this is not for you

My mom texts me at work earlier and asks when is a good time to call me so I call her when I’m home at work and of course I say hi how’re you and she’s like good. Well… actually not so good.

And then she just fully breaks and starts crying and I’m instantly thinking like oh man grandma passed, which is something I’ve been bracing for for awhile now because if she makes it to her next birthday in 2 months she’s turning 100.

But it’s actually my / her cat that passed. I adopted the cat originally but then between college and road trips and apartments and ultimately moving to the east coast he stayed at my mom and dads and from like 2017 onwards was really truly just their cat.

I think he was 15 at this point. He’d already been spending a lot more time just dozing in and around beds but he’d also historically been an indoor outdoor cat so he’d go outside sometime to hunt.

Most recently my mom and dad had fostered a couple puppies for a couple weeks so Sam the cat had been extra reclusive and when he went under their bed this morning they didn’t think anything of it but when my mom went to check on him later he was in a real bad way. So she took him to the emergency vet and they said signs pointed to a rattlesnake bite and that even with the utmost care his odds were 50% at best, so she just decided (with much difficulty) to put him to sleep. And I think that was the right decision.

What really got me in the call though was she kept sobbing to me “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” as if it’s her fault and that makes me feel awful that she feels that way? Like yes you made the call, but also he was 15 and already old and very loved and the cruel reality is as long as he was outdoors some animal attack was likely to eventually happen as he slowed with age. So I’m not angry at her at all.

I am a little sad his last day had some pain but at least at the very end she was with him. He had a life with a lot of scritches and treats and playmates and love and I think that’s all I could really hope for.

I dunno I feel a lot more sad than I expected and I don’t know how much of it is just because she is sad. I don’t think I wanted to know about the rattlesnake part I think if she had simply told me he passed that would have been better.