He Stopped Purring Today

Apologies to George Jones for the title of this, but it's as apt a phrase as I can think of to sum up the death and life of my cat, Pavlov. He was as affectionate a cat as I've ever seen, and sometimes I thought he spent his entire waking life purring. Not so much over the last week when he rarely left the couch, and a cyst that had grown on his side since last winter began to abscess. But we squeezed one more out of him as we held him in the vet's office this morning before we gave him the shot. About an hour ago we buried him between the pines in our backyard, wrapped up with a small St. Francis icon and a sprig of catnip to make the journey pleasant. He was 19.

I won't give a protracted elegy here, and I won't rehearse the difficulty of making the decision, which we actually went to the vet's this morning not assuming we'd have to make, even though I knew it was a possibility. It was awful to have to decide, but unquestionably the right thing. He'd been declining for months, and had almost nothing left to give. He could hardly walk from the couch to his food bowl without stumbling, though he often made the attempt, as his appetite remained excellent right to the end.

It is a sad day, though given his age and his relatively good health until the last, not a tragic one.

I really couldn't ask for more from a pet, though Pavlov had his faults, among them that he photographed poorly. His gray/black coloration didn't show up well against most backdrops, at least not with the lighting in our house. I had trouble choosing among at least slightly disappointing likenesses of him for this memorial post. Ultimately I chose this one, taken just a couple of weeks ago, when for once he seemed to be lit up well. We took almost thirty pictures of him that day, most of which we snapped just as he was moving. So they're generally blurry, or have a little glare, but this I thought was one of the best, taken on one of the last days he was at his.



Farewell, Pavlov (AKA the Pea, the Peanut). Thanks for 17 fine years.