Sasha

At around 7:30 last night, at the nearby MedVet clinic, I had Sasha put to sleep.

Sasha Looks Into It

He had had some fainting spells earlier in the week and, working with my veterinarian, I took him to the clinic, where they found he had tachycardia and some other evidence of heart disease.  We started him on a course of medication designed to ease the irregularities in his heartbeat and (we hoped) to eliminate the fainting spells, and things went a little better and seemed almost back to normal till Friday mid-afternoon, when they went downhill fairly rapidly.

I took him back to the clinic then, where they stabilized him, and he and I started home with a new set of medications, with the object of seeing if he would fare any better over the weekend, but we were overtaken by events.  Before we got home things took a turn for the worse, and, once home, Sasha could barely get out of the carrier by himself, and the spells were now coming one right after the other.

So I brought him right back to the clinic, and at my request they kindly and promptly (and in my presence) put him to sleep.

I know that ‘putting to sleep’ is both a euphemism and a cliche; but in this case I could see a peaceful end to a series of struggles over the past few days that he had made plain he wanted no part of any longer.  We had 14 good years together, twelve of them with his brother Kasha, both of them with me from tiny kittens.

After Kasha died, Sasha and I made ourselves into an even closer relationship than before (and believe me, we were already close).  He loved to sit on my lap while I read or worked at the computer, and even in the last days he loved to play string.

All the cliches apply: The house feels so empty, I keep expecting to see him at any moment just before reality catches up with me and I realize over again that he is gone and won’t be coming back, and all the rest.

I took him in the carrier in my car, the world’s best car, as I call it; and we drove toward the MedVet clinic through one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in a lot of locales to see a lot of sunsets, and this was one of the world’s best sunsets.

It seemed a fitting salute to the passing of the world’s best cat.

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