Leesha's Last Days
Leesha, Our Traveling Cat, Begins Her Last Journey, by Louise: I'm home alone today, five weeks to the day after Leesha died. Here's what I wrote on 3 Sep 2010 about her last days:
Leesha died on 24 Aug 2010 at about 0820. She was in the middle of our bed covered with her little pink and blue blanket. Brian was stroking her, and our favorite meditation music was playing. The morning sun filtered through the blinds, giving the room a soft glow.
We miss her terribly; the energy in the house pools in stillness without her bright waves shimmering through it. Dents from her little feet make tracks up the right side of the stairway – her pathway.
Leesha in the Sun
She suffered what was probably a stroke on Sunday, 22 August. She came downstairs trotting around the edge of the room, sniffing frantically and running into things. When we realized she wasn’t chasing something – that this wasn’t normal behavior – we took her into the emergency vet clinic. All the way, I held her in my arms, and she kept turning her head from side to side, her neck only stopping when she bumped my arm. But otherwise she seemed fairly calm.
At the vet, bloodwork revealed low glucose and potassium. So we authorized treatment for that, hoping she was just having trouble with her insulin levels. They put an oxygen mask on her and used cold packs on her feet to bring down her high temperature and started an IV. I closed my eyes in the waiting room and saw her walking into bardo--the realm of the afterlife in Tibetan Buddhism-- with my late husband, Mark – just her tail held high and the creamy fur on the backs of her legs were visible in the beautiful clouds. There was definitely a spring in her step!
We left her for the night after saying good-bye. By this time, we realized she couldn’t see.
We picked her up the next afternoon; the vet was hopeful since she seemed to be able to see and was eating normally.
She jumped out of the car at home, sniffed the garage, went up the stairs, and checked out her food dish. So our hopes were high, too.
That evening, she and Brian watched Monday night football; she was draped across in his lap as usual. Then about 2030, I noticed that she went very limp for a few minutes, sprawled over his legs, her head a pronounced wedge. She then got down from the recliner and crouched in various places in the room.
I realized she couldn’t see again. Maybe another stroke, maybe the evening darkness – but she was blind.
I tried to sleep with her downstairs, but she wasn’t responding to us. So we took her upstairs to our bed and soon the running and sniffing behavior started again. We decided not to take her back to the vet. We put her in bed between us on towels. She started to get very hot so Brian put ice packs on her feet, and she calmed down. Her panting changed to shallow breathing.
For awhile, she slept on my chest, her head over my shoulder. Again she went deeply limp. I think she was taking the sound and feel of our heartbeats with her so she could find us whenever she chose.
We stroked her through the night; she stopped breathing a few times. I cleaned up after her several times.
Then the sun started to rise, and she became restless, trying to get up, scrabbling with her back legs. I put on the CD of meditation music she and I used so often after Mark died. She began to calm as the music and early morning light filled the bedroom. I felt her spirit watching from above as her body slowly finished out its life.
We decided to call the emergency vet to see if they could come and end her suffering. Our friend Kip had done that with his cat; we couldn’t even to begin to imagine taking her anywhere. Brian called, and the technician said certainly. The horse vet was the on-call vet so we weren’t sure what to expect – those old horse vets in Montana were characters!
About 0745, Leesha started to have convulsions. I called the clinic, and the technician said the team was on their way. And about 0810, the vet and the technician arrived. They were both young and wonderfully kind. Leesha’s veins were pretty small from dehydration, but finally the doctor administered the drug. Her struggles stopped immediately, and her little body went limp.
The vet wrapped her in her little blanket, and I petted her little head one last time while Brian watched from the top of the stairs. We tried to do the best for her that we knew how; we’re immeasurably thankful that she came home to die with us.
We drove up to the National Cemetery to Mark's grave to tell him she was coming. (My husband, Mark, died of pancreatic cancer on 27 May 2004. He served twenty years in the US Air Force and is buried at the Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis, SD. Leesha was his constant companion during the year of his illness, and I wrote a book about that last year)
Leesha Comforts Mark
I sobbed uncontrollably for much of the afternoon – my companion of eighteen years was gone. My cat companion walked with me through a period of panic attacks, through Mark’s illness, through and after Mark’s death, in the lonely years without Mark, and through the first adjustment years with Brian. Through surgeries and accidents; through the prairie restoration in my backyard – almost a third of my life.
Now we have her ashes and our memories. And overwhelming gratitude for the gift of her devotion. We honor her courage and fearlessness, her faith in our kindness and care for her, her belief in the world's inherent goodness, her willingness to absorb and dissipate our sufferings, her curiosity, and, above all, her healing grace.
Text by Louise, Photos by Louise and Brian. Text and photos copyright GoinMobyle, LLC, 2010