Tragedy

As many of you know, the past couple of months have been incredibly difficult for me.  My mother was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, Samantha got sick, and my own health has not been the best.  Right before I took about a week and a half off from blogging, I managed to get eye infections in both eyes.  It wasn’t anything serious, but my vision was blurry and I was just so under the weather that I decided to stop blogging until the infection cleared up.

That wednesday, something terrible happened.  Master was supposed to be working remotely that day, so he was home with me.  I woke up around 6:30AM, and I could not get my eyes open.  I mewed until Master came in, and he got me a hot compress so I could unstick my eyes.  Before I was able to even get my eyes open, Master told me he thought Samantha had a stroke or fell and that we had to get to the vet right away.

I absolutely panicked.  She is so special and important to the both of us, and we treat her like a baby.  We’d do anything for her.  I asked Master what was wrong, and he said he wasn’t sure, but that Samantha’s back leg looked badly mangled and that she couldn’t walk.  He said she wasn’t crying and didn’t seem to be in pain, but that we had to go.  The vet didn’t open for another half hour, so I quickly got up and dressed in the first thing I could find in the closet.  I asked Master if he would carry Samantha to the car, I was too nervous I’d bump her into something, or not carry her smoothly enough.

Master asked me what we would do if it cost a lot of money to fix her leg.  Then he asked me what if they couldn’t fix her leg?  We both began crying and I told Master that we should just see what the vet says.  I’ve seen animals with casts before, and I had hoped that Samantha’s leg would be as easily fixed.

We sped to the vet, terrified for our little Wumple.  The vet took us as a walk in, though they do not usually.  We didn’t want to bring her to an emergency room which wouldn’t know her personally.

The vet came in to look at Sammie’s little leg, and said that it was indeed broken.  It was a clean break off her hip, and he was positive that at the tender age of 22, Samantha would not survive the surgery.  He said that even if she did survive the surgery, it was highly unlikely at her age that the bone would heal properly, and that she was so frail that he thought it was just a matter of time until she broke another or the same bone.

He told us, the only thing for our little baby was to put her to sleep.

Master and me were beside ourselves at that point.  We were both completely crushed and in disbelief.  I began crying in great shuddering gasps, and Master did the same.  The vet sent a woman in to get us to sign paperwork saying we understood, and so we could pay before they performed the proceedure.  Master and me were really, really trying to hold it together because we didn’t want to panic Samantha, but we just could not.  I’ve never seen Master cry.  Never.  It was horrible.

When the woman left the room, Master gave Samantha some treats he had brought for her, he emptied the bag in front of her, and she just guzzled them all down.  It felt like we were giving her a last supper.  Watching her devour her little treats just made me feel so much worse.  Master and me petted her head and legs, and held her front paw, whispering to her how much we loved her.  The poor little mite was only 5.1 pounds, which is severely under weight for a kitty of her size.

When the vet came in, it was terrible.  He shaved Samantha’s paw, but her veins were too small and he had to use her other paw.  I really didn’t want the vet to be the last thing she saw, so I bent down and made sure I was in her line of view, whispering to her how much I loved her.  After the vet managed to get her vein, it took a couple of minutes for our little girl to pass on.  She didn’t look like she was in any pain though.

After the vet told us that she was gone, I told Master I’d wait for him in the hall.  Samantha’s little eyes never closed, they were just fixated on the spot where I was kneeling.  Master says that makes him happy.  I couldn’t stay in there anymore after she was gone though.  Since her eyes never closed, she didn’t look right to me.  She definitely didn’t look like my little Sammie, and I didn’t want to remember her that way.  I gave her a kiss and waited patiently for Master.

Master spent about another five minutes with her, and then he came out to meet me.  Crying and holding each other’s hands, we left our little one behind.  She never cried or struggled.  The only sign of her pain was a slight mew when the doctor couldn’t find a vein and had to fish around in her paw a little bit.  The poor girl just accepted it, almost welcomed it.  I would never want her to suffer, and we always did our best for her.  Always.

I’m not religious, and I don’t believe that Samantha crossed the rainbow bridge.  I don’t believe she is floating around me, in spirit or otherwise.  I just feel a great big overwhealming loss.  The only place Samantha will live on, for me, is in my heart.  It was only been one week, but I don’t feel like the grieving has gotten any easier.

Master and me had a paw impression made, and we also paid for a private cremation so we could have her ashes.  As ridiculous as this sounds, I still just feel somehow that we left her at the vet and will be right back to pick her up.  Like there’s no way she’s gone forever, that maybe she’s just staying somewhere else for a while.  I know it isn’t true, but subconsciously I hadn’t come to grips with it until today.  Today we went to pick up her ashes.

Samantha’s ashes came with a little card with her name on it, and also that it is her “cremated remains.”  Just seeing it there in print hurt me so badly.  Oh, Samantha.  I just hope that somehow she knows that if we thought there was even a shadow of a chance that she would have survived and healed from her surgery that we would have done anything to keep her here with us.  I hope it didn’t hurt.  I hope that even though we were mean and had to give her ivs for her last two months of life that she knew that we had to do it because if we didn’t she would have been suffering, and in pain.

I just hope she knew we loved her as much as we did.

There will never, ever be another Samantha.  She is, and always will be, a precious little gem in our hearts.

Sweet dreams, Baby.