Goodbye, Sweet Milo

Goodbye, sweet Milo. You were loved.

My cat will be departing for the heavenly realm next Monday afternoon. I hate to write that. It feels wrong to have a death date marked for him. But my youngest is home from college for spring break this week, and he is the one who always loved our cat Milo the most. I could not bear to have Milo put down without him being here to say goodbye.  It’s time, though—it’s time.

Milo is old. We got him when my daughter was just starting fifth grade. She’s 25 now. The shelter where we found Milo said he was four when we adopted him. Since then, our vet told us that she didn’t think he was quite that old. So let’s say he was maybe two or three in 2011. That makes him at least seventeen now, and possibly older. For a cat? That’s old.

Milo is unable to groom himself properly anymore, and every day he leaves a trail of wet kitty litter paw prints on my floors, so I have to dampen a rag and mop them up—after every litter box visit, it seems. He somehow managed to spread kitty litter sand all over the house. He has diarrhea, and did I mention that he doesn’t smell so good? He doesn’t ask to go outside anymore. He can’t jump up on the couch anymore. He spends most of his time drinking water, in his litter box, or sleeping on his pillow.

In an ideal world, in a world where I had all the work I needed, all the work I could do, we would call the fancy vet and have her come to the house and do a loving goodbye. Milo would cross the rainbow bridge in our home. In this world—the world where I am living now—we will put him into his carrier and drive to the nearest veterinary clinic where they will put him to sleep. Thankfully, the vet is a short drive down the freeway, but it will not be a pleasant trip for Milo. Milo does not do well in the car. He yowls and cries.

I am not happy about this. At all.

I am thankful for the staff at the nearest veterinary clinic, though. I had a tough time even making it through the phone call to set up the appointment. I had no idea I would start crying as soon as the receptionist answered my call. She couldn’t have been kinder. She told me that of course it was okay to cry. I managed to blubber out why I was calling—that we needed to put my kitty down. She intuited that maybe I was having a hard time getting words out and asked if I would like her to go over the procedure, options, and cost.

I managed to say yes, and she did.

I did not know there were so many options for your beloved pet’s body after they die. There’s group cremation; private cremation; and private cremation where you receive your cat’s ashes along with a paw print. There are different price points for all these services, and there’s even more options and ways to remember your pet if you want them. We’ve decided on the simplest one: home burial. We will take Milo’s body back to my dear friend’s home and bury him in her pet cemetery. My friend has space in her yard that will work just fine, and she lives down the street from the vet’s office. We will have a little ceremony and will probably cry for the rest of the day and as long as we need to, whenever we remember him.

So that is what we will be doing Monday afternoon, “the last appointment of the day,” the receptionist told me, “so that you have privacy and as much time as you need with your pet.”

I’ve never had to put an animal down before. When I was growing up, we had five cats that lived outside, and they always just seemed to disappear when they were ready to go. I know it’s the right thing to do, though. Milo is certainly in pain and can’t be thrilled about living in a world where he can’t properly care for himself anymore. But it is breaking my heart to know that I’m the one who has to make the decision to let him go, that I’m the one who made the appointment. Even though caring for him has been rough these last months, I am not ready to say goodbye, especially on a regular Monday afternoon at 4:00 p.m.