Divisions and Precisions

Goodbye

Friday night I got home from work to find my room in even more of a shambles than I'd left it in, with Max crouching and hiding and acting weird. He's been confined to my room for the past several weeks, because no matter what we did, we couldn't get him to consistently use his litter box. He wasn't spraying in the house, but doing something far messier. On the carpet. So we kept him in my room and he seemed to do much better, for whatever reason. For the most part. I knew he wasn't happy, though. My room is pretty small and pretty crowded. There wasn't much space for him to play or do much of anything but sleep. I wasn't very happy, because I felt compelled to stay in my room all the time to keep him company.

So Friday night, I come home to find that he's been sick all over my bed. Montezuma-style sick, and he didn't have any sort of control over it. My room was full of ants, drawn by his cat food. I was already nearly exhausted, and I sat down and cried at the thought of having to wash everything on my bed. I had visions of another frustrating trip to the vet, with the vet telling me again there was nothing she could do, that we'd just have to wait and see. I had visions of spending the rest of my life worrying about cat poop, locked in my bedroom. I had a minor meltdown. I put Max in his cat carrier after lining it with paper towels and sat and cried while he meowed to be let out.

I was angry and sad and tired. I had a brief fleeting urge to throw the cat carrier out into the street. Finally I remembered a conversation I'd had with my mom about a month earlier, right before we confined Max to my room. She told me about my stepfather's ex-father-in-law. They lived on a farm, they adored cats. They'd be willing to take Max. When she told me that I got mad and started crying, determined that I wasn't going to get rid of my baby. But Friday night I remembered that conversation again, and it felt like a solution. I thought about it, and I talked to Brand a lot. I cried a lot. When my parents got home, I talked to my mom and cried some more.

Have you ever made a really hard decision and known immediately afterwards that it was the right decision, no matter how painful? That's how I felt when I told my mom I wanted to give Max to the folks with the farm. I said goodbye to him that night. I hugged him and petted him and told him how much I was going to miss him. He purred and licked my face when I cried. I called Brand and talked to him about all of the good things that had happened. About how he used to fight with his stuffed bear, the one that was as big as he was. About how he used to fetch bottlecaps when Hollingsworth would throw them. About how he used to climb my back and perch on my shoulder as a kitten to see what I was doing.

My folks took him away Saturday morning. I cried to see my empty room, then distracted myself by watching several movies and reading. I cried when I posted to the blog that he was gone. Despite all the tears, there's still a sense of relief. I know he'll be happier now, even without me. He has an entire barn to explore, people who will love him as much as I do, other cats to get to know. He's not locked in a tiny room in a house where people are always angry at him for messes he can't help. I miss him. I kept thinking I heard him meow all day yesterday. He was my baby, my goofy kitty. Be happy, Max.