In memory of Scooter -- our Velveteen Cat dies.

We lost Scooter on April 17. By cat standards – at 19 years -- she was pretty old and certainly had her share of geriatric health problems – kidney disease, high blood pressure --even functional blindness. Still, she managed pretty well – through medications and physical accommodations – and she wasn’t one of the cats we thought would be dying soon.

Her last day started off pretty much the same as every other day. In the morning I put her breakfast in her condo -- she ate some of it -- and then left-- slowly and cautiously walking toward the kitchen as best she could. (We kept a bowl of water in the condo for her, but for some reason her morning ritual dictated that she go to the kitchen and drink from the “big dish”. ) On this particular morning, she got about halfway there, when she stopped and just stood in place. When I noticed, I picked her up and carried her the rest of the way, but when I put her down in front of the water, her legs wobbled and she lost her balance. This was not normal. I held her to steady her, and when I let go the second time, she simply laid down prone on the floor – waiting a few minutes before standing up and drinking. I sighed with relief when she did, but continued observing her.

After finishing her drink I gave her to my husband to hold for awhile. Scooter loved sitting on his lap with Brandon – our other blind cat. This too was part of her daily routine. After a few minutes of attention, Scooter got up again and I helped her back to her condo. She ate a little food, drank more water, used her litter box and then climbed into her bed for her morning nap. Pretty routine events.

I checked on her periodically during the day, but let her sleep through the early afternoon before picking her up to feed her. When I did, I noticed her breathing was erratic. She inhaled properly, but when she exhaled, it was in an abrupt motion – not smooth. Now what to do? Cat breathing problems make me very nervous – because they are often serious and because I’m never sure if what I’m seeing is truly abnormal breathing. At 4:00 in the afternoon, it was too late to schedule a normal vet appointment. To get her examined would mean creating an emergency when I’m not positive there is one. I mulled it over and thought which was worse? Take her in for an emergency and find out I was wrong? Or, not take her in and have a more serious problem after the clinic closed for the night? The answer was clear – for Scooter’s sake she needed immediate medical attention – even if it turned out to be a false alarm.

I quickly packed Scooter up and drove to the clinic. On the way there I tried to calm her assuring Scooter that I would do what was best for her. When we got there, my fears were confirmed – Scooter was indeed laboring to breathe. We took a chest x-ray and found the lung area immersed in fluid. This is not good. We could extract some of the fluid and run a test to find out what it was, but the prognosis would be bad regardless – and treatments for a cat in her age group with chronic kidney disease would be marginal. The two most probable causes of the fluid were congestive heart failure or late-stage cancer. Testing may satisfy our curiosity for a diganosis, but it wouldn’t change the fact that Scooter was dying.

In Scooter’s best interests, we made the hard decision to end her life without further testing. Although when appropriate we’ll let a cat live out her life and not euthanize – we could not do this with Scooter. As her breathing worsened, she would start to feel like she was drowning—and this could be very terrifying.

And her breathing was worsening . Within minutes of our arrival at the clinic, Scooter started open-mouth breathing – and had to be put on oxygen while we deliberated her fate. Scooter’s passing was carried out as compassionately as possible. First she was sedated so that she would be asleep when the lethal pentobarbital was administered – and, she was given oxygen through the entire process to help her breathe easier. I stayed with her through the end, feeling sad that we were losing such an old and sweet friend, but knowing that she would not have to suffer.

Scooter – who was “too old for shelter adoptability standards” lived a full 8 years after we rescued her from a local shelter. Another example of how flimsy the shelter “age” test is for determining a cat’s life or death. Eight years is a long time for many people to have a pet – and from my personal experience with Scooter – know that she would have enriched the life of anyone who adopted her when we took her in at 11 years of age.

Euthanasia shelters frequently present themselves as the victim – they are “forced” to euthanize healthy pet cats because there simply are too many to adopt out. Yet only a fraction of their budgets go into preventative cat sterilization – choosing instead to use their nonprofit veterinary clinics as a “profit center” to support their large administative overhead -- instead of a community resource to lower the overall cat population. So long as community funding is focused on adoptions not sterilizations – these euthanasia shelters will continue to kill the majority of their intake and kittens will continue to flood the community. Why should this change? The euthanasia shelters know that their donations come from their adoption activity (not their spay/neuter activity) – and adoptions are optimized by getting in a new crop of highly-adoptable young kittens each year .