mockingbirdq | (no subject)

I had to put my cat Cricket to sleep today.

The vet we went to last month said he only had an abcessed tooth and acted like we were horrible for having him give him some meds rather than let him have surgery to correct it.

Cricket has started having problems eating again and crying this week though, so I took him to a different vet my sister recommended. He said Cricket had a heart murmur which meant his odds of surviving surgery weren't good, and that it didn't look like he had an abcessed tooth at all. He said the growth on the side of Cricket's face was a tumor and likely causing him a lot of pain.

So I had him put to sleep because he was just too old to put through a lot of surgeries he likely wouldn't survive and I wanted him out of pain.

Cricket was my first cat when I was still in high school. I found him outside our door a few weeks after our dog had gotten loose and been run over by a car. He was unconscious and barely weaned, and my mother let me bring him into the house because she was sure he wouldn't survive. I gave him water with an eyedropper and laid him under a fan in a little box. The next morning he popped his little head up with a "meow" and started walking around liked he owned the place ;) We named him "Cricket" because he loved to hop on top of all the shelves and I have a photo of him somewhere showing him balanced on the top of an open door. When I went to college he became my parents' cat and they wouldn't give him back when I graduated. My dad was too attached to him.

Poor old boy. He dealt with moving, and becoming one of five cats my parents had eventually, then moving in with us after my parents moved and my father died. He was always a sweet, standoffish cat and I'll miss him...