Saying Goodbye To Our Cat

by | Mar 7, 2010 | Dying/Death | 10 comments

Our beautiful girl

Our cat, Mocha, has bone cancer. It’s an aggressive form of cancer for animals with a poor prognosis, except with very early detection. We discovered the cancer about five weeks ago. She probably has a few more days – maybe a couple of weeks – to live.

I love this cat. I love all cats, really, but this one has a special place in my heart. She found us when I was pregnant with my firstborn, Everest. I had lost my beloved childhood cat, Spunky, when I was three months pregnant. Spunky had been with me for eighteen years and she was truly one of my best friends. She had been by my side for more transitions, challenges, and changes that I can recall, and when she died I grieved hard.

A couple of weeks after her death, I was lying in bed looking out the window when I saw a beautiful Siamese mix prowling around the garden. I said to myself, “Wow, that’s a beautiful cat. Someone is very lucky to have her.” The next day I saw her again, and again a few days later. I finally decided to make friends and went outside to try to pet her. She hissed and ran away. For three weeks she repeated this pattern every time I attempted to pet her. Finally, and very slowly, she allowed me to touch her, and eventually we fell in love with each other.

The story of how she came to live with us permanently is too long for this post, but suffice to say she inched her way into our home and our hearts. When Everest was born, she kept her distance, but after five and half years together, Everest and Mocha have become the best of friends. She’s an unusually sweet cat. She kisses us every night before we go to sleep. She jumps up on the bed for reading hour. If I’m up too late, she comes downstairs to fetch me and nudges me to get upstairs. (My  husband and I have named her “Nana Cat” because she takes such good care of me.) She’s one of those pure love-cats, a real gift of a creature.

And now she’s leaving. My heart break for her: to witness her beautiful body slowly break down. My heart breaks for myself: What will I do without Mocha in my life? But mostly, my heart breaks for Everest. It’s one thing to lose an animal; it’s quite another to have to explain this loss to a child and help him navigate the almost unspeakable pain of losing a beloved friend.

When we first told him that Mocha is getting ready to “go to cat heaven”, he ran into his safe space (a little Harry Potter closet under the stairs) and wouldn’t come out. Tears fell down my cheeks (as they do now as I write this) as I tried my best to explain death to him. With me crouched outside the door of his hole, the conversation went something like this:

“Losing someone we love is one of the hardest things we have to go through on this earth. But everyone has to go through it sometime.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s just the way it is. It’s how nature works. There are so many beautiful things on this earth and so many wonderful things that happen – like when Asher was born last spring. But then there are hard things, like getting hurt and losing a loved one. It’s not fair and it’s always hard. But one of the things that helps is to hold each other and talk about it.”

“Why does that help?”

“Because we can comfort each other when we feel sad about it. We can hold each other as we tell stories about Mocha and try to understand what will happen when she goes to cat heaven.”

He finally came out, but he didn’t want to talk about it anymore and he didn’t want me to hold him. In fact, that was the last conversation he’s allowed us to have about the topic of Mocha’s death. My inclination, as evidenced by my life’s work, is to address as much of a transition as possible before the actual event occurs. So the time to deal with the feelings about being married are during the engagement and the time to address the fears of becoming a mother are during pregnancy. Obviously, it’s impossible to prepare completely for certain transitions – like becoming a parent and losing a loved one – but the more conscious conversation someone has during the separation phase, the more gracefully he or she can let go and embrace the challenges and joys of the new life. But despite the lovely books and brilliant conversation starters I’ve attempted to share with Everest, he simply refuses.

So we take care of her as best we can. We help her die gracefully and with as little pain and suffering. Everest wants to tell a lot of stories about Mocha – and about Spunky as well – as stories seem to be his way of processing many aspects of life. So we tell stories. Everest has also decided that after Mocha goes to cat heaven, she’ll find a new body and come back to us as a kitten. So we talk about this next incarnation of Mocha. This, too, is an important aspect of transition: remembering that, even when we’re in the grief and loss stage of letting go, there’s a new life that will be born on the other side of the transition. The bride/groom-to-be lets go of his or her singlehood and has glimpses of the joy and stability of married life. The pregnant woman, of course, dreams of her new baby. And we laugh about the inevitable antics of a kitten – or, as Everest would say, Mocha in her next body.

Everest and Mocha kissing

"Head scratchies," as Everest calls it

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10 Comments

  1. Beautiful, heartfelt, heart-wrenching post, Sheryl. I’m so sorry for your impending loss. –Josh

    Reply
    • Thanks, Josh. These furry ones sure dig deep into our hearts, don’t they?

      Reply
  2. Sheryl, I love this post (and all of yours!)… this one speaks to me so much as a cat person and of course, since my husband proposed with our cat. I already dread the day of having to say goodbye.

    I’m sorry for your loss; I know you’ll make Mocha as comfortable and loved as earthly possible. You gave her a fantastic life.

    Reply
  3. Thank you, Anna. I really appreciate your kind words.

