Echo

Echo died yesterday. It was 8 days before the first anniversary of Emmy dying. Clearly, December is a hard month for our cats. Maybe it’s the cold.  Echo had never been quite the same after Emmy died.  In the first few weeks after she passed away, he wouldn’t leave the area in front of the couch where she died.  A month later, when I hired housecleaners to clean the house in preparation for Chinese New Year, he was completely disoriented.  I think they had cleaned away the last of her scent for him.

Echo had not been doing well for several months.  He was losing weight, had limited appetite, and had frequent litterbox accidents. We changed his food and were giving him daily thyroid medicine. In the last month, he seemed to be making a miraculous comeback. His appetite and range of motion increased.   The accidents were decreasing.  But Echo was 20 years old.  I suspected that this was the last bounce before a rapid decline

The last few days, we could tell his appetite was decreasing again.  But even as of two nights ago, he was able to go up the stairs and to climb up onto the couch.  Yesterday morning, though, I saw him sleeping in a patch of sun under our dining room table.  He still wasn’t eating.  And then in the afternoon, I saw him sleeping in another patch of sun in the kitchen.  He saw me and tried to walk over to me, but he couldn’t move his back legs.  He sort of army crawled closer to me, laid down, and gave a few pathetic mews.

I called the vet and brought him in.  She told me that his body temperature was dangerously low and that he was pale and dehydrated.  She recommended that we consider euthanasia.  At this point, the kids and Tom were driving back home from a visit to LA.  They were a couple of hours away.  Emmy had died while we were away, and I think that made the whole experience much more traumatic.  We decided that I should bring Echo home so the kids could say goodbye and then decide after that if we would bring him back in.  The vet warned that Echo might not even make it that long. 

I kept him on a heating pad on my lap in front of our space heater for the next couple of hours to try to keep him warm.  He could barely move.  He was still alive when the kids came back.  We gave him lots of pats and told him how much we loved him.  Tom tried to give him some water through a stopper.  Trying to swallow seemed to put him in distress, and he started hyperventilating.  We called the vet and told them that we were going to bring him in soon.  We had two drops left of some pain medication that we had been given to help Echo increase his range of motion.  We decided to give it to him to help calm him down.  He relaxed quickly, and then he gave two long moans and died.

As hard as it was, I think this was the best way it could have happened.  He died on my lap at home surrounded by all of us who love him.  He didn’t seem to suffer, and we didn’t have to make the choice to put him down.  We buried him next to Emmy. 

For me, his passing is the end of an era.  As I mentioned in my last post, I adopted him and Emmy 20 years ago when they were just kittens.  I have had Echo for half my life.  These cats have been with me throughout my entire adult life.  It’s disorienting that neither one is with me any longer.

The kids want new cats.  I told them that I wanted to wait awhile.  I’m going to try to remember what it’s like to not have to always keep the exterior doors of our house closed, to do the million little things that we did to keep the cats safe and/or our possessions safe from them.  I want to give myself the time and the space to get used to life without them before I start a new era with new pets.

Good-bye, sweet Echo.  I hope you are snuggling with Emmy right now, giving each other the tongue baths you used to always share, and drinking all the dribbled water your heart desires.

Echo

November 1996 - December 19, 2016

Emmy

November 1996 - December 27, 2015