My Cat, Sneezer, Part IV

As with Miranda, Sneezer experienced problems visiting the Vet during his sunset years. When he was there to get his teeth cleaned and one removed, the breathing tube damaged his throat while he was knocked out. We didn't discover what had happened until the next morning when he came by the bed to wake me up and ask for food--uncharacteristically, he hadn't jumped up on the bed. I looked down as he followed me into the kitchen, and I noticed that the entire front half of his body was puffed up to about twice its normal size. As he breathed in, air was filling up his body cavity alarmingly. He could easily have died.

Fortunately, the Vet was open and I rushed him there that Saturday morning. She put him in some kind of enclosed device--an incubator perhaps--for 24 hours. But then she advised me over the phone that I should take him to another Vet in the Tech Center of Denver for the next couple of days since her facility would be closed and no one would be there to watch over him. It was at her expense, so I bundled him up in the Vet's office and drove him there. When I began to carry him inside that next evening, he instantly realized that this was not home and he meowed pitifully. Like any reluctant patient, he had obviously expected, and wanted, to go home.

Two or three days later, I was able to pick him up. They'd made a couple of incisions in either side of his body, to let much of the air out. It had worked well enough so I could then bring him home. I know he wasn't sure where he was headed in the car at this point since the two previous drives had not led home. After I parked the car in back and carried him toward the front porch, he realized immediately that he was home and struggled to break from my hold. I carefully set him down, and he deliberately hiked up the front steps and then through the front door under his own power. It was as if he knew he was home and would make his own way inside, thank you.

He also, briefly, developed a tumor, possibly also from the rabies shots. But his was on his side. The Vet removed the small one, though another one soon took its place. That second one was also removed and no others came back, unlike with Miranda. The Vet advised that neither cat ought to be vacinated again, though for Miranda it was too late.

Sneezer was king of the condo, of course. In warm weather, when the front window was left open, if another cat ventured near, even in the middle of the night, I would hear this furocious, almost blood-curdling yowl as he sought to get at the offending tresspasser. There was a neighborhood black cat that used to sit just outside the window and torment Sneeze with its presense. One time, it sat on the front porch and calmly began grooming itself. It did not realize that the front door was open. Sneezer slowly crept toward the unsuspecting adversary and then lept. Instantly, there was black and then gray and then black and then gray as the two tumbled over and over in their tempestuous, swirling struggle. I tried reaching in to separate the two, finally grabbing a mass of gray fur and held fast. The black cat immediately took off, having been thoroughly bested.

Sadly, the inevitable course of old age finally began to take its toll on Sneezer. During one visit to the Vet, I was shocked to learn that he had lost so much weight that he was down to just over six pounds. He wasn't eating any regular cat food, a sure cause for concern. I had to buy canned chicken instead--that was all he would eat. Soon, he would only slurp up the juices of the chicken. Then, he would only drink water, large amounts of only water. Clearly, the Vet told me, his kidneys were failing. I would have to buy rubber bath mats to lay in front of each litter box and then place old towels and rags over the mats because Sneezer would no longer use the boxes but stand in front and pee.

After Miranda died, but before Sneezer's health began to fail, I was told by a sister of a co-worker that she and a friend had rescued an adorable kitten from a grain bin at Coors Brewery where they both worked. She asked if I wanted the new kitten, and I readily accepted. He was adorable. I took him to the Vet and he was given the usual shots. Fortunately, she discovered that he was carrying bacteria that would have killed him had it not been caught in time and cured.

I soon named him Pudge. I kept him in the bathroom until Sneezer became familiar with a new cat in residence. But this was going on for days and he seemed no more likely to accept this latest competition than he had Miranda, whom Pudge resembled in fur pattern (though he lacked the orange splotches). One morning, though, when I was speaking on the phone with a friend, bemoaning the fact that they may never get along, I glanced down and much to my surprise, Pudge and Sneezer were eating side by side off the same plate on the floor. I realized that Pudge had figured out how to open the folding bathroom door and had gotten out. Sneezer simply accepted his presence and that was it.

One evening before Christmas in 2005, Sneezer lay beside me on the couch as I watched my usual string of Christmas shows on TV. I looked at him and wondered if he would make it to the next Christmas and how much I would miss him when he was gone. Sadly, he didn't quite make it.

In early December of 2006, although he had not done so in several months, Sneezer walked from the station he had taken up beside the toilet in the bathroom, laying between the toilet and the cabinet and rarely moving--only drinking from the dish I had set beside him. I was shocked and saddened when I looked down and realized that he was walking on the joint of his right leg rather than on his paw. He had probably experienced a stroke. In his confusion, he had returned to his old ways of hiking to the kitchen for his breakfast even though he hadn't eaten anything solid in weeks.

I knew it was time. I tearfully called the Vet that day and explained that I would bring him in that afternoon when I got off from work. I wrapped him up in a large towel. I carried him to Pudge on the couch to say goodbye. I even stopped beside his favorite bush out front so he could take in one last sniff of these familiar surroundings before placing him in the car. I knew he was ready to go because, during the entire mile drive to the Vet, Sneezer never complained. Not one sound of protest was uttered even though he always did so previously any time he had to ride in the car.

The Vet and the staff were helpful as the assistant carried him to the back room to install the shunt in his left leg. She brought him back and she and I petted him as the Vet inserted the needle into the shunt. In a moment it was all over, and I cried like a baby.

They asked me if I wanted to stay in the room with his body for a few minutes, but all I could tearfully murmer was, "No, he's already gone," as I walked away in sadness, glancing back one last time at his inert form on the counter where we had ended his pain. I cried most of that day when I thought of that gangly cat that emerged from the cardboard box from the Denver Dumb Friends League so many years before. Sneezer was already six when Frank rescued him in 1992. He was nearly 21 when I took him to the Vet in late 2006. He had outlived both Schnozz and Miranda by several years each. The three tins that contain the separate ashes of each cat sit together on a shelf in my condo.

At the end of my own days on this earth, I hope we are all buried together on some high ground somewhere peaceful and serene, along with Pudge and Tabby, my current two cats. Each has given me devoted love and affection in his or her own way over the years since I was exiled from the Air Force over 31 years ago.

Is there a happy place where we can all be together once more? I suspect not but I always hope so.

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