Love, Miss Jennifer Kevorkian

The phrase “why do it now if it can wait till later” is pretty much my mantra. If I could count the number of times I’ve put off something I HAD to do but didn’t WANT to do… Well, let’s just say the number would be pretty freaking high. (I don’t feel like counting it right now, I’ll do it later.) It’s one thing when I have a sink full of dishes yet make the conscious decision to watch E! News instead, or when I was in college and waited until the night before it was due to start my semester long research project. Nothing catastrophic is really going to happen if my Teflon pan soaks another night, and really… what’s another all-nighter when you’re 23? That’s what they make Ritalin for. Well, this time the reason for my procrastination is a bit more serious. I’m delaying putting my elderly cat down to sleep.

I’m not going to go into much detail on the matter, as I know most of you are my Facebook friends and have been following this saga for a while. The long and short of it is simply that Vayda is 16 years old, and due to her old age and her sordid past of being mistreated by her previous owner, her body has begun to fail her in many ways. One of these ways is that she can no longer make it to the litterbox to relieve herself, and instead just goes wherever, whenever. It’s really heartbreaking to witness, because I feel (and my vet feels) that she is losing her dignity. More aptly put, it's just simply her time and I need to respect that. If only us humans had the option to die with dignity, I'm sure many of us would choose to do so.

After exhausting all of my options (you name it, I tried it) and after getting several different veterinary opinions all confirming that there was very little hope, I made the decision to put her down. In all actuality, the decision was relatively easy to make. It’s the act of actually going forward with it which is the hard part. I admit, I’ve been selfish. Four the past four weeks since the decision was made, I feel as though I’ve been in purgatory… just waiting. Waiting for what, I don’t know… maybe for her to pass in her sleep on her own, or maybe for her to miraculously get better on her own. Who knows why we delay these things that cause us pain. We're all guilty of it at one time or another.

Furthermore, my poor kitty has been carrying about as normal, totally oblivious to the fact that she’s on death row. Dreading the inevitable, I’ve come up with every excuse under the sun to keep her around for a few more days, ranging from “Oh its rent week, so I’m a little tight on cash right now. We’ll have to do it next week.” or “Well I just bought 10 cans of cat food on sale… waste not, want not!” Being the master procrastinator that I am, I took a huge first step and called the vet last Thursday to schedule the appointment. In a stroke of good luck for me, Vayda’s doctor was in a surgery so I left a message. She called back that same day but I was “busy” so I let it go to voicemail. I stayed “busy enough” that I was unable to listen to the message until the next day (Friday), but then I figured they might close early on Fridays or something so I should probably just wait until after the weekend to call her back. (Do you see where this is going?)

Today, I finally ran out of excuses. I spoke with my vet, and I scheduled the appointment for Princess Lady Vayda Sultanpuss to eternally sleep on Wednesday, August 26th at 2:30 p.m. Unfortunately I will not be able to take her myself. In the same vein that I handle most things in life (ignorance is bliss), I just want to get up next Wednesday morning, feed my cat, kiss her goodbye, come home to an empty house and pretend I was never a pet owner. (I give it exactly five minutes after walking through the door Wednesday night that I curl up on my bed in the fetal position, sobbing hysterically with her flea collar clenched between my fingers.) Lucky for me, my wonderfully understanding, compassionate, loving, brunette boyfriend has offered to do it for me. He’s not thrilled about it either, as he’s grown to love Vayda as much as I do. Furthermore, he feels bad that she has no knowledge of what’s to come. To quote my boyfriend, “This is so unfair… it’s like a mob hit! She trusts us!” Then he goes into the whole Sopranos thing “We’re just going for a ride, that’s all. We’re all friends here.” And thoroughly distracts himself from the matter at hand by his own, hilarious self. (Insert pat on the back here.)

I have yet to really process the news. Five days away still seems like a very long time to me, and I'm sure I'll find plenty of ways to keep myself busy between now and then to keep my mind off the inevitable. Although, something tells me that this time, the wait is going to be the hardest part of all.