little flourish to ‘a thousand pounds or more’, which was: ‘Fuck off!’
It was an instant and honest reaction, but it still made me feel ashamed. We don’t know how lucky we are in this country not to have to take fiscal factors into account when deciding whether or not to treat adult relatives for serious or chronic illnesses… else more of them might end up in the ground a lot sooner.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for grandma. NOTHING.”
“It’ll cost ten-thousand pounds to treat her.”
“…to be honest her soup was starting to lose its zest.”
Children are a different proposition altogether, though. If either of our kids needed tens of thousands of pounds for medical treatment, and we didn’t have it, we’d wrench appliances from the wall and flog them on the street, list everything we owned on Ebay. I’d put the car on the market, the house on the market, mySELF on the market – kidneys, liver, lungs, the lot – hell, I’d rob a bank, borrow from the mafia, rob from the mafia, anything. Everything.
But – with mercy set at a thousand pounds minimum – the cat was clearly on borrowed time. Besides, even if we had a thousand pounds or more, she was in pain, and our actions might only serve to prolong that pain, even escalate it. We knew which way the wind was blowing. And you can’t fight the wind. We decided we’d phone the regular vet’s first thing the next morning.
I tried to prepare my eldest son, Jack, freshly-turned four, for the inevitable. I lay in bed next to him after I’d finished reading his night-time stories, and shot the breeze for a while. I told him Candy was sick. Very sick. We had to take her to see the vet, but the vet might not be able to help her. Sometimes a cat is too sick and too old for a vet to help. Animal hospitals aren’t always as good at helping animals as human hospitals are at helping humans (because I didn’t want him to think that hospitals were just giant white death-factories). Out of nowhere Jack asked if there were cities in the jungle. No, I told him.
“So there are no vets,” he said. “Then the animals will just die.”
Bloody hell, I thought. This is going to be easier to explain than I thought. But possibly a million times more traumatic. Why can’t he just go around saying ‘Daaaattt’ all the time like his little brother?
“We might have to get Candy put…” I began to say, and then steered away from the cowardly euphemism. Probably best not to Freddy Krueger the kid. It wasn’t a great idea to make him scared of going to sleep.
“She might not come back,” I told him.
His aunt’s dog died recently. His mother didn’t sugar-coat it for him, or wrap it up in euphemisms, but neither did she labour the point. She just let him be sad, because death is very sad, especially when someone or something we love dies. Once he’d recovered his composure, he asked her, “Dogs die… but cat’s don’t die, do they?” He was getting nearer to completing the puzzle. He keeps finding new pieces. He almost found another one as I was talking to him about Candy.
“Candy’s a girl cat,” he said with a smile, “But she’s also an old, old cat. She’s like a granny.”
OK, I thought, I’m all for a good dose of the truth, but let’s gun up the engine and back the fuck out of Dead Grandmother Cul-de-sac before things get too grizzly.
The following morning, yesterday morning, was as sombre and heart-wrenching as you’d expect. I’d slept on the couch that night and Candy had slept on the foot-rest next to me. When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me. And she was purring. I’m glad I got that. It kind of made up for all the times I’d yelled at her.
I called the vet first thing and we were booked in for eleven am. We were filled with denial. And hope. Chelsea and I threw ourselves into the minutiae of family life: wiping butts, cleaning dishes, picking up clothes, all at a frantic pace. We focused on anything except what was about to happen. Even though Candy still picked and licked at her food, miaowing for more but eating very little of it, we kept filling and re-filling her dish. Anything you need, old lady. Anything you want.
It all happened so fast. Within ten minutes of arriving at the vet’s, Candy was gone. The anesthetic took her in less than a second. Chelsea had brought Candy’s favourite cat treat, which she was still licking as she nudged forward, and gently and silently left the world. Chelsea cried. What surprised me is that I cried, too. I’d spent the morning intellectualising, and dispensing little parcels of clinical rationalism like a Scottish Spock. I didn’t cry when my grandparents died, I didn’t cry when my children were born. But yet there I was. Crying like a bitch.
In later years the cat had become more of an adversary to me than a treasured pet. Never-the-less, my tears were pure and unsentimental. I loved her. I didn’t want her to die.
I deal with pain by leaning heavily into black humour. I looked at the vet – who’d been unspeakably patient, human and kind – and pointed at the table behind her, where another few needles loaded with anesthetic still sat. Earnestly, with tears flooding my eyes, I said: “Can I take one of those away for my mum?”
The vet turned round and reached for it, before turning back with a smile. We all laughed.
Little Candy’s body was released to us. I was going to bury her in my parent’s back garden. While it’s undeniable that the £40 price tag was a definite factor in burial’s favour, we owed it to Candy to lay her to rest alongside our three rats, and my mother’s dog, Zoe, all of whom I’d buried myself. It was an honour. A mark of respect. A sign they mattered and meant something.
Me, Candy and the bump
In the car as Chelsea cradled Candy’s body in a shroud made from her favourite blanket, I reflected on the feelings that were stirring inside me. My sense of humour sometimes hides a burning anger; behind that, sadness. That was what lay at my core. Sadness. Great, unfiltered sadness. As I got ready to bury our beloved little cat, something in me was being unearthed.
We told Jack. His first reaction was, “My friend Cory can still come today, right?” The entry for death in his internal lexicon is yet to be shaded with feeling. His second reaction was tears, a plaintive moan. He said he’d draw a picture of Candy. So we could remember her.
I told my mum about Jack’s reaction when I got to her house with Candy. A little gallows humour crept into the re-telling. I just couldn’t help myself. “And as he was crying, mum, I just looked him straight in the eye and told him, ‘While we’re getting it all out, son, I just need you to know that Santa Claus is definitely not real, okay?’”
I smiled. She didn’t.
I dug a hole for Candy. I burst through roots with the spade. Mulched up hard soil and clay. Laid her gently in the earth, and covered her over with soil and a slab, so the foxes wouldn’t get her. I remembered all the times she’d lain next to me in bed with a paw draped over my stomach. How happy she’d been when we’d finally got a garden and she could play outside.
This is how it always ends. With me, here, with a spade.
Why would we ever do this again?
We’ll do it again.
Want to read more about pets dying, you morbid bastard?
Here’s a long, funny and touching piece I wrote a few years ago about the deaths of the three rats and a dog mentioned in this piece
Here’s an article published a few years ago about the death of my mother’s cat, with whom I’d ‘shared’ a childhood
Jesus Christ, I write about pets carking it a lot, don’t I?
