2005-10-17

Grace


Jesus will be back. He's got quite an imagination.
Oh wait.
That's me.
Unfortunately, my imagination was hard at work all weekend trying to figure out how to heal my Grace.

The Western Medical vet wanted to do surgery. The Eastern Medical vet, and my new best friend, had some alternative ideas that both the cat and I like better.
Now, go ahead and bash me here. Go on. Get it out of the way. Not having surgery = ending my beloved's life, etc. Have surgery and then keep her inside for the rest of her life. I've heard, and weighed, it all.
Here's the thing: She's a cat. I love Grace more than anything in my life, honestly. That cat has been more to me than my dog, than any guy, then Namoli, then... anything.
She's very, very special.
Which is WHY I don't think it's honoring her to send her to the clinic and have her put to sleep and have someone drain the wound.
Grace is not sick. She's healing, albeit slowly, and I know from empirical evidence that if I did elect to have her cut open, she would be back on the street in a matter of hours. This is the animal who REMOVES screens in order to be outside lying in the sun, rather than inside, lying in the sun.
Don't think that this has been an easy decision for me. I've wracked myself all weekend long. I've tried to communicate with her, I've meditated, I've researched, I've cried my eyes out, I've freaked the hell out, I've driven her to the vet's (where I could not bring myself to take her inside and leave her to be chopped up). I have worked on this.
If Grace were to not survive this injury, it is probably her natural end.
She is a cat.
This is what they do.
If She had ingested Mop-N-Glo, or if she had a disease, I would feel differently about extensive veterinary care.
But I feel like this is the risk of allowing her to have her little cat heart filled with joy. She's going to fight and kill things and come in at night to eat a healthy meal and cuddle up to go to sleep. She escaped four times on Sunday. Yeah. FOUR TIMES. This animal has no interest in surgery.

The cat and I wanted to try anti-biotics and homeopathy and say what you will but here's the routine:
Twice a day, we battle it out to irrigate a puncture wound with hydrogen peroxide and then insert a very big needle and medicate with anti-biotics. That's the invasive part.

Then we move on to the oral portions of the day: 1Ml of pink, kind of delicious-smelling cat-fixing juice is squirted, by dropper, into the back of her mouth and then I slip my jaws of life, aka hands, around her muzzle while she unsuccessfully foams out pink kitty meds as best she can. 2 pellets of Hepha Sulpha are also shoved deep into the cat's throat and her mouth is again held shut.
She hasn't figured out that my opposable thumbs will win every, single battle that we have over this healing process.

We round out her treatment with a topical festival. Saturday, the topical parts of the day meant making a salt pack in my left hand, wandering around and waiting until she wanted me to pet her, and then springing the salt on the bubble of pus.
I've since found a better solution - it's called drawing ointment and basically, it's mud with some minerals that coaxes all of the pussy crap up to the opening. One application, after Kirtan last night, and the wound looks like it has drained significantly.

I am arranging for a popping party - my friend's hubby grew up on a ranch out here and I have been informed that he takes perfectly healthy animals and finds the hidden wound and pops this crap in his sleep, for fun. I'll hold her, he can squeeze it.

Finally? If she does stop eating, or stop opening the door on her own, we go to the Eastern vet again and find the right thing for Grace. She's definitly healing but I will be woman enough to admit that I'm freaked out about the whole thing... you know, whether or not I've made the "right" decisions here. I truly love her and I guess part of what I found inside myself is that truly loving her doesn't mean that I hold onto her and treat her as I would need to be treated. I'm a girl. She's a cat. She wants to kill stuff. I want to eat stuff that's already killed. There's no parallel, you know? Anyway. I'm trying to say that it wasn't an emotionally easy weekend and I dove deeply into philoposhical questions that I've never considered for myself. I can't get away from believig so strongly in the natural life of the animal. Even writing that makes me cry because I am so aware that she might go septic and she might die and this might be the only creature who I love unconditionally.
Which is why I can't cling to her the way I've been doing. I have to let her have her cat experience on this Earth and if that means that I lose my sweet, sweet Grace... it's the right thing, you know? There's a course in life and death is part of that course. Sometimes, there is a choice and also sometimes, it may not be the right thing to do to extend the path before death. I feel deep in my gut that I'm making the right decision about my pet and I hope to GOD she can heal with a little help.

I've learned a lot this weekend and a lot of it isn't pretty, you know? It's full of pus, it's life and death, it smells, and it's heart-breaking and I just hope so hard that I am doing the right thing in the grand scheme of things because once in awhile, I get this little twinge that I am killing my most treasured companion. I know that can't be true but... a lifetime of what I can only call Westernization because I don't HAVE a better description... a lifetime of it has caused me to have a serious internal conflict about what's right and what's possibly arrogant and irresponsible.

Although, that thing just keeps shrinking and next time?
I am going to try to not become wrecked in the face of gravity. She's healing faster now, I checked on her at lunch, and I am so proud of both of us but yeah...
next time, and there will be a next time because that's what small things do - they wrap around your heart and they squeeeeeeeeze until you can't even stand it anymore - I'll try to keep a cooler head and trust my instincts.
You know, I say that every freaking time and every time, I do mean it... someday, I'll get there.

arizonasarah at 10:59 a.m.

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