Amber was put to sleep on Thursday, May 9, 2024 after suffering a saddle thrombus the night before.
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| July 12, 2020 |
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| October 1, 2023 |
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| October 27, 2009 |
I knew what had happened just from the sound.
It sounded like a child clunking around in their parent's shoes. Or maybe like a kid doing a commando crawl, knees and elbows thudding on the floor. It's not a sound I should have been hearing. I knew what it was: a cat crawling along the floor, pulling itself with its front legs, its hind legs dragging uselessly behind.
I had heard that sound once before.
Saddle thrombus is extremely rare, they say. I think of it as a stroke for a cat. A blood clot has caused an obstruction in the artery that supplies blood to the back half of the cat. The legs and tail are not just paralyzed, they are effectively dead, and rapidly go cold. There is a treatment - but it must be administered quickly, is very expensive, is lengthy and involved, and has very little chance of succeeding. Cats who survive the treatment will almost certainly have another saddle thrombus in the near future. Median survival time for cats who "recover" is 94 days.
BlueBear had a saddle thrombus in October 2017. He was just eight years old. We rushed him to the emergency vet. After a brief consultation, they advised us of the prognosis and recommended immediate euthanasia.
I looked toward the source of the noise. I saw Amber dragging herself down the hall towards the bathroom.
Oh God, not Amber.
My reaction would have been the same regardless of who it was. I love all of our cats - my cats - and I tell them that several times a day. Amber, though, had been especially close to me this past year.
It wasn't always like that. For much of her fifteen years, Amber had been a cat who kept in the shadows, letting other cats be my mom's "special cats." Babusz in particular was close to my mom. When she died in 2021, the cat power structure shuffled quite a bit. Peaches moved into the position held by Babusz, and Amber began to make herself more visible.
Amber was quite fond of my mom but never let me get too close. I got to pet her for the first time since she was a kitten sometime in 2022, when she seemed sick. I noted that her fur was nowhere near as soft as it looked. She was quite rotund - my mom tended to show her love through food, and she routinely overfed all the cats.
After my mom died the cat structure changed again. Peaches and Spooky, who had once attached themselves to her, now vied for a spot next to me. Mama Cat, too. Her large son Bojangles routinely perched on the back of my chair. Amber was still aloof, but warmed up a bit. She developed a fondness for treats.
Peaches died last October after several months of declining health. She spent her last few weeks lurking in the bathtub, possibly to avoid September's heat. For months after she died, Amber would check the bathtub to see if Peaches might be in there.
Amber and Peaches had been good friends. After Peaches died, Amber finally seemed to fully accept me, and was now most often found at my side or on my lap. (My recollection may be a bit off here. The close-up photos of Amber above were taken October 1, 2023, eight days before Peaches died, indicating that Amber had been by my side for some weeks or months before then; while she and Peaches and Spooky may have been trading off the coveted position at my right hand, my attention had been focused on Peaches during the time that she was showing signs of decline.) She had lost a lot of weight in the months since my mom died - I realized this might be because she was living on treats, rather than the overfilled bowls of food my mom would have throughout the house. I made special arrangements to feed her. Cats love exclusivity, having something that no other cats have. Amber was fond of sitting on an oversized hassock that we acquired back in 1984, so I set up a food bowl there just for her, as well as a dish for treats. I would give her a third of a can of Fancy Feast every few hours. After a few weeks she was eating three cans a day. She was no longer losing weight, but she also wasn't gaining weight as fast as I expected. I wondered if there was something wrong with her ability to extract nutrition from food. I guess we'll never know.
With Peaches gone, Amber grew closer to Bojangles, ten years her junior. She had also always been friendly with her littermate Spooky. Spumoni - who generally only pals around with her mother - was never close to Amber, but would sometimes teasingly swat at her in passing. Mama Cat, as always, only made time for her two children, and would often position herself so Amber had to leap over her to get down the hall or onto her hassock.
