The Death of Pete

 Trigger warning: you all knew this post was coming at some point -- and much like I did with Maggie and Sadie, I am going to be spending some time here talking about a cat's death. If you do not want to read about this, then scroll onward and skip this one as I am sure I'll talk about Pete again in the future in a less depressing light. 

Pete's final photo

At about 8:30 yesterday morning, Pete left this plane of existence while snuggled inside the blanket in the above photo at our local vet's office, while Daisy held him and cried. He will be privately cremated and his ashes returned to us in a cat-shaped urn, and we may or may not have him back before Christmas, given the timeframes involved and the holidays themselves coming up. We were told 5-7 business days, but who knows, honestly. 

He is survived by the remaining five Gen-Z'er cats we have left, as Pete was the last of the original generation of our children.

So, here's the story. It's rather heartbreaking, but you knew it was coming.

Over the weekend, Pete began exhibiting signs of weakness in his legs. This was nothing new, really -- he's been pretty wobbly for a couple of months now. That was partially due to his age and arthritis, of course, but also heavily affected by his advanced kidney failure, which makes the limbs weaker. We knew this, but, he was still mostly able to get around fine. He just seemed like he'd lost a lot of his strength, and getting up onto the couch or bed, or my ottoman, was a lot harder for him. Still, he was able to get up and down the stairs and was mostly status quo.

By Sunday night, it became apparent that he was having far more trouble than usual. He would attempt to jump up on my ottoman and fail, and he would slip and fall getting in and out of the pans. He would recover after a few moments and hobble wherever he needed to go, but I was keeping a close eye on him.

On Monday morning, he came upstairs with me and went to bed with me, curling up as my teddy bear as he always liked to do. He slept with me almost all day on Monday as per the usual, cuddled in tight like the black little furnace he always was, warm and secure and happy.

By Monday evening it was very apparent that something was wrong. It was suddenly much harder for him to get around, and he took great time and effort to walk across the room to the water bowl or food bowl. I carried him downstairs because he was so wobbly instead of letting him walk on his own. He seemed nauseous and a little out of it, but he happily laid on the couch and got up to get treats and then went over to lay inside the little yurt that Daisy had gotten from Chewy's Black Friday sale. I mentioned to Daisy then that we needed to keep a much closer eye on him. 

By around 10pm his back legs had given out on him and were essentially no longer functional, and he was walking on his right...wrist, I guess? I could straighten out his front foot and he would remember he had a foot there, and he'd use it to balance himself. However, as soon as he took another step, it would fail him. He was essentially operating on one leg out of four and would slip and fall if he tried to make it across the couch or across the floor.

"It's time," I told Daisy. "His legs don't work anymore. He can't walk or stand."

At first, Daisy didn't fully agree with me, as she thought there might have been a little hope left for him. After another hour of him being essentially unable to move without our help, she understood that it was time, it was over, as well.

Daisy stayed up all night with Pete while I worked, next to the two of them. His condition quickly deteriorated. He lost his furnace-like body heat and became cold. This is a telltale sign that the body is shutting down. He was splayed out like a Beanie Baby with non-functioning limbs, which is also a telltale sign of kidney shutdown -- when the toxin buildup in their bloodstreams becomes too much, the limbs just splay out and become immobile. He would look at us with his big round eyes like I don't know what is happening to me, I just want to eat and drink and be loved.

It was time to let him go. It was a heartbreaking decision.

As the night went on, and he got slowly worse, Daisy and I began discussing our options. Originally we wanted to call the "do it at home" people and schedule it for Saturday, but as we watched him get progressively closer to death throughout the night, we nixed that idea. We then decided on calling our normal vet's office as soon as they opened, to see if they could get him in to take care of it there, but they didn't open until 8. Daisy did not want to wait that long. The emergency vet we took him to in October when he was very sick had extended hours, but they were also prohibitively expensive as they were an emergency vet. 

"There's the VCA," I said. 

The VCA vet hospital is just down the street from us, they are a normal vet's office in addition to being an animal hospital, and before we got all the children, they were our primary vet. They have records on all of our cats there, and it was there we took Maggie for her own end back in 2024. They opened at 7, as soon as I would get off work.

