Patches

On a down note, my mother just called to tell me that they're taking the family cat in this evening to be put down.

Apparently he hasn't been able to move in the last twenty-fours and the general consensus is that it's time.

It's not much of a surprise. The same question was put to everybody shortly before the holidays. At 17 years Patches was simply too old and not very many of his body parts were working right any more. You had to help him into the litter box, when he could be bothered to use it at all, the muscles in his hind legs were atrophying and he often didn't have the energy to lift his head from his food bowl when he finished eating, so often fell asleep while he ate.

My mother had taken to sneaking downstairs, in the morning to clean up the cat piss before my father woke in order to prevent him from seeing it. His bladder was so weak that we had to fence him in the kitchen to stop him making a mess on the carpet.

When I came home for Christmas I could tell that it was the last time that I'd ever be seeing him and that stuck in my chest for a bit.

Patches was always a scrapper and a cranky cuss and he preferred to spend the majority of his time out-of-doors than indoors, but he was part of the family and he will be missed deeply.