The cats like Temptations treats - Amber, Spooky, and Bojangles especially. Every night they would line up to get them at bedtime. I would pour some treats into each of three lids. Spooky and Bojangles would dive in and chow down, while Amber held back - usually while perched on my back. Every morning as I made my morning ablutions, Amber would come to me for treats. I would pour out another lid full, and she would always, always wait until I set the lid down, and then run off into the hallway. A minute later Bojangles would come in and begin eating treats while Amber waited in the doorway. He would eat about two-thirds of the treats and then exit the room, leaving the rest for Amber. Only then would she come and finish the treats. I would usually add a few more for her, and thank her on Bojangles' behalf.
More and more Amber was spending time with me. Where once she wanted nothing to do with me, now she constantly wanted me to be petting her, or stroking her fur - which was now as incredibly soft as I had once imagined it to be -, or rubbing her belly, or scratching her ears. "Petting the cat" became an important daily task. I knew, at fifteen years old, our remaining time together was limited, and I did not want to regret a moment not spent together.
Peaches had had a difficult time eating in her final weeks. I gave her exclusive food in the bathtub, made her special meals, and had plenty of treats available for her. She developed a fondness for lickable treats, and rapidly burned through our supply of Churu. I had just ordered a new shipment of Churu and two other brands of lickable treats a few days before she died. The box sat untouched since October. About a month ago, I decided to see if Amber might like them. She did. I began a routine of letting her - exclusively - have three or four tubes of treat each day.
Something seemed off this past Wednesday. Amber was at my side as usual during the day, and had two tubes of treat before I started work. She made herself scarce as my work day began. But she did not emerge during my first break, or during my lunch. I began to worry. But as I settled back to work at the end of my lunch break, she again was at my side. She didn't want more treats, but let me scratch and pet her for several minutes before she jumped off to do cat stuff.
She had the saddle thrombus as my work day was drawing to an end.
I knew there was nothing that could be done. Maybe - maybe - if I gave it some time, God might grant the miracle that I had been denied during the hours and days I had spent at my mother's bedside in the hospice. Maybe the clot would dislodge, dissolve, disappear, and her hind legs and tail and everything else from the hips back would recover.
I found her hiding behind the toilet, hugging the coolness of the porcelain. I pulled her out and decided to take her to bed with me. She did not want to be there. She panted, she cried, she tried to drag herself away to some hidden place. I would not allow it. I covered her eyes with a blanket, a pillow, my arm. This calmed her for a few minutes at a time, but then she became agitated again. She fought me, scratching and biting like she never had before. Eventually she dragged herself away. I followed her.
She found a spot on the floor she seemed to like and settled there. She panted heavily, doing "abdominal breathing." Other cats gathered around her at a respectful distance, keeping watch, standing guard - including, surprisingly, Mama Cat, who maintained her position for hours. After a few minutes Amber's breathing calmed. She looked completely relaxed. She looked like she had simply decided to lounge on the floor, her legs stretched out behind her. She eventually fell asleep. I decided to let myself do the same. It was about three A.M., about three hours since things started.
I woke up a few hours later and could not find her. I had hoped she would stay where she was. On some level I had hoped she would die in her sleep, avoiding the trauma of being euthanized. But it was not to be. It took some searching, but eventually she let out a little cry that gave away her location. I extracted her from her hiding spot and secured her in the bathroom, with a towel and bowls of food and water. I then made some calls to arrange for what needed to be done. Our regular vet was completely booked up and would not be able to perform the euthanasia. I made arrangements with an emergency vet to get it done, but confirmed that our regular vet would be able to arrange the cremation. I got a long-disused cat carrier and prepared for the final trip.
Amber cried as I took her to the car. The cats always do. Even though they all spent some part of their early lives outside, none of them want to be taken outside. She cried as we started the drive. I sang to her - The Amber Song, the song I would sing to her while she was on my lap or when she would crouch on my back while I was in bed. She had always loved the song, and would stay with me longer whenever I sang it to her. Now it seemed to make her more agitated. I turned on the local NPR station, and they were running their noontime arts program. A man was speaking about a walking tour of several historical churches in the Hazleton area.* His soft droning tones calmed Amber and she quickly settled down. As we made the trip through Wilkes-Barre and into Plains, where the emergency vet was located, the program turned to classical music. Amber continued in silence. Maybe she was sleeping.
Finally we were there, and it was time to go.