    I don’t think I ever knew that your husband proposed with your cat! I’d love to hear the whole story…

    Reply
    • My first cat as a kid was an orange tabby cat named Tom. He was my favorite cat but he ran away when we moved to CO. Dave swore up and down he would never get a cat, but when he proposed, he had called all over town and eventually found an orange kitten to bring home and proposed with the ring around his collar. So the cat is totally sentimental, to say the least. 🙂

      Have you read the book “The Art of Racing in the Rain”? It’s FANTASTIC… the story of a dog in his final transition.

      Reply
      • That’s one of the sweetest proposals I’ve ever heard! What a thoughtful guy you have there…

        I haven’t read “The Art of Racing in the Rain.” I’ll add to my amazon cart right away.

        Reply
  4. What a beautiful post! Our big, wonderful, noble dog Norman passed last August and we held him (at home) as the vet helped him go. We all cried (as I did reading your post) but after that my boys (5 and 9) moved very gracefully into acceptance (whereas it took longer for my hubby and I…) We all talked about how fabulous Norm’s spirit must be feeling without his old aging body and that his spirit was probably skipping and jumping around us as we talked. We also believed Norm was coming back (since he had done it once before!) 3 months after Norman made his transition, we went to a shelter to see about a certain puppy. We fell for him of course, believing it was Norm. As I stood in line to buy some food for our new family-member, the woman next to me suddenly called out, “Norman!” My 9 year old and I whipped our heads to see why she called out that way. Then we saw a man walking toward us — her husband Norman. He smiled at me and winked. I wanted to hug him. Your radiant Mocha will find you again!

    Reply
    • What a great story, Julie! I got chills when I read it and laughed out loud to imagine someone yelling out “Norman!” Fantastic! Yes, I do think kids recover faster than we do. Our vet yesterday said the same thing to me – that my heartache right now is my own but also what I’m carrying for Everest, and that he’ll move on much faster than I will. Thanks so much for your comment and for sharing that great, heartwarming story!

      Reply
  5. I have been having dreams of my cat who is diagnosed with feline asthma running freely outside out in the wide open spaces. As much as I would like to see her ‘run wild’ outside, she is de-clawed and wouldn’t be able to protect herself if I let her out and also her immune system is lower than most cats with the steroid shots she receives to make her breathing easier.
    I have come to believe that the dreams are trying to get me used to the idea of her imminent death…not something I have wanted to think about AT ALL. When I think of the dream this way, my version of complete loss and being devastated is being tendered by this picture of what she will experience when her body is gone. I’m opening up to this view and seeing it is a preparation for me for when this transition happens.
    It doesn’t take away the grief that must come from losing my dear feline, but colors the loss with a new life for her.
    My heart goes out to you and your sweet Everest.
    Kate

    Reply
  6. This post about Mocha is so lovely Sheryl. Our cat, our Ben, was hit by a car about two weeks ago. Although he was alive, he had horrific head injuries, so we chose to have him put to sleep by the vet. He and his sister Geri has been my partner’s cat since he cared for his Mum with dementia. They have been our companions through lockdowns, and more recently mine while my partner has been in hospital having treatment for leukaemia (which hasn’t worked, so he is moving into other treatment). Ben was so funny, like a child, hard-work but hugely rewarding at the same time. We will miss him very much.

    I am struggling with guilt because since my partner moved to my house, where the roads are busier, we have shut both cats in at night. But Ben so loved to be out at dusk, we would let him go out and then put the cat-flap on ‘in only’, so that once he came in in was in for the rest of the night. It was our compromise to letting him be him but trying to keep him safe. It was at that time he was hit by the car, as he went out while we were watching TV in the evening and never came home. I am tormenting myself that we should have been better at delaying feeding him until just before we went to bed, so he would then be attracted to come home and be shut in and be safer. Did he really get that much more pleasure from his late evening jaunts that they worth what happened? I also think that since my partner has been going into hospital I have been more lax with my bedtime and Ben’s. His sister Geri puts herself to bed, but Ben paws at the catflap to go out, though in the winter he would be back and asking for his spot on the sofa by 10pm. I’m especially haunted by people on internet forum etc who say that people who let to let cats out at night is contrary to loving them, that it would s an accident waiting to happen and that with enough effort by the owner to keep them entertainined, cats can be just as happy indoors.

    I also feel guilty that we had him put to sleep, rather than the vet try to make him better. It was nothing to do with the money, that we didn’t want him to suffer through treatment and then end up living half a life, he loved eating and exploring and he had a broken jaw and may have been blind and had brain damaged. Who were we to judge that wouldn’t be enough for him? But we didn’t want to keep him alive for us, when it wasn’t the best for him.

    Up to the point he was hit by the car, he was a happy, fulfilled cat, full of health and vitality, who lived and lived every day.

    I also feel bad because by partner is home from hospital at the moment and although we are both sad, I talk about it most, which makes him sad if he hadn’t been thinking about Ben at that moment. And it seems wrong to be sad when we should be making the most of life while my partner is relatively well at the moment.

    Reply

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