We decided, eventually, to call them first -- as soon as they opened -- because neither I nor Daisy wanted Pete to suffer any longer than he had to, and it was clear he was going to the longer we waited. If they didn't have an opening, we could call our normal vet at 8, but it hurt us so much to see him deteriorate and see the sadness and fear in his eyes as he didn't understand what was going on, just that he felt bad.

In the interim, Daisy carried him to the pan, where he used it normally -- laying down because he couldn't stand, but using it normally -- and to the water and food bowls, where he drank a lot of water and ate a ton of food while Daisy lovingly held him up so he could do so. He then summarily projectile-vomited most of that food and water back up .

"I know you love it even if I think it's dumb," Daisy said, "but if you get the hat and scarf we can get a few last Christmas photos of him."

It is a very cute photo, but you can tell he is not feeling good. He was playing along with us because he loved us. Looking back on it now, since he has passed, it is an oddly haunting photo to me. I get no sense of comfort or sweetness in looking at it, and in fact it just makes me sad. 

Daisy laid with him on the couch and lightly napped off and on while I finished my work night -- and we both noticed how much his temperature had dropped. He was very clearly dying. It was only a matter of time. 

It hurt us so much because he was eating, drinking, and using the pan; he wanted love, he was cognitively there with us still. He wasn't foggy or disoriented like Maggie and Sadie were; he was still Pete, trapped in a body that was quickly failing him all at once. Daisy put a diaper on him in the event that he were to lose his faculties like he'd lost the use of his limbs, and we waited for the clock to hit 7. 

The VCA said they could get us in without an issue. I went upstairs and changed clothes, so I could wear something a little warmer for the trip to the vet's office, and when I came back downstairs, Daisy was holding Pete in the kitchen, in her arms, and he was on his third Churu. He got to a fourth before he was done and didn't want anymore. Daisy's reasoning was something along the lines of he's going to die, let him die with a full stomach if he wants it. And I can't disagree with that logic.

We wrapped him in a thick towel and carried him out to the car, where he rode to the vet on my lap -- not in the carrier. The carrier and being in the car has made him very carsick during the last few trips we took him on, to the point where he'd vomit and shit himself. He had the diaper on still, but as he was already sick and Daisy had just given him multiple Churus because he'd wanted them, we opted for a ride there on my lap and then placed him gingerly into the carrier when we got to the parking lot. 

The receptionist girl Daisy spoke to on the phone was there and helped us process the paperwork. The euthanasia and cremation/urn were separate expenses and were performed by different parties; they do the euthanasia at the vet's office, but the cremation and urn and processing are all done by the Humane Society's "Rainbow Bridge" program, and you have to go to their website and pay for that separately. 

We were taken to the little room where Maggie was taken care of, and they took Pete into the back to run the catheter into his arm so that the final drugs could be administered. When they brought him back to us, they had him wrapped in that thick brown blanket he's in in the photo at the top of this post, and he seemed quite comfortable. We got a few more minutes with him, where Daisy was able to take a few photos of me holding him (the one above is the best one of those) before I gently let Daisy take him from me and hold him in her arms for the last time.

The vet came in -- the one who'd seen Pete in the spring when he'd had his first bad bout of sickness this year -- so she knew us and knew his history. She very lovingly and sweetly injected him with his final medicine and within ten seconds, he was gone. Daisy held him -- her most beloved son, her oldest and most loving child, as he slipped into the ether.

Once it was done, I confirmed with the vet that yes, he was gone, and Daisy said they could take him. The vet swiftly removed him from the room at Daisy's request, and for the first time in almost nineteen years -- and the first and only time since Daisy and I have been together -- we were without Pete. We were alone in the room with just ourselves and his empty cat carrier, the towel he'd been wrapped in stuffed inside.

I don't think I've ever seen Daisy cry so violently in my life, in all the years we've been together. They were desperate, screaming cries of unimaginable loss. She was doubled over and screaming as quietly as she could into her hands, and I was there with her, fingers tangled in her hair, trying to hold her and comfort her as best I could.

She kept apologizing to me, saying she knew he was my baby too. I'm not sure, however, that the apologies were as much to me as they were to Pete, though. And I understand that. 

