My heart is breaking. My cat Emo will be gone very soon. I’ve had to make the difficult decision to put her to sleep. She’s 16 – born early 2003 – and is now completely deaf, blind in one eye, has arthritis and a heart murmur, and dementia. The last couple of years have been tough on her, and by extension myself and Little G. As she’s gone deaf and partially blind, and her dementia has worsened, she’s spent a lot of time howling and wandering around crying. We would find her in the corner of the shower (her water bowl is in the shower base) crying because she had forgotten how to get out. The constant howling, loudly and in a high pitched tone, was hard to ignore. And because she is deaf you have to go to where she is and touch her before she would stop. She’s done odd things like get in the shower while it was still running (and I was in there!). But lately things had been getting worse.

Emo’s always been a gentle cat. She’d bat you with a paw or bite without using her teeth if she was annoyed, but she had never properly bitten or scratched me. But now the dementia has progressed to a point where’s she’s bitten me three times in the last two months. Every time she looks very confused afterwards, and sad too, with her ears down. It’s very unlike her.

She has spent increasing amounts of time wandering and crying, but until not too long ago that was limited to inside the house. She seemed to be getting lost and calling out, or trying to find her way around. The last couple of weeks she’s been wandering and crying in the backyard, causing 3 neighbors in the last 10 days to remark on how upset she seems and how loud she is. 

Back in June I took her to the vet, hoping that there might be something fixable wrong with her. She’d been weeing in my daughters room on and off for quite some time, although I hadn’t realised how often because Little G was still wetting the bed so the room smelt like pee a lot. Emo also seemed to be drinking an awful lot and her eyes were runny plus one of them clearly had a cataract. The vet ran a whole lot of diagnostic tests, which is when I found out she had a heart murmur. Nothing could be done about any of the things that were wrong with her, they were aging related. I knew then that we were on the downhill slide and things might be ok for a while or she could go downhill quickly. 

We have been making the most of our time left since then. But recently all her symptoms have got worse. She is now completely deaf and gets quite a fright if I touch her while she’s sleeping. She snores. She is still weeing in my daughter’s room. The crying has got worse. She’s very unsteady on her feet, and often slips and falls when jumping on to the bed, or off it (though she can make it on to the kitchen bench when there’s meat left out apparently!!). Despite all that we could go on I think. What really tipped the scales was the periods of extreme agitation. She gets very confused and wanders around and around and around, howling and crying. When she looks at me it’s like she’s looking right through me, like she doesn’t recognise me. She’s clearly upset and confused and she wanders around slowly crying. She can’t seem to find any comfort, sit down stand up change positions. Wander in and out of each room and round in the garden outside. It is heartbreaking to watch as we can’t comfort her, she doesn’t know us and she doesn’t know what she wants. One of my neighbors has also mentioned to me how distressing it is – he thought it was a baby crying that no one was attending to.

I feel like I’ve got to make a decision that saves her from that distress. The physical stuff I can deal with, but to see her so highly agitated and confused makes my heart ache for her.

So tomorrow is the day. I don’t know if I can go through with it. I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I don’t know if I’m making the right decision. It all hurts so damn much. I love that cat and I can’t imagine my life without her. 16 years – we’ve grown up together. Her and my daughter have grown up together. I just hope that ultimately I am saving her from further suffering.

Emo Part 2