I took her out of the carrier and wrapped her in the towel I had put inside with her. I carried her into the vet's. To anyone watching, I looked like someone carrying a perfectly healthy cat.
I told the people at the desk why I was there. I broke down as I explained that I knew what had happened, knew that there was basically zero chance of helping her, knew that the only thing - the humane thing - was euthanasia. They looked me up and saw that I had been there with BlueBear six and a half years before, when he had his saddle thrombus and was euthanized. I opened the towel to show them Amber's dead limbs dangling uselessly along with her tail, to let them know that I wasn't someone just trying to dispose of an inconvenient cat.
And I broke completely. Suddenly I was bawling, bargaining, telling them that I only wanted euthanasia if there was nothing else that could be done. A vet tech came out to console me, to tell me that she had seen this several times before and had never seen a cat recover from it. I accepted this, something I had already known. I handed Amber over so she could be prepped for euthanasia.
A few minutes later they led me into a room. Amber would be brought in with a line installed to make the injections easier. They would leave us alone together, and we could spend as much time getting ready as we needed to take. They provided me with a button so I could spend however long with her and call them when we were ready.
They brought her in, wrapped in a soft blanket, her eyes wide and looking at me, her pupils very large. I suspect they had given her a mild sedative. I held her and she buried her face in my chest.
When we took BlueBear in all those years ago things were very different. I wrote about it here:
I spent a few minutes with her. I sang her The Amber Song.** I told her she was a good cat, the best cat. I told her how glad I was that we had gotten to spend so much time together. I thanked her for being so nice to me, for being such a good friend to Bojangles, for being such a good friend to me. I told her how she would soon be with her Mommy, and with Peaches, and with everyone else who had gone before. I told her how the rest of us would be joining her someday, maybe someday soon. I scratched her head and rubbed her belly and stroked her fur and told her I loved her and everyone loved her and kissed her a thousand thousand times. I told her I was ready, that I was going to call the vet now.
I pressed the button.
The vet came in. I told her I wanted to hold Amber as she gave the injection. She said of course. Amber buried her face in my chest again. I breathed warmly onto her head. The vet gently gave her the two injections. Amber went still in my arms. The vet told me that she would leave the room, and I could take as much time as I needed, and should press the button when I was ready.
I spoke to Amber again. I don't remember what I said. I broke down again and wept over her for several minutes. Finally, finally, I pulled myself together and pressed the button.
The vet took her away to prepare Amber for me to take her to be cremated.
They put Amber in a soft fabric bag, almost like a child's book bag. I had paid up front, so I was able to leave directly. I then made the brief trip to our regular vet to make the arrangements for private cremation. I will get her remains, and a small vial of her fur, in a week or so.
* * *
Everything I have read says that saddle thrombus is very painful. I had forgotten that detail. I never got the impression that BlueBear was in pain. (Rereading what I wrote right after he died, I suspected he was in pain, but he didn't indicate that he was in pain.) I didn't get the impression that Amber was, either. In both cases their reaction seemed to be confusion and fear, not understanding why they weren't able to run and jump like they had been just a few minutes before. I felt like the vet rushed BlueBear's euthanization, which happened about two hours after his saddle thrombus. Amber, on the other hand, I intentionally did not rush. In the end over thirteen hours passed from the time of her event to the time she breathed her last. I hope and pray I did not simply condemn her to several extra hours of unnecessary agony. If I did, I hope she can forgive me.
*The archived interview with Jan Lokuta is dated May 8, 2024, though I was listening on May 9.
**There are actually at least three versions of The Amber Song. I sang two of them.
One is sung to the tune of "My Name is Larry" by Wild Man Fischer:
I love my A-am-ber
my baby A-am-ber
she is my A-am-ber
such a good A-am-ber
...and so on, sung with plenty of vibration on the A-am-ber.
For the moment I forget the other tune, but I'm sure it will come to me.
...I remember now, sung to the tune of the first two lines of "You Are My Sunshine":
You are my Amber
my baby Amber
my little Amber
my favorite Amber...
A third version I didn't sing that day, using the tune of John Brown's Body/The Battle Hymn of the Republic:
I-I love my little A-am-ber
she is such a go-od A-amber
how I love my pretty A-am-ber
she's such a tiny cat
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