It is with the heaviest of hearts that I am writing this. I had to let Truman go this evening. He was a bit off his food and distant yesterday. I hoped it was just a bit of a tummy upset – he had had a couple of those over the past few months but always came round like the trooper he was. It wasn’t to be this time, though. When I got back from work this evening, about 7, he was up and walking around so I thought he was going to be OK. I had bought him some special food as a treat – Iams wet for seniors – and he ate a little of it. I took him downstairs as it was quite warm and he hadn’t been outside this season yet. I sat on a garden chair with him on my lap and he cuddled in. I then took him back upstairs, put him on the bed and went downstairs to feed the others and have my own tea. When I went up to see him again an hour later and he was sprawled out across the bed – he never lay like that, always curled up or crouched, so I knew this was it. He was struggling to get up and crying. I called the vet straight away and she came out within half an hour. I stroked him and talked softly to him while he slipped away, lying on my bed where he has spent most of the past 15 months. The vet took him away, wrapped in his blanket. She asked if I wanted his ashes but I said no, that the best of him would be with me always. In 20 years I have had to let so many go to the Bridge but I thought with Truman it wouldn’t be so hard – he was living on borrowed time, after all. Not so. This is the hardest yet. Perhaps because he wasn’t expected to live very long at the beginning as time went by it seemed like he would live forever. He was old, blind, had a nasty ulcerated cyst on his neck and was scraggy with the muscle wastage to his hind quarters but he was the most beautiful cat I have ever had and he was greatly loved. The strangest thing, my son, Christopher, stayed with him while I went downstairs to let the vet in. He said to me later that Truman had looked up at him and, for a moment, looked like a young cat. I’d like to think that he is now at the Rainbow Bridge, young and whole again.
Play hard at the Bridge, little man.
