Goodbye Sunny.

I just got back from picking up Sunny's ashes at the vet. We had to have him euthanized a few weeks ago, he got very sick very fast. He was always a big guy, until last year. He lost a lot of weight, but he stopped losing and his personality didn't change at all. He was still eating fine and running around the house, being a bully to the other cats. Like normal.

About a week before he died he started eating less, so we started to worry. But we decided that we would let Sunny be. He was around 17 years old, and a vet visit he had last year so traumatized him that he gave me a kiss on my nose when I brought him home and removed him from the carrier. If you knew Sunny at all, you would understand how significant this was. We felt that we gave him a good life, and we learned from trying to force feed Melon last year that we never wanted to do that again. All that stuff to keep the cat alive I think is more for the owner's sake than for the cat's. We knew he would let us know when it was time, and we would try to check our emotions when that time came.

On Sunday night we thought it was time, but it was hard to let him go, and the next day was our anniversary. We tried to make him comfortable, but that was hard too. He went from jumping on the couch to not being able to stand up in about 3 days. We called the vet Monday night and they said to just bring him in anytime on Tuesday. We didn't put him in the carrier, Sarah held him on her lap. At our vet they usually give the cat a tranquilizer before they give the injection for euthanasia, but they brought him back into the room and told us that he didn't need it. When they set him down on the table and got the injection ready, Sarah thought he had already passed. The vet put her stethoscope on his stomach, and Sunny drew this long, harsh breath and scared the crap out of me. He did that a few more times while the vet got the syringe ready. My thought is that he was stressed about being at the vet and it pushed him over the edge.

I think that I was more sad for Sunny before he died than after. Usually I become unhinged with grief when one of our pets die, so I don't know why I didn't really do that this time. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or if it's because we lost 3 of our cats within a 14 month period. I don't know if my feelings will change in the future, but I guess I won't worry about that now.

Like I said in my blog about him, Sunny was a sweet guy who was constantly rebuffed by our first cat Bruiser, and we think that made him a little mean. He was definitely a couch bully, he would bat at other cats to get a good spot, or he would just flop down his 14 pounds on top of them until they moved. He was a good lap cat though, and loved to be petted, but as I said, he did not like your face anywhere near his. I love you buddy, I miss and I'll never forget you.