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Maxx

I remember clearly the one day I arrived at my mom’s house one day after work. I walked in and on the floor in front of me was this little tiny creature staring up at me. Frankly, it looked to me like a hamster of some sort, but upon closer inspection I realized that it was a cat. The smallest cat I’d ever seen in my life. He was orange and his hair stuck out in every direction and he meowed non-stop. He was named Maxx.

At that young age he was bottle fed from a doll bottle filled with milk. He’d sleep inside anything he could find. We’d find him laying inside gardening hats, or inside those tiny grocery bags, the ones that fit maybe one bottle. He’d try really hard to get up on the sofa, but at the time it was way too high for him, until he figured out how to scale it and eventually make his way to the cushions.

At heart, he thought he was a dog. We’d throw a ball and he’d chase it down the hall, fetch it and bring it back and drop it at your feet, until you threw it again. I’d never seen a cat play fetch before, but it was alot of fun.

As my sister and I moved out of the house, he became my mom’s companion. She spoiled him rotten, he’d sleep next to her or on top of her. He liked her the most. He was never really fond of me.

Last night, out of nowhere, he had what appeared to be a seizure. His body fell to the ground and he was unable to stand up. Within a few minutes, he appeared fine and even began playing. A few hours later, another seizure.

My mom called Wifey™ and I and we immediately headed over to take them to the all night emergency animal clinic, where we thought he might have gotten into something poisonous from the backyard ‡ perhaps some snail bait. The doctors news was much worse than we thought.

The seizures had paralyzed his front leg, the tip of his heart was on the wrong side of his body and his lungs were filled with fluid … and he was on oxygen. The prognosis wasn’t good at all. Another seizure could kill him, his heart could fail, there was really nothing else that could be done except to put him on medication and perhaps force his body to survive another few days, perhaps a week. The most humane thing to do would be to put him to sleep.

After about seven years of having him, we made the hard decision to end his suffering. I think people without pets hardly understand the attachment, but people with them can fully understand how hard it is to make such a decision. In the end, you have to make the unselfish decision to do what’s best for the animal.

My mom was able to spend a few minutes saying goodbye to him while he laid in the cage. He even crawled over to her, almost asking to go home. There would be no going home tonight. We left and allowed the doctors to take care of the business they needed to do.