The Rainbow Bridge
Hello everyone.
Following my latest trend of writing about my real life, I had the urge to write about Sophie, my cat’s passing. The beginning of February will mark three months without her. I’m ok. I’ve gotten better with coping and I’m happy.
But, something about getting it out in print and getting it out there, it feels final. It feels really good.
Some of you knew Sophie and knew what she meant to me. Some of you are total strangers. But the story of grief, loss, and coping is a familiar story to everyone. Everyone has experienced it in some way, maybe with your own pet, maybe with a person.
I think it’s healthy to experience death. I had never come face to face with it until I had to put Sophie down. But it made me face death and what I thought and believed in a very healthy way. It made it a little less scary and it actually made it sort of beautiful.
So I wrote it all down. I wrote down the process of watching Sophie deteriorate and bringing her to the vet for her final visit.
Not everyone is ready to face death. For some people, you’ve faced it recently and it’s too fresh. So I’m warning you, this story is full of very real emotions and details.
As always, you don’t have to read if you don’t want to but I encourage you to. Facing death is a very healthy part of the healing process.
I hope those of you who do read enjoy the healing process in my story. I hope to post again soon but until then
I’m off.
Writing Prompt: What was the most recent incident in your life that made you upset?
“Baby Girl!” I exclaimed as my sweet cat attempted to jump onto the couch and preceded to land back on the floor. “You’re so silly.”
A grin stretched my face as my hands wrapped around her chest behind her front legs and I lifted her onto my lap. I was immediately surrounded in warmth. Her silky soft fur warmed my hands and lap and her gentle purring rumbles warmed my soul.
“What’s up with you, huh?” I smiled but an alarm in my brain seemed to go off. She had been missing her jumps more often. “Do we need to go see the vet?”
It was a joke. Sophie hadn’t shown any other signs of illness. She was her usual cuddly, loving self. Suddenly, our newest kitten jumped onto the couch and the purrs turned to growls.
“Go on, Bandit. You can try to play with her later. We haven’t had our cuddle session in days.”
A pungent smell hit my nose. My eyes darted around. Someone had missed the litter box. I immediately went to the kitten, the likely culprit and searched around. He gazed at me lazily with no concern in his eye.
I crawled around following the smell and found a tiny nugget of evidence on the floor.
“Bandit! I’m going to be so pissed if there is more.” I continued to crawl and found another. It seemed to be leading to our coffee table. I looked up and noticed that Sophie was laying underneath the table and realization dawned on me. I crawled to her quickly and looked her over.
Feces spattered her beautiful long fur. She looked at me with gentle worried eyes, clearly something was wrong. My husband and I had decided to see the vet because Sophie just seemed off. But suddenly, this was something much more sinister. Sophie was the cleanest cat I had ever met. If she wasn’t bathing herself then she was cuddling with me.
“Oh, baby! What’s wrong sweetheart?” I reached out a hand to comfort her but she recoiled and ran off. She was my baby. How could she run off from me?
I hurriedly cleaned up what I could find of the mess; hoping the vigorous scrubbing would somehow calm the solid wall rising in my chest. I was choking back a stream of tears as I pulled out my phone and shakily looked for the vet’s number.
“Hello, is there any way to get Sophie in today? I think she is really sick.”
“She pooped all over herself and she hasn’t been spending time with me all day. She doesn’t do that!”
I could feel myself losing control. It was like if I couldn’t see the vet right now I was going to lose her.
“Ok. I’ll keep an eye on her. See you tomorrow.”
Defeated, I hung up the phone and a new warmth swept across my face. Hot fresh tears streamed down my face and my head felt like it was going to explode as I fought to gain back control. In my heart, a dark pit formed. I was going to lose her.
“So, Sophie isn’t feeling well huh?”
The usual vet tech had ushered us into a room and was filling out the paper work. Her eyes were misted with understanding and my stricken panic.
“No. It started about a week ago. We noticed she seemed to have trouble jumping up to get places. We thought it was just her being silly. Then she started spending less time with us.”
I took a deep breath. I wished my husband was here. I felt I was always alone at the vet. Work had ended shortly after the wedding and I didn’t want to take another long-term position with our honeymoon coming up. None of that seemed important now though.
“Yesterday she pooped on herself which isn’t like her at all. The she hid in the closet all night. She’s my baby girl. She would do anything to cuddle with me.”
I felt stupid, letting my emotions show so clearly. I didn’t cry in front of people.
“Ok, well I will go get the vet. We will figure this out.” She gave me a comforting smile that actually subsided the tears a bit. They didn’t feel as much of a threat anymore.
