May 01, 2002: the great clock of your life is slowing down
The phone rang this afternoon while I was writing an email explaining a piece of technical information. I picked it up.
It was the vet, with the results of the cytology labs he'd sent out yesterday on Kallisti.
The news was bad; worse than we'd hoped. Kallisti has a rare endocrine tumor, probably on his pancreas and intruding on his stomach. It's probably malignant, it's inoperable, and it is slowly starving him to death.
And there is other news, too--his other lab results are all mostly normal. His kidney and liver function are perfectly fine. He has some excess white blood cells, indications of a secondary infection, and when I brought him into the vet he was badly dehydrated, but other than that and the tumor he's perfectly healthy.
It's not time for him to be put to sleep yet. He still has time left, and with palliative care I can make the time he has left more comfortable. (I'm resolved to accepting the fact that he's going to keep urinating inappropriately; he peed under the workbench as I was writing that first paragraph up there.)
He's awful to watch, though. When there's nothing engaging his attention he crouches and stares off into space. He's quite literally a skeleton of a cat--his face is all odd angles and you can clearly feel the bones in his legs. He moves like a very old cat,creakily and carefully. But his eyes are bright and clear, his voice is as penetrating as ever, and he is still greedy for petting and holding. And he ate an entire can of food tonight, and begged for treats afterwards.
There's a good chance that when he begins to truly die, he'll do it all at once, and it'll be clear when it's time for one last trip to the vet. But for now...for now I will love him, and tell him that he's a good cat, and enjoy the time I have left with him.
It's all anyone could do.
I have been overwhelmed by the amount of support and sympathy i've gotten from friends. I do appreciate it very much, even though I've been too emotional and out of it to reply to any of it. Thank you, all.
I cried for a while on Chris' shoulder tonight, silent hot tears of grief and overwhelm. He held me close and just let me be sad, something which I am genuinely grateful for. He's been a bit out of his depth here--I, the normally unflappable girl, am flapping, so to speak.
As I said to him tonight, "Some people have children. I have cats."
I'm sharing Kallisti's Rescue Remedy, and it's restoring a modicum of calm to me, as is the magic of time and sleep.
It's one day at a time, now. We'll take it as it comes.
Kallisti, tonight, on my lap.