I was mostly numb. I still am, actually. Losing Pete hasn't really set in yet. Even when you know it's coming, you can only brace and prepare yourself so much for when it actually happens. 

After a few short minutes, Daisy was able to compose herself enough to leave the grieving room, and we quickly exited the building after some thanks to the girls at the front desk. Daisy couldn't look at anyone, she didn't want to talk, she just made a beeline for the door. 

We were both able to be more composed in the car, and called her parents on the short drive back home to let them know it was done. Neither of us wanted to talk about it.

I brought the carrier in and put it in the chair in the dining room while I made sure everything was situated. Charlie came to the carrier looking for Pete and was confused when he found that Pete wasn't in there. 

I went upstairs and undressed so that I could go to bed; Daisy was not as lucky. She is in training this week for a new part of her job, and thus could not just take the day and rest -- no, she had to be presentable and social on video training all day after being up all night the night before and after the death of one of our cats. 

She told me that as I was getting ready for bed, Hank and Emmy wandered through the house crying and looking for Pete together -- a search party, if you will. 

I went to sleep a short time after -- and Daisy was able, very briefly, to join me in getting a little rest before she had to be back up for work. Charlie and Gary, apparently, would not leave her alone; they knew she was upset and wanted to be on her to try to make her feel better.

So that's the story. 

The carrier still sits in the dining room chair, empty. I did wash the towel that we'd wrapped him in. 

Daisy worked all day despite severe sleep deprivation and a headache likely not helped by that, and was awake well into the night after I started work. Yes, I went back to work as normal -- taking the night to grieve would not have been productive and would not have helped, and it's not like it was magically going to bring him back.

Emmy spent the overnight hours staring at me as if to ask WHERE IS HE? Every night, Emmy spent most of her sleeping hours curled up holding Pete or having him hold her; she adored the old man. She doesn't understand why he would just suddenly be gone. She and Charlie both took turns sleeping in Pete's yurt last night, and sleeping on "his" blanket on the couch. Neither of them can fully comprehend why he's not there or where he could have gone. We've tried to explain it to all of the cats, but of course the concept of "he's gone and he's not coming back" is likely mostly lost on them, and those places and things still smell like him. 

Gary and Mable, surprisingly, do not really seem to have noticed Pete is gone. I am sure they know he's not here anymore, but it doesn't seem to have outwardly affected them in any noticeable fashion. Hank is the same way -- once Hank grew up and Emmy came into his life, his time idolizing Pete was pretty much over. 

We feel it though. We feel the loss hard. The couch and bed are so much more empty without him, more empty than I thought they'd ever be. It is so lonely and quiet without him here -- and suddenly I find myself not needing to check on him multiple times per day/night, not needing to make sure he gets his pills and Churus on a certain timeframe/schedule to prevent him from feeling sick or nauseous, and not hearing him quietly howl and paw at my office door to get in and flop out on the ottoman. 

Suddenly I feel so very alone. 

Pete was the first cat that was actually mine, the first cat to really love me. He was not the cat that made me love cats; that was Kittybell, the cat that ended up being my mother's cat, who showed up on our porch in the middle of a snowstorm when I was in college and who just died a few years ago at an age close to, or older, than Pete was. I did, of course, have a little Persian kitten named Priscilla too, back in the 80s, but I was so young then. Pete was the cat who made me feel like a father, the cat that made me realize just how much love and compassion I could have for animals. 

It is because of Pete that my ex got the girls, and tangentially because of Pete why Daisy and I got Hank, Empress, Mable, Charlie, and Gary -- Pete started this proverbial family. Pete was the snowball rolling down the hill. 

It is very difficult for me to write about all of this. For almost the past two decades there has never been a time where I didn't have Pete. He was always there, through every move, every state, every relationship, every snowstorm or severe thunderstorm, every road trip, every plane trip, every life event -- no matter what I did or where I went, or how long it took for me to come back, I knew Pete would always be there on the couch, or on the bed, waiting for me to return. Even in his more problematic days, when he would attack Sadie frequently or go pee on things to show his displeasure, he was still there. To know he's not there anymore just leaves a great hole of emptiness that I do not know can ever be filled or know if it will slowly heal closed in time.