End of the Line

It’s been almost as long since his initial diagnosis, as it was in the time since I adopted him from the Hillsborough Animal Shelter up to that point. It’s been a long, long road since that first day in late 2000 when this cat – way tired of being in a cage – practically demanded that I take him home.

All that time, Tuck’s been a tenacious bastard. He’s tolerated Ruca’s insanities and neuroses, locked himself in the bathroom more than once, took an eight-hour plane ride in stride and, in recent times, dealt with a rather large dog. He’s pried open cabinets, closed bathroom doors on himself, defeated the security of an infrared-activated dog door. And when in May 2005 he was diagnosed with terminal leukemia, the vet looked over his numbers and told me then that Tuck would probably have about three months – and then he surprised everyone by holding on an additional four years. Yeah. He’s been a tenacious bastard. Old man; old friend.

But now we’re pretty sure that we’re at the end of the line, even against the power of willful tenacity.

Against the backdrop of everything else that’s been going on recently here, we’ve noticed that Tuck hasn’t been his normal self. It began a couple weeks ago, noticing that we were changing his litterbox papers less frequently. He wasn’t eating as much, not drinking as much. We hoped it was our imagination, but it wasn’t. We had to remind him to eat. Remind him to drink. Physically put him in the litter box when it was time. We noticed that he’d slowed way down – wasn’t dashing into the shower in the morning, was sleeping all day. A big clue was that his coordination, always so pinpoint sharp, was off: he’d try to jump on the kitchen counter, miss and fall back to the floor.

This has been going on for a couple weeks now, and on Friday when we boarded the animals to take a weekend in Carmel we asked the vet to draw a blood panel and check him out. Tuck’s been terminal since 2005; we’ve never had any delusions that he could be cured or fixed, or that we had any hope for him other than delaying the inevitable. If this was it, if this was the start of the final turn for him, we needed to know. The vet drew blood and sent out for the panel.

The results came in this morning, and they weren’t good.

Tuck’s level of immature red blood cells is basically zero. His liver is starting to fail.

We asked, how much time? What do we need to look for now? He’s still eating, still drinking, still grooming. He needs reminding, and tending, and he’s a lot slower than he was just a month ago. How much time?

Could be two weeks. Could be two months. But it is coming now and there’s no reprieve this time, no higher doses, no new medications, no hail mary passes. All we can do is watch and keep doing what we’ve been doing. The vet says that when Tuck stops eating altogether, that’s the end: at that point, he’s given up.

I’m not sure what to write next here.

This cat and I have been through a lot together. Several moves. Several hurricanes. A lot of life. A lot of cleaning cat pee out of the carpets of Florida apartments. A lot of having to implement security procedures because he’s too damned smart for his own good. A lot of marveling at the bizarrely intelligent things he’s done. A lot of worrying and watching and shoving pills down his throat and playing with diets. It’s been a long, long road. And he’s been a very good friend.

When we took the animals to the vet on Friday, I turned to Kristi and asked, “We are taking Tuck home on Monday, right?” Because part of me just knew. I knew what the end would look like, and this was it.

On Monday morning (we’d pick them up in the afternoon), I saw one of his syringes in the bathroom, and the house was empty – it’s bizarre how empty this place feels with Kristi at work and none of the animals at home – and I thought, one day soon we’ll have to get rid of that stuff because Tuck won’t need them anymore.

I’ll write more later, I promise. I think I just need to absorb right now.