Farewell, Tucker

For me, a new normal came into being a little over five years ago.

I lived in a little apartment in Altamonte Springs, Florida, recently moved back from Tampa after a longer stint away from my hometown than I’d expected. Tampa was often a pretty lonely time, which was a big part of why I adopted a second cat to begin with. The first one – Veruca – was a plea from a friend who had too many animals and needed to rehome one in a single-cat house. After a few months (and many long worked weekends) I told myself that I needed a second cat to keep the first one company. But honestly, it was really more about keeping me company.

Tuck was always trouble. He’d lock himself in the bathroom. Rummage through cabinets, in search of treats. Knock things off desks and tables that got in the way of his happy reclinage. He was way too smart for his own good, and nothing about him was ever according to the manual.

So when he started eating cat litter in 2004, I didn’t like it and tried to get him to stop, but ultimately just wrote it off to more Tuck weirdness. Then, shortly after the 2004 hurricanes, he started peeing on the floor or any other fabric lying around, instead of the litter box. Again, I didn’t like it. At all. I went through gallons of cat urine remover. He spent more than one night locked in the bathroom by a frustrated owner. That went on a long time.

One day my brother Chris was over at the apartment, in May of 2005. He hadn’t been over in a while. He took one look at Tuck and said, “Where’s the rest of your cat?”

It had happened so gradually I hadn’t noticed the weight loss. But now that Chris mentioned it, Tuck was thin. Very thin. Something was very not right, and it wasn’t just behavioral weirdness. I made an appointment the next day with my vet to have him checked out, which turned out to be a long and grueling process of tests and samples that inexorably led to an irrefutable list of numbers on a lab report: Tuck had leukemia. His bone marrow was not producing red blood cells properly and his now-swollen spleen was working overtime to compensate. We could try a few things – chemo, radiation – but they would be time purchases only. Tuck was terminally ill, and likely to die in a few months.

I was wracked with guilt. He’d been going downhill before my eyes for a freakin’ YEAR and I hadn’t gotten him checked out. I had just keep telling myself that I should, sometime soon, but just not right now, he’s probably fine. Could I have prevented this? If I’d jumped on it the moment I saw something wrong, could we have beaten it? I didn’t know. And it was that not knowing that I couldn’t live with.

I told the vet then that I wasn’t willing to do radiation. Tuck was a really, really good cat and friend. I’d known someone years ago who died from cancer, and saw firsthand what radiation and strong chemo does.. Tuck deserved better than that. So the vet prescribed strong antibiotics, iron supplements and prednisone (a steroid) to try and stimulate RBC production from his marrow, and told me to keep him comfortable and happy for as long as I could. He might die in his sleep, she said. It might be worse than that. Just keep him fed, watered and medded, and give him lots of attention. That’s all I can do.

I asked her if there was anything I could have done to prevent this.

“NO THERE WASN’T,” she said emphatically. “And don’t think like that again. You did the right thing – you brought him here. Just be there for him. Don’t waste his last months consumed with guilt over something you had no control over.”

So I went home. Cried. Yelled. Anguished. Decided to start feeding Tuck tuna – he loved it, and while the vet would say later that human tuna isn’t good for a cat, my feeling was that Tuck was at least eating. You’d just given him a three month prognosis. I’m not super worried right now about long term vitamin deficiency. I just want him to eat.

And eat he did. And eat. And eat some more. Within a month of meds and tuna, he had gained weight and was gradually getting his old self back. Jumping up on counters. Getting into trouble. Talking. Chasing Ruca.

Three months passed, and turned into four. Then six. Then a year.

Tucker was a scrappy little bastard.

In that time, I moved again, and then met Kristi and moved to California, got married, and piece by piece Tuck settled into an entirely new life. New house, new people, new weather, a really new dog. When Kristi first met Tuck, he just hissed at her: she was convinced that he would never like her, despite my assurances that he was just annoyed that she was on his couch, and he didn’t know her. In the last three years, they formed a special bond of their own. I’m happy about that.

About eighteen months ago, Tuck started taking downhill turns. He’d get lethargic, weak. Lose interest. Lose weight. Stop eating, stop drinking. The litter box problems would start again anew. In February ’09, we had blood work done and got bad news. His liver was failing; his immature RBC count was near zero. His time was coming soon, probably within four weeks or so. Go home and keep him comfortable, the vet said. When the time comes, you’ll know. He’ll give up. You’ll see it when it happens.

