I'm allergic to cats
posted by Dick Septic on October 21, 2002
Boon was with me from college to a few years ago. He was a big fat maine coon cat. He was named after D. Boon, because I got him just after D. died. He was my best buddy in the world for a long time. I was leaving for work one day when I noticed him in the driveway bleeding from his mouth and just looking like shit.
I took him to the vet where they discovered a tumor in his mouth. We did several rounds of treatments on him. We 'debulked' (horrible word) him twice and gave him radiation. He seemed to get better each time, but the intervals between visits got shorter and shorter.
Finally, the doctor (who was a wonderfully compassionate person) told me it was time to let him go.
Everyone told me that animals let you know when they're ready to die.
Everyone lies.
I took Boon for his last ride because I couldn't stand to see him like that anymore. Henry was just a baby at the time and Boon was leaving these hideous trails of bloody slime throughout the house. It was sad and horrifying. But what haunts me to this day is that I think I decided to put him to sleep because he made me think of cancer and dying, and I don't like to think of cancer and dying.
When I laid him on the vet table and held him really close and tight he fought hard to escape. He knew what was coming and he wasn't ready for it. He wanted to stay, but I had decided it was time for him to go. It took a few tries for the vet to find a vein and I think what finally allowed Boon to die wasn't that he was ready to die, it was that he saw that I was ready for him to go.
Boon was the last cat I wasn't allergic too.
His ashes came back to me in a box that Tracey brought over a few weeks ago. A box of things she didn't want around anymore. For the first time since he died I opened it and there was a ziplock bag with his ashes and a stamped mold of his front paw. I looked at the ashes and I could see his teeth. Same teeth he used to bite me with. Good old Boon.