I opened the crate and coxed Sophie out. She was back to her usual vet self. She hid in my arms.
“Sophie, I know you don’t like this but it’s going to make you feel better.” I was fighting back tears, covered in a sticky, gross, liquid medicine as she had escaped my arms once more.
“It’s helping ok?” I took a shaky breath and pet her gently. “Don’t you feel better?”
I wanted to believe the medicine was helping. She had perked up a day after we had visited the vet but her blood work wasn’t looking good. We were supposed to go back in a few days for some more tests and more medicine. The problem was, she was a very small and slippery cat. It was a fight every day, twice a day to force the liquid down her throat and it certainly took a toll on me.
“Dad will be back in week. You should be better by then but if not he can help with the medicine huh?” I tried to smile.
I reached out and scooped her in my arms like a baby. “I love you,” I whispered as the struggle began again.
My spirits lifted slightly as the vet brought her back in wrapped in a towel. I had left her all day at the vets for testing. Seeing her relieved some of the anxiety my imagination had bestowed upon me throughout the day.
The relief didn’t last long. She was very thin and scraggly looking. She smelled of medicine but seemed content once placed in my arms. I placed my lips to her head and pet her as her purrs penetrated my soul.
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The vet sat down and a pit formed in my chest. Something was very wrong and I feared the worse. My husband was still traveling for work and I wasn’t sure I was emotionally prepared to face one of those vet talks alone.
I barely took in all the technical talk he used as he reviewed blood work. All I really wanted to know was how to make everything ok for her.
“We now think she may have FIP. The problem with that is there is no test she can take to know if she has it. It is very rare and only affects cats that have a certain genetic makeup. There are simply patterns we can look for. The blood work is one sign. Another is the fluid build up in her abdomen and lungs.”
I nodded my head waiting for the but. There had to be some good news. There had to be a cure or medicine or something.
“Unfortunately, there is no cure.”
The silence threatened to crush me. I looked down at my sweet girl, her eyes were closed as she purred happily in my arms.
“Ok, so what can we do?” I was so surprised I was actually keeping it together.
“Well, we would like her to come back in two days for one last test. The test is for the family of illnesses FIP belongs to. If that comes back positive we will be able to say for certain that she has it and make decisions from there.”
The look on his face, the way he was talking, I knew exactly what he meant by decisions. There was only one decision. As much as thinking about it threatened to tear me apart, I knew that if she was suffering, there was only one thing to do.
I nodded and looked back down at the very living cat in my arms.
“I’m sorry. I wish I had better news.”
I walked Sophie, now in her carrier, to the car. As I slid into the drivers seat to bring her home, I took a deep steadying breath. I stuck my fingers through the bars of the carrier door and stroked her fur just between her eyes. She closed them happily and resumed her purring. She knew we were heading home.
“It’s ok baby. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel better.” I bit back tears, knowing what I was promising her.
I couldn’t sleep in the bedroom anymore. We were keeping Sophie isolated in there until her test tomorrow. She wasn’t her anymore. She hid, she didn’t eat, she didn’t drink, and she didn’t want to cuddle. I was so afraid of what I might hear or what I might wake up to see if I slept in the same room as her.
I awoke on the futon, having slept very little the day before. My husband and I had been talking via text and we both seemed to know that the test was going to be pointless.
I opened the bedroom door to attempt to feed Sophie of pureed food that had useless medicine hidden within. I almost dropped my armful of food packets and the bottle of medicine.
Sophie was stretched on the end of the bed, unmoving, her eyes open, staring, and unblinking. I hurried to her side, not ready to say goodbye like this. As I stroked her head she blinked, but she didn’t move her eyes to even acknowledge my presence at her side.
With a small wave of relief, I realized she was alive. I noticed her shallow, ragged breathing that was barely audible. With a resolute certainty I knew what I had to do.
“Sophie isn’t doing well at all. I think we should cancel the testing and try to get her in today to give her some peace.” I texted my husband. My hands were shaking and I could just barely feel the tears streaming down my face through my numbness.
The day, that had started like the last few weeks of anxiety and worry, suddenly became Sophie’s last day. I didn’t leave the bed. I stayed by her side the whole day, unsure if she even knew I was there. Meanwhile my husband was rushing home to be here as we said goodbye.
I thought back to when we first decided to get a cat. I had made the promise then, that I would not leave my companions side while the vet put them to sleep. They were my companion and I was going to be by there side until the end.
Of course, when I had made that promise, the cat was going to live a long happy life. She wasn’t going to be four years old.
