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I just had to put my cat Molly down yesterday, it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. It felt very sudden since the ER thought i could likely get another year out of her with medication, but unfortunately she wouldn't take them with food, treats, or anything else. Any pills i managed to feed her were immediately thrown up, so i suddenly went from having some hope to getting to spend a little more time with her to having her put down in about 14 hours. I could have waited a little longer but she had a heart condition that was filling her lungs with fluid, and i know that in a day or two later she would be in a lot of pain and really struggling to breathe again. I figured she wasn't going to be any more healthy than she was right then, and i couldn't bear thinking that she would spend the last few hours alive struggling to breathe and generally being in pain. So i brought her into the vet yesterday evening, they gave her the first shot to put her into a sleep, it took about 15 minutes and she slowly got sleepier and sleepier before passing into the coma. It was peaceful and i got to be with her the whole time telling her how great she was and how much she was loved in a happy voice, so hopefully she felt calm and relaxed during her last few minutes of consciousness. It was really hard saying goodbye, and i struggled leaving her there even though i know she couldn't hear me or anything anymore. I left and they gave her the second shot to euthanize her. She meant the world to me, and after 15ish years she was my oldest friend and the absolute greatest being to come into my life that ive ever experienced. So with that, heres a little bit about Molly and what she meant to me. She came into my life the summer of 2004 or 2005 so I was about 13 going on 14. I was visiting my grandparents at the time and when I got home we had a new kitten in the house. The way my mom tells it, she was driving home and slammed on the breaks to stop from running over a little kitten in the road. She got out of the car to make sure she was okay and the kitten sprinted towards her and jumped into her arms. Not wanting to leave the kitty there to starve or get hit by a car my mom brought her home, where they tried to decide what to do with her. We already had a bunch of animals, but for some reason we decided to add her to our family. When I came home she was just there, and it didnt take long for me and her to get close. Middle school was really difficult for me, it was an incredibly lonely time in my life and Molly was a very social kitten. She not only was very interested in spending time with me, but she would "talk" back when spoken to so I spent a lot of time with her as my sounding board while i talked with her. Her meow was very distinct, and would sometimes even sound like she was saying her own name "Mrowwlle". I dont have a ton of pictures of her during this time, but here are some from when she was maybe 1 or 2, playing with a cat toy. Its amazing now seeing her so thin and with so much energy in these pictures. What a goofball         It was 2010 when I left home and moved about 750 miles from home with a friend. About a month after I moved, my mom and step dad broke up and it was pretty contentious. Im thankful I didnt have to witness most of it, but part of the fallout was that most of the animals had to go, including Molly. My mom called and asked me if I would take her, and after talking with my friends/roommates i said absolutely. I flew there and flew back to my new home with her, thinking about it now apart from one other occasion that 6 weeks or so was probably the longest we were apart for her whole life. She got to join the wild ride that was my late teens and early 20s trying to figure everything out, and not all of it was bad. We ended up having a lot of people over pretty regularly, and every time someone would come home she would initially hide and then appear to shower whoever it was with so much affection. If anyone crashed on our couches you could expect to walk out the next morning and see her snuggling with whoever it was. You could always walk into a room she was in, look at her and say "Moooolly!" and she would look back and meow right back at you. Sometimes sassy, sometimes comforting, her meows felt like they had a wide range of emotions by that point and other people would sit and chat with her just like i did as a lonely kid back in my youth. Here are some pictures of her from when she joined me then. She must have been about 5 by then.      As we both got older and left that first apartment, we entered a pattern of moving about once a year to a new place. Life wasn't very stable, and i know she didn't like moving very much, but we did the best we could. The recession in 2011-12 was still affecting everything and making it hard for a 20 year old guy with no previous work experience to find a job. This was also when I had my first heartbreak, and then fell into a relationship with my first serious girlfriend. For the first molly was there when i needed to feel loved, and needed to vent my emotions to someone without looking for judgement. for the second, she was there as apart of a new family i was forging that would last for the next five and a half years. This is also the time period where i have my biggest regrets with her. Like I said earlier, jobs were not avaliable and the one interview i was able to land i was disqualified for when time came to surprise me with a drug test that I failed thanks to weed. It was a low point in my life that I still have some residual fears around even though im a mildly successful almost 30 year old. I made the decision to start school at community college, and live off of the student loans that i could get. But I was out of money right then, and my i knew i could go back to my hometown and work for my moms new boyfriend and make some money to pay rent back home and also save up for college. I left Molly with my friends and roommates feeling pretty secure knowing that she would be taken care of for the 9 weeks or so i was going to be gone. Thats not what happened, pretty quickly the housing situation got toxic from what i hear, and people moved out and new people moved in, and suddenly nobody can find Molly. I get a call one morning from the last person i personally knew living in the house telling me Molly must have escaped and that he was now also moving out. For about 3 weeks i thought molly was dead, and i was incredibly devastated. When i finally returned, i figured out a new living situation with the guy i originally moved there with and we went to pick up my stuff at the house where i new knew nobody living there. While packing everything up I knew i had to try to find out what happened to her, I spent about an hour searching the house, and eventually i came up to the attic and sat for a while calling her name. Right as everything is finished being packed im about to leave when i hear a faint meow, crawling through the fiberglass (and maybe asbestos? That place was sketchy) I found her, tucked away in the smallest little nook between the roofing and the attic floor. She was barely responsive, and when I pulled her out the poor girl was skin and bones. She didnt resist me picking her up at all, which is incredible out of character for her. I felt so awful for putting her through that, and to this day i still feel awful for it. But I was so grateful she was alive, and I think she was grateful i was back. She probably thought I was gone forever, and was so scared of all the unfamiliarity happening around her she just retreated and hid, i have no idea how she ate or anything since cats need to eat within like 