My heart is broken
for today I've bid goodbye
to my sweetest Love
Goodbye, and safe journey, for my lovely Mystical Shaman, our lovely Bear kitty boy.
And on your way, give my love to Edit, Miod, Nutka, and Sprinkles, and to our other beloved passed companion animals, as they meet you on the other side.
Maybe you'll even finally get to meet my amazing Ebony girl. I already know you'll love one another. You, and she, were my beloved animal soulmates, and shall ever remain.
And, unlikely as it might be, give my love to Surefoot, and Tanjone, my cousins' horses, who I absolutely adored as a child. And, at least with Surefoot, I know that feeling was returned.
I'll love you always. We miss you already. And always, always, will.
So why is it, that having made the decision that I firmly believe was in Bear's best interest, the choice to honor him, to not allow him to suffer further, that I feel like such a heel?
The feeling that there is SO MUCH MORE that I could have done, should have done, but didn't know enough to do?
This day is doubly hard, for about a week ago, I FINALLY found a food that Bear absolutely LOVED, which is a raw fermented food called Answers. And he seemed, at least for a time, to be rallying.
I started him with the chicken, since he always loved chicken, and unlike most of the raw foods I've tried previously, he was actually eating it greedily, and actually going back to it repeatedly through the night, which he never did with ANY of the other raw foods I gave him.
I only wish I had found it MUCH sooner.
As it is, he had a good quality of life, and still seemed to be a happy boy, though he's been clearly losing ground, and recently at a rapid rate.
He stopped being able to jump on the bathroom counter a bit over a week ago, as he's always LOVED drinking the water from the drizzling faucet, even though I encouraged him to drink the hydrogen enriched water that was MUCH better for him; but he quickly regrouped and started jumping on the bathtub, and then onto the counter.
He still occasionally misjudged, which would NEVER have happened in his youth, as he was ALWAYS my natural athlete, and would regularly clear six feet and more when leaping after his favorite feather toy, on his favorite kitty fishing pole.
But of late, he's been getting increasingly more wobbly when he walked, has been misjudging distances, and has been having increasing trouble keeping water down, even though I've been giving him hydrogen enriched water, although he hasn't been drinking nearly enough.
But he remained mostly happy through yesterday, and last night crawled into his favorite spot across my neck, and purred loudly while we fell asleep.
And, falling asleep with a purring kitty in your ear, is the best natural medicine that exists. Bar none.
But this morning he took a drastic turn for the worse.
I won't go into graphic details, but suffice it to say that it seemed clear to me that he was suffering, to the extent that at one point, I asked him aloud, flat out, if he was ready to go.
And the overwhelming impression I got was that, not only was he ready to go, but that he had been for several weeks, and was hanging on to make it easier on me.
Damn.
I spoke with Marek around 11 AM, and asked him to send Matrix for Bear, at which point he said not to worry, that this was a momentary issue, and that Bear was going to rally again, as he had the last time.
And I didn't have the heart to tell him that I thought this time was very different.
I wound up calling our vet five times to no avail, with busy signals each time, but finally reached them on the sixth try, and after explaining what was happening, I was told to come in immediately.
And I think it likely that the incessant busy signals were a sign that I was still conflicted, as I already knew it was likely that our visit to the vet would be our goodbye.
Have I mentioned before that I LOVE our local vet, and am ever grateful that she opened her office literally within minutes of my home?
She is a conventional vet, but is open to natural healing, which many vets are not, and she actually welcomed my lending her my copies of Juliette di Bairicli-Levy's books, the “Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat,” and “The Herbal Handbook for Barnyard Animals.“
For those in Tennessee, they are Bluegrass Veterinary Clinic, 3069 McMinnville Highway, Sparta, Tennessee, 38583. Actually, they're in our micro-town of Doyle, but Sparta is their mailing address because it is a much larger town.
But they're awesome in any case. I HIGHLY recommend them.
The short version is that they saw Bear a month ago, after he had already lost a substantial amount of weight.