When we had decided to get a cat, she was going to be a companion to me but I had never imagined how close she was going to be to me. She was my cat. She greeted me when I got home and insisted on a cuddle session. She spent every moment with me that she could, whether it was on my lap, next to me on the couch, or simply laying in the room where she could see me. She talked to me with chirps I had only ever heard her make. She was so small but so beautiful.
She was supposed to spend Christmas with us. It was going to be our first Christmas celebrating at home as a married couple. She was supposed to be our children’s first cat. The more I thought about it, the more it was crushing me.
I had lost cats before but my mom had always been the one to take them to that final appointment while we were at school. The closest experience I had to this was with my last cat, Milton.
He had been my cat too. He only cuddled with me, after sharing his affection with the rest of the family of course. He has been a rescue from a woman who had neglected him and fifty other cats. We lost him too soon to leukemia but I had had someone to blame then. I could blame the woman for abusing him and exposing him to the illness that would take his life.
The hardest part about this all was, we did everything right. We responded early, we paid every bill that came our way, and we did everything we could whether Sophie had liked it or not. And we still weren’t going to be able to save our cat. There was no one to blame.
“I was thinking, we shouldn’t put her in the carrier. I can’t being myself to do it. She hated that thing. I think her last car ride should be in my arms.”
“I don’t know, it’s really windy outside.”
“We can bring it, just in case, and I’ll wrap her in a blanket but I really just can’t…” Tears were coming down my face again. I had never cried in front of my husband in the three years of us being together and I had never seen him cry but not even a month into our marriage and we were having some our firsts together that no one enjoyed having.
The day had seemed to fly by and my husband had come home an hour before were supposed to be at the vets. I envied him slightly. He hadn’t watched alone in the last week as Sophie had disappeared. He hadn’t sat through the talks with the vet, knowing there wasn’t any hope. And yet, here he was with a cat that had less than an hour of life left, a cat that had been his as well, and he had to cram his goodbyes into this small amount of time.
I scooped her into my arms and wrapped her in my Lion King blanket. It seemed fitting. She didn’t fight or anything. She just resigned herself to whatever was going to happen. Even though I was doing the hardest thing I had ever done in my life, having her in my arms brought some comfort as it always had.
The car pulled into the parking lot in what felt like record time. We sat for a moment in silence, neither of us knowing what to expect, neither of us wanting to cry in front of people we didn’t really know, neither of us wanting to face it. Finally, my husband got out of the car and opened the door for me. I climbed out and my feet felt like lead. We walked in and the receptionist hurried to let us into a room. It was past closing time so we were alone which I was very thankful for. I laid Sophie on the table and it seemed that she wasn’t going to make it to the procedure.
The vet took her to get everything set up and we filled out the paper work. We wanted to most intimate options possible, a paw print, private cremation, returning of ashes, because we honestly couldn’t imagine our house without Sophie. We had always half joked that when she passed we were going to turn her into a little bonsai tree. That had been a half serious joke for years down the line.
I was so afraid. I was afraid he would bring her back in and she would be already gone. I was afraid of watching it happen. But most of all, I was heartbroken.
He brought her back in with an IV set up to inject her with the medicine that I knew would finally make her feel better. We took up seats beside her, knowing we couldn’t let her pass without us by her side. The air in the room seemed to vanish as he put the first injection in.
She twitched, suddenly showing life and a want to get out of there. What was left of my heart shattered as I tried to settle her weakened body down, try to reassure her that everything was going to be ok.
I knew it wasn’t going to be though. The only thing she had ever wanted in the whole world was to be with us and now we had made the decision that would rip her away.
I could barely stand it as she calmed down and her eye became more and more dull. I wanted her to actually sleep, to close her eye so I could pretend she was sleeping and not that she was actually gone.
The vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to her chest.
I had known she was gone but hearing his say it made it all the more real. Sobs that I was sure would tear my body shook me and I barely registered the vet leaving to give us time to say goodbye in private.
Sophie’s death affects me to this day. I struggled a lot with losing her. I struggled most with my region.
My mom is a pastor so I grew up in a fairly religious, though accepting household. I had gone to church every day as a child but I had been raised to make my own decisions about what I believed.
As I had reached adulthood, I had turned away from the church as an organization and struggled with my spirituality. I believed in God but I wasn’t sure to what extent. One thing I was pretty firm on, was I didn’t believe in a heaven.
But with Sophie’s death, my beliefs were shook. How could I believe that she was just gone? How could I believe that I would never see her again. So for her sake, I have to believe there is an afterlife. I have to believe Sophie is somewhere keeping someone’s lap warm with her eyes all the while on the door that I will one day walk through. And when I do, she will run to greet me with her usual chirps and we will be together once more for our usual cuddle session.
