Our beloved cat Rosie (the friendliest, most easy-going cat in the world) hasn’t been herself recently.
She’s lost a lot of weight (admittedly, she was massively overweight before… but now, worryingly, she’s beginning to look like a normal-sized cat). Also, her fur is looking straggly and has lost its lustre.
In the last few days, things have gotten even worse… splotches of diarrhoea mark her path, wherever she goes, like the pebbles Hansel and Gretel left behind – but a more disgusting version of this.
We take Rosie to the vet, who doesn’t really diagnose her with anything. In fact, Rosie’s so diarrhoea-y the vet doesn’t appear to want to get anywhere near her. The appointment ends with the vet giving Rosie a big injection of steroids (he has to get close to her to do that bit, at least) and telling us that should pick her up for a few days.
The steroids do pick Rosie up… for a couple of days, anyway. But, after that, her weight continues to plummet and her fur gets stragglier.
My Mum visits and Rosie immediately goes up to her, puts her white-socked paws on her shoe and gives her a soulful, meaningful look. ‘She’s asking for help!’ my Mum cries.
It’s nine in the morning, a few days later, and Lizzie has taken Rosie back to the veterinarian.
The phone goes – Lizzie.
‘It was a different vet this time,’ she explains. ‘This one was very nice.’
‘What’s the verdict?’ I ask, apprehensively.
‘Not good,’ sighs Lizzie. ‘Rosie’s got cancer.’
‘Cancer?’ I reply, shocked. ‘Really?!’
‘Yeah, she’s got a huge tumour, apparently, at the back end of her. Near her bowels.’
Oh no, I think.
‘What can they do for her?’ I ask, queasily.
Lizzie sighs again. ‘The vet says they can’t do anything for her. The tumour’s too big. And Rosie’s too old.’
‘We’re going to have to have her put down,’ says Lizzie.
I feel devastated. I LOVE Rosie. She really has been an incredible pet…. always trotting after me, Lizzie and the kids around the house and garden, smiling benignly up at us and purring loudly and constantly at the slightest hint of a stroke or cuddle.
Gah! Why does it have to be Rosie’s who’s put down? Why can’t it be one of our other pets – like Cedric? Or even Dwight, our other (semi-feral) cat we hardly see anyway?
Despite this catastrophic (sorry) turn of events, Lizzie is in a surprisingly blithe mood. She’s bounding around the kitchen, smiling and singing Circle of Life (which makes sense in the circumstances) and Three Times a Lady (which doesn’t really make sense in the circumstances… although Lizzie keeps on trying to change the words so they have some relevance to Rosie’s current grim situation. With little success).
‘I can’t believe we have to put Rosie down,’ I sigh, morosely. ‘This has all happened since we moved to the countryside,’ I reflect.
Lizzie is still beaming away in the background.
‘I’m just glad I wasn’t put down when I had a tumour,’ she says, brightly.
‘That can still be arranged,’ I reply; joking of course… but her perkiness, given what’s happened, is a little irritating.
After school, it’s time to tell both kids that their beloved pet cat has terminal cancer.
This job is left to Lizzie. For some reason, between us we seem to think she’ll deal with matters more sensitively. Despite the fact this is the woman who was hollering music from The Lion King at the top of her voice, an hour or two before.
Lizzie tells Jake first, as he cranes over and demolishes a mountain of rice and chicken katsu curry at the kitchen table.
Lizzie waits until Jake has finished… then says, ‘I’ve got some sad news about Rosie.’
She hardly needs to say any more. The sentence is confirmation enough of our unfortunate moggie’s imminent demise.
Jake is sad… but takes the news relatively coolly. ‘She IS just a cat,’ he shrugs, ever the rationalist (he wants to study maths and philosophy at university, after all).
Within minutes, Lizzie is making jokes about the whole thing and repeating, yet again, the chorus of Circle of Life. These two are definitely cut from the same cloth, I think. Totally unsentimental, the pair of them. I wonder how they’ll be when I finally pop my clogs? Will Lizzie sing Circle of Life at my funeral? Or at least put it on the PA?
It occurs to me that Lizzie’s generally unsentimental nature might be what helped get her through her appalling cancer ordeal. She didn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself, because she’s not really a sitting around feeling sorry for herself sort of a person. She’s more of a get up, pull yourself together and get on with it sort of a person. I’m probably more in the former camp. If it had been me who’d gotten cancer, I’d probably have spent a lot of time sitting around feeling sorry for myself.
After she picks her up from the school bus, Lizzie tells Annie the bad news.
Annie is the opposite of Jake. She sobs and sobs and sobs and sobs in the car as they drive home. Lizzie tells me this when the two of them are back, but it’s pretty obvious what’s been going on – Annie is still sobbing as she walks into the house and continues to howl for the rest of the evening.
‘Rosie can’t die!’ Annie splutters at one point, between gasps and gulps. ‘She’s my best friend!’
I feel Annie’s pain (even though I’m not sure if Rosie really is her best friend; there’s no denying, however, that the cat has certainly been a good friend to our daughter).
