Goodbye to a Mog

 This month, we said goodbye to our cat, Trogdor, after 17 years.

 Ever since we got the cats, I've had that fear at the back of my mind, knowing that someday I would most likely have to make the decision that it was their time to go and wondering how on earth I would know when it was the right one. As it turned out, it was very easy.

 Trog was sick for a long time, a good year of gradual but obvious decline: vomiting frequently, losing weight and diminishing his range of movement. The vets finally detected the stomach cancer in August, but I already knew something was very wrong. By that time, he was only eating liquids and moving from his food in the utility room to his bed in the living room, with occasional sojourns to the conservatory. 

He no longer climbed to his "cave" on the cat tree for a rest. Instead he started using the cushions on the floor that his sister Meg more typically slept on. One day, I gave the kids a challenge to build a cat fort on the living room rug. My son stuck Trog's cushion in a cardboard box and wrote "Fort Mediocre" on it. I berated him for his half-hearted effort, but Trog took to his new floor cave immediately, spending almost all his time in there when not begging for more cat soup.

The worst part was when I realised he was rarely sleeping. Gone were the days of seeing him blissfully contorted in slumber; instead, he would be curled in place with eyes open, his chin lowered but his head still up. He was in too much pain. Even to lie down, he would hesitate first, bracing himself. He did the same thing before using the litter tray.

He was still drawing comfort from us, occasionally coming to the sofa to cuddle up to me; sometimes he'd purr as he did so, but it wasn't his vigorous, loving purr. A cat's purr can mean: "I'm in pain; be gentle with me." If he lay on me or against me, in those last weeks, I could never bear to move him after he'd gone through the ordeal of lying down. I must have spent a cumulative week or more over the summer, just sat on the sofa to let the cat draw what comfort he could from me.

I don't know when the last headbutt was. That was always his signature gesture of affection, the hard ramming of his head into your face, purring furiously all the while. There were times when he would give me that gaze that usually preceded a headbutt, but he couldn't follow through with the move. It was usually my target when he was sick: I would know Trog was himself again if he was headbutting, but this time, I knew there wouldn't be any more.

After the initial diagnosis, we went through a determined or desperate few weeks of medication in the hopes of alleviating his symptoms, of restoring him to his quality of life for a some months. One day, it hit me that it wasn't working, and when the vets confirmed it, I knew it was time. It was his inability to sleep that I couldn't bear. I hated seeing him unable to do more than sit with his pain, and the thought of him alone every night with it was worse.

That was Friday, and I almost had him put down that afternoon. In the end, we waited until Monday because the children's father wanted to be there. He was the one who named Trogdor after the internet meme-before-memes. Trog had always been 'his' cat, and Meg 'mine', to the point that when we separated, I suggested he take Trog with him. (It was a genuine offer, but I'm relieved he declined. Trog has been a big part of the last few years, and a constant loving presence in a time when I've needed all the emotional support I could get.) 

While having their dad visit was an extra source of stress for me, his presence made a silver lining out of a bad occasion for the kids, and Trog was happy to see him. (So was Meg, who unusually spent a lot of time sat on his lap.)

Because Trog could still be distracted from his pain, I was OK letting him have that extra few days to say goodbye. In retrospect, I'm very glad we did. His digestive system behaved itself, and we showered him with love, affection and all the random treats he would eat. (Plus the ones he didn't eat but Meg kept from going to waste.) His dad had the bright idea of getting him some fresh fish, which he wolfed down ecstatically, even though it was solid.

His last week had been one of wet and gloomy weather, but between showers that weekend, we took him out to the patio for some extra stimulation and attention. On his last day, Monday, it was finally dry again and I encouraged him onto the lawn. He hadn't been on grass in weeks, but we sat there despite the damp, and he lay down and watched his sister go sniffing around the garden for about ten minutes. Then he carefully got up and walked shakily back to Fort Mediocre.

The best memory of that last day for me was when he came to me on the sofa. He fell asleep, deeply enough to dream. For the first time in ages, for the last time, I felt that warm, relaxed weight, twitching in dream-running... if only for a few minutes. He twitched violently enough to wake himself up with a whimper. I soothed him, and he settled back down immediately, but he didn't sleep again.

By their choice, the children didn't make the final trip to the vet with us, saying goodbye at the car instead. Their father came, so there were two of us by Trog's side. Covid regulations meant we had to wait out in the car park as Trog was prepared for the injection. It was an awful wait, and when we were allowed to enter the room directly via a side door, we had to wear masks, so we looked strange to Trog. But he knew us by sound and smell and that, I hope, was enough.

The injection is set up so that the anaesthesia takes effect before the lethal stuff. Seeing his head droop down to the table brought an unexpected flood of relief and gratitude: all I had wanted was to see him rest, to sleep. When he became still a moment later, my heart clenched, but I'm so grateful that his final experience was that of sleep at last.

The children coped really well with it. I was so scared of how they would react; they hadn't understood the severity of his symptoms to the same extent. However, they had seen them and knew that all the happy things that made him Trog were already gone. Their Dad stayed through Tuesday and we all had a lot of time to reminisce about our lives with Trog: the escapades and the love.

It was harder watching Meg's reaction. Although she wasn't affectionate towards her brother and rarely interacted him, they'd become more comfortable around each other in their old age, and she had been much more tolerant of him in the past few weeks, making concessions with food and resting places that she never would have done before.

She didn't notice at first that we had come back without Trog, but that evening, she looked into Fort Mediocre and everything else on the living room rug, realising that he wasn't there. Then she sat up and looked from one end of the sofa to the other. This set me to tears and Meg always comforts us when we cry, so she promptly sat down on my lap, but even then, she looked around a little more before focusing on me.

On Tuesday, she searched determinedly around the house, even asking me to open the front door so she could sniff the air on that side of the house. On Wednesday, as I made her breakfast, she stood looking into the hall, waiting to see if he would appear for his share. I had picked up Fort Mediocre because I couldn't bear her looking in it; my son cut the Fort Mediocre sign out of it, to keep as a memento, and dropped the rest of the box back on the floor. Meg went back into it and started scratching furiously, dragging up Trog's smell.

Fortunately, that was the end of it. She's taking her duties as a newly single cat seriously though: we're seeing a lot more of her now that she's decided she can have twice as much attention.

Yesterday was the seventeenth anniversary of bringing the cats home. Almost all of my adult life, all of the children's lives and a very respectable life for a cat. Or nine. Or more... I'm pretty sure Trog lived more than nine. He lived in seven different houses, travelled by plane twice and train once. He spent over two months as a feral cat when we lost him after a move, but he didn't last a week the one time we put him in a cattery: the owner had to call our emergency contact (my parents) to pick him up, as his paws were bleeding from his efforts to get out. He brought live birds, mice and rats into the house, though his specialty was snakes. He never ate reptiles, but he loved playing with them. For years, he woke us up at 3am to be let out, but not before at least five minutes of fierce loving. He was scared of strange people, but he would take on any cat... until he realised he was getting old and gracefully retired to the indoor life.

I promised him that our most recent move would be the last, and even if he didn't understand me, I'm glad that I kept that promise. He was already old and sick when we moved in, but he was still himself and he had six months here before the pain took hold. There's a part of the garden I refer to as Trog's Savannah, and my mental image of the conservatory has Trog in it, sprawled in the sunbeams. Today, we collected his ashes. We plan on taking some of them to scatter in the reeds in Virginia where he once claimed his territory. The rest will stay with us, as will the memories, the pictures... 

Trog, you're more than welcome to haunt us any time. Just keep the burnination to a minimum.