Photo-A-Day #3695

Today we said goodbye to our cat, Oliver. Oliver was the reason why we adopted him and his brother Duncan. Oliver looked very much like a cat that Allison’s parent’s had named Kip. Kip was just a kitten when he died in an accident (hit by a car). I loved Kip and I enjoyed spending time with him. I was upset by his passing and so when Allison found Oliver and Duncan while working in the cat room of Petsmart for the North Attleboro Animal Shelter. We had to adopt them together and for many years they brought us lots of joy.

Oliver has been losing weight ever since Duncan died in 2012. In the past six months he had been having bouts of diarrhea. This got worse and worse from once every couple weeks to multiple times a day. It was certainly time to say goodbye. He was clearly getting sicker with no hope of getting better.

We decided that we would have Oliver euthanized by a vet in our home. It is more expensive but it is more comforting for the cat and for me to have to drive him to the vet while he wails would have been horrible. I haven’t had to do that before because even though we had Duncan get sick, he ended up dying on his own at home, which happened right after we had made the appointment with our vet.

The only problem with this visit was that the doctor and I had a miscommunication over the day that this was taking place. It was supposed to be today at 5pm and when it got to be 5:45pm I called. We had gotten our wires crossed but the doctor dropped everything and came over to take care of Oliver. She was wonderful. She put us at ease and explained every part of the procedure. When he got the sedation shot he hoped out of Allison’s arms and tried to run around the house. It was sad to see but eventually we caught him and completed the procedure. He is buried out in the side yard next to his brother. We will eventually move the lilies from the backyard over on top of the cat’s graves. We’ll also have the kids paint up some bricks to put around the lilies as well. It will take time for us to get over his passing but we are working on the healing.

When we picked up the kids and got home Eva went over to the grave. She picked a flower from the Rhododendron bush and placed it on the grave. I think that planting flowers on top of it will help her heart.