And, when the vet saw his condition today, even after his apparent rally with the new food, the consensus was that aggressive treatment would be required, including at least two full days in the animal hospital receiving fluids, along with multiple diagnostic tests, meaning that we would be on the hook for the equivalent of a mortgage payment or two, with zero guarantees that they could extend his life, or even make him substantially more comfortable.
I've been strongly bonded with Bear since he was four months old, when I adopted him from a close friend (who ran a cat rescue facility in Florida) in February, 2005, and he HATED being separated from me. As I hated being separated from him.
Not to mention that all the diagnostic testing, not to mention being away from his home and family, including our other two cats and dog, would have been excruciating for him to endure.
And I promised him, as I've long promised ALL my animals, that I want him to stick around for as long as HE is comfortable doing so, but I DO NOT want to extend his life past the point where he has any real quality of life.
And, since the impression I got this morning was that he'd been hanging on strictly for me, but had actually been more than ready to move on for a while, I made the excruciating (for me) decision to allow him to do so, and to let him go.
Which completely sucks, and this is one of the hardest decisions I've EVER had to make in my life.
How do you let go of a soulmate, much less, one who's had your back for 16+ years???
Damned if I know.
Predictably, when I was finally able to really talk to Marek, who had been driving through hundreds of miles of nothing, with little to no cell coverage, it hit him hard, and he was initially appalled at my decision.
Which wasn't helped by our call being cut off three times in a row.
But then I explained my reasons, and the ins and outs of what has been happening in the past couple of weeks, and he finally understood; and said that he was glad I hadn't called him first, or he would have said to wait, which wouldn't have served Bear's highest good.
And, at the same time, I haven't been passing along all the many signs that Bear was getting weaker, because I didn't want to distract him, or to depress him, with the obvious truth that our beloved 16-year-old cat was, not surprisingly, losing ground.
Needless to say, it's been hard on us both, as Bear is the most loving, sentient, wise, and amazing cat, that either of us has ever known.
He will always remain our mystical shaman. Bear was a wise old soul even as a kitten.
My favorite photos of myself and Bear remain, unsurprisingly, those that we took beside our backyard firepit, as he and I were cuddling by the fire a year or so ago. Unfortunately, try though I might, the photo isn't uploading correctly, but Marek took a series of them with his cell phone, which turned out wonderful.
At the time, Bear had only recently made his miraculous recovery from a massive abscess under his front leg, and as he had lost a lot of weight then, I was really afraid that we would lose him.
But between our new vet, and my knowledge of natural medicine, he recovered fully, and seemed even healthier and more energetic afterward, than he had been before he developed the abscess.
Part of the issue was that he had accidentally opened the abscess himself, by scratching it open, and as a result there was an open wound nearly an inch across, which we had no real way to cover, as cats are expert at removing any bandages that humans devise.
I suggested using topical raw honey, rather than an antibiotic cream, since we knew he and the other cats were likely to lick the wound, and the vet agreed that it might work better, and to give it a try.
The wound healed quickly, far more quickly than I was expecting, and it healed without a scar, at which point his fur grew back in and covered it.
So we nearly lost him at fourteen, right around my birthday, he healed completely and soon turned fifteen, and ever since then, each and every day we've had with him has been a gift.
The photo above, of Bear atop his kitty tree, I took about three weeks ago, on April 20th, with my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 smartphone.
And now. more than ever, I LOVE the fact that the lovely young couple who adopted Hunter, our neighbor's dog who had his front leg badly broken by a passing car, was renamed Bear.
Because he and my Bear were closely bonded, as he was with our cat Truffle, and he was our dog Lolo's best friend. Only Musica kept her distance from the big furry goofball.
I love you Bear, I will ALWAYS love you, and I will always miss you.
Kocham cie (which is Polish for I love you).
Life is wonderful, and is getting better, better, and BETTER!!!
Regardless of how it looks in the moment.
I'll likely be posting sporadically as I take the time to grieve my boy. Thanks for hanging with me.
Kocham cie to ALL!!!
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