My Cat Died Today

Jerry died this early morning. At six minutes past three to be exact..

I haven’t told the kids yet because they are due to go for their first sleepover together with their grandfather and I don’t want to ruin that for them. I haven’t told Granpa either because I can’t keep it together enough and he’s not a great one for tears.

Also believe it or not, my husband and I are due to go out for dinner – alone, as a couple, without the kids, for the first time in years. Somehow I don’t think I am going to make it.

Jerry was my bush baby. Literally. He and his two siblings were found under a bush in a local park. While the other two made a break for it in panic, Jerry scrambled up the bush stem to me. I sat on a bench with him and he settled on my lap and that was where he could be found for most of his short life.

His was a gentle soul and unruffled soul. While we humans played chess he’d lay on the table patting the captured pieces. Read a newspaper and he’d place a paw on the edge of the page as if keeping the place though as a kitten he’d literally try to digest the news. Do a jigsaw and he’d lay in the box on top of the unused pieces.

I’ve had cats all my life but only one other that was as laid back. His name was Fergus, also a stray. Like Fergus, Jerry seemed incapable of any form of aggression – to humans at least. He was murder on the local bird and lizard population. And that is what I think killed him in the end.

I have never agreed with the belief that an indoor cat could lead a fulfilling feline life. I certainly wouldn’t like to spend all my days indoors. I couldn’t imagine cooping such a free spirited creature up in an apartment or house no matter how large it was or how well furnished with cat furniture and toys.

So Jerry and my other cat Lily are indoor-outdoor cats. They tend to hang about the patio laying on the roof of the shade structure there. When I walk Skye, they’ll gallop after me in the park, shooting up trees and darting under bushes, chasing each other and having fun.

But like most cats, they are hunters too and if a present of a lizard (or half a lizard) is not a daily occurance it is still frequent enough to be an event that is largely ignored by the kids. ‘Eeew – Mum, Jerry’s left a lizard tail under the table again!’

On Monday morning, Jerry wasn’t where he should be. Screaming his face off in the kitchen for his breakfast. He didn’t come running tail up, down the corridor when I called him and he wasn’t out getting the best spot on the roof before Lili claimed it. I noted his absence and suspected the little devil was curled up in the kid’s cupboard again getting his fine white hairs all over their clothes.

I wish that was where he had been. Instead when I got back from the school run, I spied Jerry up on the patio roof. Surprisingly though he miowed a greeting at me, he didn’t move. I chatted to him a bit expecting him to jump down and run to the kitchen for a late breakfast but still he lay there.

I climbed onto a wooden box to speak to Jerry more directly. As soon as I was close to him he started to purr like a tractor, so I still didn’t expect the worse. I reached up to lift Jerry down and he hissed in my face. He never made a move to scratch or bite but he must have been in great pain.

I laid him down and saw the blood. Initially I thought it was his tail – that maybe a dog had got hold of him, but it was his back leg, where a tendon had been bitten almost through. It looked painful but not that serious. Not life-threateningly serious.

How wrong I was. Given a strong dose of antibiotics by the vet, Jerry was discharged. I was told to expect him to be listless and perhaps off his food. He was that alright. He hardly moved for two days and it seemed that though not gouting, blood still seeped from the wound.

I was back at the vet on Wednesday. This time the thermometer came out covered in blood. ‘It’s fresh, said the vet, …he’s bleeding from the lower intestine’. He was anemic too. All that seeping blood and no food for two days. It was time to start force feeding him.

So, the vet injected glucose under his skin and packed us off home again with a recommendation to come back in two days if Jerry showed no improvement on a regime of frequent, small feedings to build up his strength again.

On Thursday, Jerry did seem to rally a little. My husband confidently predicted that Jerry would be fine especially as he was now moving about a little and had elected to leave the bed I’d made up for him in a cosy, quiet spot and lay in the living room instead. But, I wasn’t so sure. My husband rolled his eyes at me when I told him I’d be taking Jerry back to the vet in the morning.

He didn’t make it till then. Just before three, Jerry started wheezing and gulping for breath. His body was wracked with a shuddering seizure and then he lay still, panting. I lay beside him on the floor and stroked his head talking quietly.

With his breathing so laboured it was obvious that he would never last long enough to find an emergency vet. I picked him up gently and laid him across my knee as I frantically tried to find some magical cure on the internet. Perhaps there would be something, somewhere that would tell me a position or a home cure for a cat in the throes of a terminal siezure.

How stupid. Typing and sobbing, I kept talking to Jerry the whole time. Kept telling him everything would be alright. Only, of course it wasn’t. Nothing would ever be alright for Jerry again.

And now, here I am asking myself why. Why did this beautiful soul have to die – and die so horribly? What really happened? Was it – as the vet said – a cat fight with resultant internal bruising? Was it rat poison? Did a dog get him? Did I make a horrible mistake by picking him up and carrying him to the computer chair – breaking him further inside and shortening his life by even a few minutes?

Two things seem to be stuck in my mind. One is that Jerry would still be alive today if he was an indoor only cat and the other is that I have a problem coming to terms with the veterinary care Jerry received. I knew he was sick enough to die but instead of going with my gut I listened to the vet when he said he was just weak from loss of blood from the leg wound. He indicated that the internal bleeding was not likely to be serious … so why did I not take Jerry to another vet? At what point do you know that you need a second opinion instead of putting your faith blindly in the doctors?

Run free at the bridge, Jerry baby.

Have your beloved pet imortalised with a pet portrait by
UK Artist John Payne.