Memorial for Lasie

I was living temporarily at my mother's house when she first came into my life.

I've forgotten the exact details of her origin.  I think she had originally been the pet of an elderly woman who was no longer able to care for her, and she was entrusted to the woman's family, who proved to be much crueler.  They had her declawed in all four feet, mangling her paws in the process, and soon after she was dumped at a shelter where she was thrown into a cage with numerous other fully armed cats.  When my mother found her, she was hunched tightly into a corner of the cage, cold and frightened.  Worse, the shelter staff indicated that she had a questionable test for FIP and would likely be euthanized as a precaution.  Mom took pity on her, and I came home from work one day to find a purebred Siamese in my bedroom.  We medicated her and treated her paws as best we could, and she quickly endeared herself to everyone in the house, in part due to her range of loud vocalizations.  Mom named her Lasie (pronounced "lacy"), and it wasn't long before we began having conversations as she wandered through the house whining at everything and nothing.  Many animals seem to know instinctively that I mean them no harm, so it was no surprise that a bond soon formed between us, and I would often serve as a paw-warmer for her damaged feet.  

Some time later I moved back into my own apartment, initially by myself.  But not long after that I received word that a dog would be joining Mom's household.  Worried for Lasie, Mom asked if I would take her in.  I was a little reluctant at first, but I also knew what kind of hell she'd already gone through in her few years of life and I didn't want to risk that happening all over again.  So she became mine.  It wasn't long before she was perching herself on my chest whenever I turned in at night, warming her paws and demanding to be petted.  She soon also endeared herself to the beautiful woman who would eventually become my wife, and "the Whining Beast", as she was affectionately known (amongst many other nicknames), became a favorite topic of conversation.  I promised myself then that, if at all possible, my home would be her forever home, so that she wouldn't have to go through any more uncertainty.

More trials lay ahead.  At one point she fell out of a third-story apartment balcony, breaking a bone in her foot which took several months to fully recover from.  A few years later she lost most of her teeth to feline resorptive lesions.  Through it all she soldiered on, and managed to endear herself to just about every doctor and vet technician who worked with her.  We called it the Unofficial Lasie Fan Club, and through multiple vets and hospitals the phenomenon persisted.  Through more than a decade of job changes, apartment changes, an eventual marriage and more than a few medical issues of our own, she was always there, stomping around on top of us, yowling for attention, and providing her share of feline healing powers.  That is, when she wasn't whining for food, or water, or a clean catbox, or a heating pad, or more attention.  Or sometimes just yelling to yell, because she was the Whining Beast.

Last year she developed an awful sinus infection that had her sneezing bloody snot all over the walls and left both her and us feeling absolutely miserable.  It turned out to be a highly resistant bacteria that required a nasal flush and two rounds of heavy antibiotics to treat.  Eventually it seemed to clear up and she became more like her old self, wandering around the apartment yowling at all hours, and we hoped that that was the end of that.

Things began to change a few months later, though.  She became less active, spending a lot more time lying either on the carpet or on a heating pad I always kept on hand to help warm her paws.  After a while she was almost always perched on that heating pad or in her cat bed, jumping down long enough to get food or water or visit the catbox, then heading right back to the bed.  Her meows seemed to become more subdued, more stressed.  At first I didn't give it much thought, figuring she was just slowing down in her old age, but there were a few times when she would jump up on the bed and meow more pitifully than usual, often looking me right in the eyes shortly after.  I began to suspect that something might be wrong, but given the excellent quality of her lab results just a few months before I had no proof.

Then one day I noticed that the bloody snot on her nose had returned, and it looked even worse than before.  Her trips to the water bowl and catbox continued, but I soon realized she'd stopped eating.  When I watched her drink water it was a very slow, listless motion, and when she returned to the bed she would just curl up tightly in its confines, looking cold and frightened once again.  I went to pet her, as I had so many times the past few weeks out of growing concern, and she was cold to the touch and no longer purred at the attention.

I rushed her to the hospital the next morning, hoping it was merely a recurrence of that godawful infection and that she simply needed more antibiotics, but a more thorough examination revealed the much uglier truth: her kidneys were failing rapidly, and her gallbladder was full of stones, causing the intense pain and bloating that had made her stop eating.  The only way to correct the gallstones problem was through surgery, but given her advanced age and the kidney failure, the vet felt that it really wouldn't do much good.  And, painfully, I had to agree.  A few hours later I called the vet back and told her that we didn't want Lasie to suffer any longer.  She agreed completely with the decision, and promised to give her a kiss on our behalf when she administered the final injection.

Maybe I wasn't always the best pet-dad I could have been, but my home had indeed been her forever home.  I'd kept my promise.


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LASIE

2000(?) - April 18, 2015

"My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today."   --Watership Down

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