3-4 or their livers fail but it was miraculous and she was okay. I got her situated in our new house, living with people she knew, and slowly fed her up until she was a proper weight, and then to where she was overweight. Oops, but she was a happy fat cat for a while. She would be about 6 or 7 at this point. I dont have many pictures of her from the next two years, i think i just have the one here:  I would consider the next two years to be the closest thing I had to living in a frat house with the frequent parties and constantly having people over. I was going to college to finish a two year degree and getting serious with the girlfriend i mentioned earlier, this would be when her and Molly really got to know each other and got pretty close. Molly was again a pretty constant fixture of that house, she would come out to socialize with all the new people, hang out with those who crashed on our couches, and if the house was quiet she got to pick from four different rooms to crash in with me/roommates. Everyone loved her. This was a brief period where i let her be an outside cat with supervision, which she loved but i would come to regret. A roommate brought another cat into the house towards the end of my time there, and it ushered in what we would dub the "Flea-pocolypse", which was miserable for everyone especially. The infestation got so bad that you could walk about ten feet and feel the dozens of fleas jumping on and off you with each step, nowhere was safe in the house and despite trying every treatment available to me nothing worked. It was so bad that when we moved out the owners of the house had to pull up the entire flooring and replace it. I didn't let Molly be an outside cat after that since she likely brought the fleas in initially, even if it was the other cat being left untreated by its owner that spiraled the situation out of control. Without examining the dates too closely i'm guessing Molly would be around 9 or 10 by now. This period of our life came to a close and the next three years were defined my Molly, myself and my girlfriend moving in together and building what we hoped would be the foundations for the rest of our lives together. College was over, i got my first big-boy job with the government, and we settled into a lovely two bedroom starter apartment. Molly was starting to show signs of aging at this point and spent more time being sleepy and grumpy when you woke her up, but she was very affectionate still when she wanted to be. We were there for about a year and during this time she became the foster-parent to a kitten we added to our family. She wasnt super affectionate to the kitten, but it was her who taught the new kitty to use the litter box, and taught her mannerisms that she funnily enough had learned from a cat I lived with since I was a baby. That cat passed away shortly after I brought molly to live with me in 2010, so it was kind of funny seeing some kitty traditions being passed on through several generations of cats. I know my new ex-girlfriend still has that cat, i hope maybe someday she'll pass those traits on to another kitten. Anyway, here are a few pictures of her and the kitten during that time:    After that year, we needed to find a better place to live. There were rats in the walls, the landlord was a pervert who patrolled the grounds and peeked though peoples windows, the only upside to the place was how cheap it was and now that we both had jobs we sprung for a more expensive place. This would end up being the longest place both Molly and I would live at consecutively since i was still a teenager. It was a great spot, a relatively cheap three story duplex where she had tons of room for her to bask in the sun, and lots of places to hide when she wanted alone time. My girlfriend and I would spend another two years together there, until she and I decided to end our relationship. Things were a lot calmer for Molly during this time, there wasn't a ton of change and since she was getting older she was appreciating the quiet a lot more. I felt like it was my first "grown-up" living space, and we had people over for more quiet get togethers where she still loved to come out and get love from all the people who wanted to see her. The kitten she helped raise moved out with my ex, and though i think she was affectionate to a degree for the kitty i think she enjoyed being the only cat again. I stayed there one more year after the breakup before moving on. Here are some pictures of her, she would be between 11-13 or 14 at this point.       Towards the end of our time at that house is when I met my next girlfriend, who would end up joining our lives for the next two years (until about late February of this year). I met her though tinder and she only swiped right on my initially because I had a picture of Molly on my profile. I had set the "smart photos" on and I guess tinder decided that was my most attractive picture because that was the first one is showed on my profile, cant say I disagree with their logic Molly was a beautiful cat. I wish I still had that picture but I cant find it anymore. After that house we moved into my first solo apartment, not much to say about this since not a lot happened with her during this time. She continued to get older, spent a lot of time sleeping and laying in the sun when possible. After that apartment My girlfriend and I moved into a place together, she ended up getting another cat that was and older male cat Molly wasn't very fond of. About six months of living together and we broke up, and went our separate ways. About six months after that brings us to today, and I'm grateful that Molly got to spend time alone again as she was acting very old at this point and in the last few weeks especially her health got worse and worse. Here are the photos of the rest of her life that i have from the last two years.                 If you read this whole thing, thank you. It's been incredibly cathartic typing all of this out and sharing my time with Molly with you all. The loss is still very fresh, and im still incredibly sad and lost now that shes gone, but i think writing out the timeline of our life together helped process that a little bit. Even if you didn't read it I hope you enjoyed the pictures of my baby, my love, who meant more to me than I can ever begin describing. She was the last connection i had to the life i grew up with, to a family unit who doesn't exist anymore in a place that is practically unrecognizable now. She grew up with me, was there when i needed her most, and i tried my best to be the best parent to her that i could be. She affected everything in my life, considering her in big decisions like where i could and couldn't live to smaller considerations like making sure we had a care routine and that someone would be there for her if i was gone from the house for longer than a day. She helped my build personal relationships with people in my life, and taking care of her gave a young man some much needed structure in a life that felt like it was constantly crumbling around him. Molly I love you so much, I hope you knew that even if the last couple of weeks were spent upset at me for bringing you in and out of the vet and trying to force you to eat medicine you hated. I dont know what life going forward is going to entail but I do know that my world was all the brighter with you in it and im so thankful you we had our time together. I wont ever forget you. Here is a gif of me waking her up and showering her with too much affection and pissing her off 
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Aug 7, 2020 05:35
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 22:29 |
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