Vlad

Vlad (my cat) is sick.

He had a stroke, almost a year ago.

His health has been worse since then.

He’ll get sick, for days, or sometimes close to a week at a time.

Stops eating, gets real slow.

Whenever he’s sick, the whole condo smells faintly of rotting meat.

The food he’s not eating clogs the sink drains, rots in the garbage.

I could clean it. I do, eventually.

Do you ignore the smell? Because cleaning it means admitting he’s sick again? That it’s worse this time? That he’s not getting better? Do you clean it, meticulously? Something you can control?

I think this is probably the last night I’ll get with him. I’ve thought that before, but he’s so much worse than he’s ever been.

He can’t make it to the litter box anymore.

We sat outside a lot today. He likes sitting in the grass, I think it’s worth subjecting him to being held.

He’s a limp bag of bones when I take him out and then back in. Weak protests.

I don’t know how old he is. When he entered my life (may 2023) he was “12 or 13”. His previous owners had his front paws declawed. He flinched away from my feet, in the beginning. It took him two weeks to find his voice.

Once he did, he used it often, a very unique scream yell. He barely ever purred, and if he did, it was felt more than heard. He complained loudly and loved quietly.

We’d guessed he’d been going blind for a while. The stroke knocked whatever vision he’d had away. So I kept the condo in the exact same layout, and he’d navigate the room like a robot vacuum, hugging the walls and then launching himself across the living room, bumping into the couch like someone who’d navigated a ship across the ocean via the stars. He insisted on getting onto and off of the couch from the same precise spot, every time, to fix his place in the universe, no matter who was sitting where, stomping across laps and wobbling over kneecaps.

It was tough figuring out how to play with an old, blind, semi mobile, declawed cat, in a way that was fun for him. You could get him to swat at a ribbon if you played it across his paws, gently bapped him in the face with it. Sometimes he’d catch it, remarkably fast for all the strikes against him. I have a special way I pet him on the back of the neck to tell him I’m done bothering him, and then he knows not to snap at my fingers anymore. I know exactly where he likes to be pet, and how. I know how to get the thick black itchy earwax out of his ears. He rattles his head when we’re done, shaking himself straight.

He’s a grouchy old asshole. A curmudgeon. He hardly ever relaxes, outside of his beds. He’ll stand fully upright on you instead of loafing or napping, with very rare and precious exceptions. But he’s been laying in the kitchen trying to catch sunbeams a lot more recently. I moved one of his beds into the middle of the floor, so he’d have something soft to lay in. I set him in it once, to let him know it was there. I caught him using it a few times this last week.

If he makes it through the night, his reward for that profound feat of endurance is that I’ll start calling euthanasia places. The vets haven’t ever known what causes this in him. I’m sure I could rush him to some pet emergency clinic and pay thousands of dollars for a surgery with a 30 percent success rate. Maybe if I’d worked harder to get a job, I’d have the money to feel comfy doing that. Maybe I still wouldn’t bother. I’d like to think I wouldn’t even if I had the opportunity.

He just limped dizzily out of the bathroom for more water. He’s still drinking, enough to survive. As of the last few days, he has trouble lifting his stroke-weakened back leg enough to fully climb into his bed, so he sits with his front half in it. I think I’m going to head to bed. Tonight, I’ll refill his untouched food bowl, check his litter, freshen his water. I’m going to kiss his head, and maybe flop the rest of him in the bed and apologize for moving him. I’m trying to decide if I should sleep on the floor next to him or if that will stress him out. I hope he starts eating again. If he doesn’t feel like he can, I hope he passes painlessly in his sleep.

I’ve had him for two and a half years.

(He came out to the couch in the few minutes I was editing this, and let me pick him up and set him next to me. I’m gonna be here for a bit.)