To begin her grieving process, Annie creates an online ‘shrine’ to Rosie… asking us to post favourite pictures of the beloved pet onto it. Annie immediately posts some pictures of herself, when she was only four or five, lovingly holding the cat… reminding me that Rosie has been there for most of our daughter’s life… and immediately making me well up with tears (not for the first time, in the last few days).
It’s at this point, that Lizzie touchingly suggests she paint Annie holding Rosie… to capture one of their remaining moments together (actually, I think Lizzie’s real reason for suggesting this is just so she’ll have something to paint. She’s doing a ‘painting a day’ Internet challenge and pretty much anything is grist to her mill).
Lizzie spends an hour painting a fidgety Annie, as Rosie lies placidly in her arms (the cat is even more placid than she used to be). Eventually, Rosie gets bored… stretches… jumps down and wanders off.
‘Can you hold your pose, Annie?’ Lizzie asks our daughter. ‘As if you’re still holding Rosie? So I can finish the painting?’
‘You want me to hold an empty space?!’ Annie wails back. ‘Like Rosie’s already dead and gone?! How can you ask me to do that?!’
Needless to say, the painting remains unfinished.
An hour or so later, Lizzie and I are getting ready to go to bed.
‘Rosie dying is like the last nail in the coffin,’ I murmur, mournfully, as I slip under the covers. ‘This is the first time I’m thinking… I definitely want to move back to London… not maybe, definitely.’
‘I mean,’ I continue, as Lizzie climbs in beside me, ‘we keep on getting cancer! First you… then the cat!’
‘Is it something to do with this house?’ I mutter – and can’t help but wonder. I look towards the closed curtains, on the other side of which – like looming, hidden set dressing on a stage – is the electricity pylon and power lines which stand worryingly close to our bedroom. Could electrical waves emanating from these lines actually have something to do with all of this? Lizzie did begin worrying the pylon could be bad for our health months ago. And first she and now the cat (who spends an awful lot of time lounging on our bed) have been struck down with the Big C.
Lizzie hasn’t brought the topic up herself recently, however, so I decide not to pursue it. I don’t want to stress her out. I REALLY must ring up Western Power and see if we can get that fucking pylon moved or even buried, however.
It’s Wednesday morning.
Two hours ago, Rosie was put down.
I feel… empty. Yes, I admit it… tears seep down my cheeks as soon as I think of the empty space which Rosie plumply, purringly filled only a couple of hours before (an empty space Lizzie tried to make Annie hold – prematurely – when our daughter was posing for that painting last night).
Needless to say, it was unsentimental Lizzie who took the cat to meet her maker earlier this morning. She knew I simply wasn’t up to the task. I don’t think this was helped by my comment, a few nights ago, that if I was entrusted with taking Rosie to the vet, I’d drive right past the vet… down to Dover… onto a ferry… and over to the Continent… where I’d live it up with Rosie for her last few weeks on earth (sending photos of us both from a series of exotic European locations, which would grow in attractiveness in inverse proportion to our cat’s increasing manginess).
Anyway, for that reason – and her general greater toughness – Lizzie did the deed two hours ago. And two hours later, just like yesterday, she seems calm… even casual… about it all.
‘It was the other vet – the nice one – who gave Rosie the injection,’ Lizzie tells me, in the kitchen.
Lizzie sees my pained expression.
‘Rosie was comfortable – wrapped up in a blanket – when it happened… and I was stroking her and so was the vet’s assistant. It was very peaceful,’ Lizzie says.
I wipe away a tear. It’s clear I would have been on the floor, if I’d been present at Rosie’s final moments.
‘Rosie’s in Cat Heaven now,’ says Lizzie. There’s a hint of a smile on her lips. I’m not sure how seriously she’s really taking this.
I wipe away another tear. Where will I get unconditional love from now? I know (I hope) my family love me, but that’s messy human love. Love mingled with irritation and frustration and awareness of my imperfections (and vice versa). Not pure, simple pet love.
To be honest, I want to completely break down and have a really good sob. But I’m aware Lizzie’s watching me. And I’m also aware that whilst I did shed tears when Lizzie got diagnosed with cancer, a year-and-a-half ago, I didn’t descend into uncontrollable sobbing. Not in front of Lizzie, anyway.
In my defence, Lizzie asked me not to cry when she got ill. Because, she said, it would make her cry too.
But… how will it look to her now, if I collapse to my knees wailing and weeping… on account of the cat? Will Lizzie assume I loved the cat more than I love her? I’m not sure it will go down well, whichever way you look at it.
‘Cup of tea?’ I ask Lizzie, hoping she doesn’t notice how choked I sound.
Is our grieving for our pets more uninhibited, I wonder, because our love for them is so simple and undiluted? Probably, I conclude. I mean… I’m barely holding it together here.
The night before, Lizzie painted another portrait of Annie and Rosie – as they lay on Annie’s bed together. And that time, Rosie stayed still throughout – sleeping peacefully through the whole thing.
RIP Rosie.
March 2023
P. D. Clifton 
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