Decisions

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. ~ Oppenheimer on the day of the Trinity nuclear test, quoting from memory the Bhagavad Gita


The vet woke me this morning at 7:00.  I'd only been asleep about four hours because I read all night last night, a blissful holiday night of devouring books.  I could tell from her voice that the news wasn't good, and I woke right up, crisis giving me the ability to cast off my usual morning fog. 

Yesterday's cat was injured and was so feral and wild that just to try to treat him would require major medicine and sedation that might kill him in the process.  He can never be returned to the wild and will never domesticate.  Their recommendation was to put him down humanely.

I've never made a life-or-death decision over anything larger than an insect in my whole life.  I have three cats of my own who are, in the way of ridiculous single women, as dear to me as little furry children.  I love all animals, even that feral black male tom who clawed and spat all the way to the vet yesterday in his temporary imprisonment and pain. 

I told them I would call them back, and I got off the phone and cried.  I knew what the right thing to do was.  Had I found it in the woods yesterday in agony and unable to live, I would have gotten Daddy to ease it from this world to the next because that would have been the right thing to do.  It is not right to let anything suffer needlessly because of personal weakness or squeamishness. 

This felt so different, though.  Maybe it was because he hadn't been torn open.  I know he was injured, and badly, too, or my vet would not be recommending this course of action, but I still had to think.  I did, however, have to decide quickly.  They had to have my decision fairly fast to know how to procede.

As I said, I knew what the right thing was.  And even though I feel like a part of me somehow died when I made the phone call, I know that what I told them was the right thing to do for that animal.  We'll go get him tomorrow and bury him here with my own departed ones.  He was never mine at all until this last, but at least I can make sure that the leaving of this life is as merciful and as full of honor as I can make it.  The rest of it I will just have to live with somehow.