Been a busy term, or all this talk about health care “reform” is too boring, or Keyser has no idea what, but he hasn’t had much to say of late.

Yesterday was a bad day. One of the cats has been sick for a while. After much folderol and money, it was determined that she had some sort of cancer in the intestines, and there wasn’t much to be done about it but wait. So we wait. It doesn’t seem that bad most of the time, but sometimes she’d strain and try to squeeze something out, and sometimes it would be a bit of piss with blood in it. Apparently, the thing growing inside of her sometimes would make her feel like she had to crap, but naturally it wouldn’t come out. Sometimes the blood was from squeezing the bladder coincidentally, but sometimes it was cancerous stuff. Or so Keyser gathered.

Sounds bad, but it didn’t happen that often. She was okay most of the time, and so the question would be, there seemed to be no need to kill her while things were basically okay, and you wanted to end things before it got bad, but how exactly do you tell when the line has been crossed separating “not so bad” from “no, this is bad”? Well, we crossed it the other day.

Last weekend she started vomited up green bile. Seemed to be the wrong end to be having problems with, but apparently the cancer was messing up her digestive system. Now, Keyser has no problem with the idea that once life becomes intolerable, it’s best to end things. Mrs. S. feels the same in theory, but can’t really bring herself to make that decision. The vomit seemed to indicate that the end was near, though Mrs. S. equivocated. Then things got a lot worse all of a sudden.

Yesterday, Mrs. S. went off to the university, while Keyser was at home. In the morning, he sitting at the table in the living room fiddling away at whatever he was fiddling away at, when the cat comes into view in the adjoining dining room. She was on the floor horking up some more of that green stuff, and then just pushed herself along on the floor through the stuff. “Uh oh, that’s bad. Do we have to go the vet’s?” The answer must be yes, so Keyser calls the vet. Can’t get an appointment until Thursday (this was Tuesday).

Then the cat shoved herself along the floor once more, maybe twice. Well, that does it. If you can’t even get up on your own, then the end is at hand. So Keyser calls Mrs. S. to see if she can’t finagle a sooner appointment (she’s better at that sort of thing). Keyser then starts his stationary biking, and in the middle of that, the phone rings. It’s the vet’s office. They’ve had a cancellation and an appointment is available at 2:15. Is that doable? Well, yes, it is. And conveniently, Mrs. S. doesn’t get off work until 2, so she’d be spared the unpleasantness of doing what she didn’t want to. Keyser considered just doing it himself and presenting her with a fait accompli, but he figured it was best to let her know ahead of time.

As it turned out, Mrs. S. was able to arrange to have the ex-Mrs. S. come along to (the cat had originally been hers).

Somehow, the cat had managed to get herself down the hall and was lying on the carpet outside our bedroom. He went to see how she was doing, and when he smoothed her, she tried to drag herself up on her feet. This reminded Keyser of the final words of the Emperor Vespasian, who is reported by Suetonius to have said in his final moments imperatorem stantem mori oportet “The emperor should die on his feet.” Well, regardless of ruminations of bygone Romans, Keyser thought it best to leave her alone if staying with her was just going to induce her to try and do what she couldn’t.

So the last hour was strange. Sitting around looking at distracting crap on the computer before driving over with the cat to the ex’s house to pick her up and go to the vet’s.

By the time it was time to go, the cat had somehow gotten herself under the bed. It was easy enough to pick her up, since she didn’t weigh much and had no energy. Seemed like an unfair thing to pick her up to take her to have her killed, but it was for the best.

It was certainly good that the ex was able to go. Keyser probably wouldn’t have felt any worse by himself, but it was nice to have someone else there. The ex held the cat while we waited for the vet. When she showed, up, the vet spoke to convince us that it was the right thing to do, but we hardly needed any convincing (Mrs. S. probably would have, not because she wouldn’t have known, but because she didn’t like knowing it). First, the vet gave her a sedative, which took about five minutes to work. Then she gave her whatever it was. The ex was write there, whereas Keyser looked away, so he can’t tell you what exactly she did (though he did she her get some needle ready). Actually, the vet offered that we could go before she gave the sedative and after the sedative worked. She said the cat wouldn’t notice anything, but it struck the both of us to be cowardice to leave. (As an aside, Keyser remembers reading a news story many years ago in college about some vet that would anaesthetize pets and then when the owners left, he’d actually not kill the pets but sell them for some sort of medical purposes. Now, can you really think of anything more abominable than that? Keyser can’t. Not that he suspected the vet here of that, but that appalling thought has always lodged in a part of his mind where unsetting ideas lurk.)

Anyway, it didn’t take very long, just a minute or so. Keyser gave the cat a farewell scritch, and it’s funny how different a body feels dead. Even in repose, a corpse has a sort of limp feel about it. Weird.

Well, Keyser bore up as you would expect a manly Pannonian too, apart from a bit of sniveling, which is probably excusable under the circumstances. After dropping the ex off at her house, Keyser found Mrs. S. as she was walking home. We took the filthy car to a car wash. It’s spring around here, which seems like an inappropriate time for death. (Because the ground is still frozen, we couldn’t just have a burial at home, so the cat will be cremated and we’ll bury the ashes in a month or so.) Getting the car cleaned seemed like a sort of sneer at death. Life goes on.

So, that’s part of the stuff that Keyser’s been occupied with recently.