We went home. Talked. Cried. Anguished. And renewed our efforts. Tuck had a weird thing for ice, so we started putting ice cubes in his water bowl to encourage him to drink more (a side effect of the pred was dehydration). We fed him tuna again, bought him a high-calorie dietary supplement from Petsmart. We kept him social, kept him from going off and sleeping all day in the bedroom. And he bounced again.

Since then, this has happened a few times. Each time the dip was a bit deeper, a bit more pronounced, a bit harder to climb back from. Each time we had The Talk. We hoped that the vet was right, that we would just know. Secretly I hoped and prayed that Tuck would die peacefully in his sleep and spare us – spare me – the pain of having to make that choice.

Kristi noticed it first, early this week. The lethargy was back again. He was sleeping all day. He wasn’t looking good. It was time to start the supplement again (“gooping him”, is what we called it) and put him on close observation.

Wednesday night, we came home from dinner and Tuck had peed on the bed. That was a really bad sign. We spent the evening washing sheets and blankets and put the cats in the office overnight; otherwise, Tuck would smell the last traces of the pee and go again. That was my decision, to lock him away rather than letting him sleep with us that last night. That was my call. I’m deeply sorry for that now. But that was my call, my guilt.

We came into the office Thursday morning to the strong smell of cat urine. A puddle was drying on the floor. The phone was on the floor as well; my desk was in disarray. Tuck was hiding back in the far corner. We cleaned up and tried to coax him out with food. He would come out only briefly, wobbly, shaky, tired. He’d lick the tuna once or twice, and then go back into the corner to sleep again. This was a really, really bad sign.

By late morning we decided that we needed to get him to the vet. He’d never been this bad before. If there was anything to be done, it would happen there. If this was the end, we needed a professional opinion on that. We scooped Tuck out, petted him. Couldn’t get a purr, even a faint one – this was a cat who loved people and was always purring. I gently played with the tips of his ears – a tease that always irritated him, guaranteed to get a bit of fire going. No response, no reaction. He just didn’t care. Tuck just wasn’t there.

We drove him to the vet and sat in an examination room with Tuck for about an hour. The vet was at the other office and was on his way; we were grateful for the time.

When the vet arrived, he examined Tuck for a minute and said simply, “I don’t mean to be abrupt. But it’s time.” He could feel tumors on and around Tuck’s spleen. His gums had started to yellow from liver failure. Tuck was weak and wasn’t eating. We talked for a few moments, made our decisions.

It was fast. We stayed. We cried. We anguished. But we stayed.

And then we left the office, stepping out into a somewhat emptier world.

It’s been hard. We see his meds in the bathroom. His box in the living room. His fur on our clothes. After we got home I walked through the house, heard his collar bell and turned to see if he was behind me. Out of habit. I’d forgotten that his collar was in my pocket.

Sleep is a little harder to come by, at least for now. We’re in search of the new normal.

I refuse to accept the cancer as part of him. He fought it, all the way to the very bitter end. The pills, the shots, the tests, the pee.. that wasn’t Tuck. That was the monster he’d struggled with for over half his life. And he put up a damned good fight. Five years into a three month prognosis, as I was fond of saying. And he’s at rest now.

I’m just grateful that he lived long enough to be a cherished part of Kristi’s life as well as my own. That she’d known him apart from the sickness. That when it came time to make the decision, I didn’t have to make it alone. And that, selfishly maybe, the burden today isn’t mine alone to carry. Selfish, but honest.

Years ago, in the first two years after I adopted Tuck, I wrote a series of stories about his exploits. They started as a series of emails to friends and family, sharing some of the bewildering things he did. Eventually I called them the Tucker Chronicles. They’re perhaps not much, but they all took place before the cancer began. I prefer to think of Tuck in those terms – closing himself in the bathroom to frustrate Ruca, or dashing up and down stairs to escape my clutches while the pizza guy laughs. Or even as the crotchity old man of later years who successfully put a 150 lb. lab in his place, or as the clever cat who figured out how to outsmart the electronic dog door.

At some point I’ll tell the latter stories. That’ll have to wait a bit longer, though.

If you’d like to read the Tucker Chronicles, I’ve posted them online again. I hope you enjoy them.

Farewell, Tucker, old friend. You will be dearly, dearly missed, and the world will forever be emptier without you. Rest well. You’ve more than earned it.

Tucker, 2/2000 to 8/12/2010. Rest in peace, good friend.