A Small Soul

Little Moo shortly after being adopted. You can 

see the mucus coming from her mouth and 

staining the fur on her shoulder.

10^th December 2015

Dear Cassi,

A small soul has laid to rest this day for the very last time. My black and white cat, Little Moo, has breathed her last. I knew it would be soon as the infection in her jaw proved incurable. No matter how many antibiotics I gave her the mucus would return.

Yesterday morning I found that instead of a green lining round the little cats mouth there was a fiery red expanse. For the last month I had been trying to treat her with flea spray and it had done no good so it was at this moment I had no choice but to bathe her.

I remember the vet having said I should think of putting her down. It didn’t feel right. She was a tough girl and deserved every second of life she could fight through. So I took my sick cat and gave her a warm bath than sat with her for an hour or two rubbing the water from her fur.

She purred to me as the three remaining kittens sat at my feet. As the poor cat dried she seemed to strengthen, and so I put her to bed in the back bathroom where she has always slept.

This morning I gave her the pain medication and found she could hardly move on her own. There was little I could do and I had to take Pickle to his appointment. I got home and slept. I steel keep the hours I kept when I had a job sleeping mostly during the day. I’m not sure why, I just feel more active at night.

Little Moo on antibiotics looking like a normal healthy animal.

When I woke at six in the evening I checked and found the cat dead. Little Moo still had her eyes open and look little different from her state in life save that her body was cold. I picked her up and held her for a long moment hoping that I was wrong, hoping that there was some life left in the frail form, but I found none.

Did I do the right thing, Cassi? I found that cat half starved to death in a parking lot. I took months getting her to trust me and then taking her home only to have to earn her trust over and over again.

In the end I could do little to save the frail cat, but was she so much better off in my home and not in that parking lot? I did my best for that little creature and here she is no different in the end.

So you tell me, did I do the right thing?

Richard Leland Neal