Friday, September 16, 2011

Milagrito, the last day


Our cat Milagrito will be put to sleep today. For the past six months he has been suffering from a fast-growing tumor. In the last several days he has become weak, and eats almost nothing, so it's time for him to go.

I'm finding myself a little speechless when I attempt to pay him tribute or commemorate him somehow; he's so important to us, but in ways that are little different from the ways all cats are wonderful. So I'll just say what we did this morning. I took him downstairs to the garden, where in the dawn light he walked around and sniffed a little. He's always gone down to the garden in the mornings to smell what he can smell of the night's visitors; this morning his tour was desultory.

I brought him back upstairs, and he drank a ton of water, as he's been doing for the last few months of his illness -- I guess it's all he can think to do to ease whatever he perceives is happening inside him. Then he ate a little fresh red tuna, his favorite, which we've been giving him as much as he wants. He's also been eating a lot of soft-boiled egg yolk in the last month or two, giving him calories and strength, but he's stopped wanting the eggs.

Then I carried him in my arms around the house, and he purred. I'm glad he can still purr -- one of his talents. His fearsomely loud rumble has diminished, but it's still there, and as long as I walked with him back and forth, he gave out with it, until he fell asleep on my shoulder.

Milagrito's page on Catster and "his blog"
Pictures on Flickr (Corrected link)

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