We had to put one of our cats to sleep today. It was our oldest one, Gable, given to me 12+ years ago by an old girlfriend of mine, Kelli. My nickname for him was The Big Man. He was a tough old bastard and had a number of very expensive hospitalizations over the years, but he always bounced back. Because he was a tough old bastard. This latest one, though, was too much for him.

He developed a cyst in one of his eyelids and it was starting to get infected. The vet said surgery was the only way to treat it — cut it out rather than drain it. We had a long talk about anesthesia risks for an old cat like Gable and she said she thought he’d tolerate the procedure okay. And he did; it was the recovery that got him. He just stopped eating and drinking and got weaker and weaker. Then he disappeared for two days and I thought he’d gone off to die on his own. And then yesterday he turned up again, looking pretty ragged but alive.

We took him back to the vet, who thought giving him a blood transfusion and rehydrating him would perk him up enough to start eating again. It didn’t. In fact, he just deteriorated overnight while he was there. When we got there this afternoon, he was on oxygen, was mouth-breathing, and was obviously on his way out.

So we took a few minutes with him as a family, told him how much we loved him, gave him lots of pets while Beth and Zoe cried over him. Then we held him and said goodbye while the vet put him to sleep. He went easy. He went knowing we loved him. He went knowing he wasn’t alone.

I snapped these two pictures in his last minutes.

Beth saying goodbye.

Beth and Zoe with Gable, just before he went to sleep.

…and one last picture of The Big Man from when he was doing okay. This is from about six months ago, when he was on the mend from his pneumothorax hospitalization. Look at my tough old bastard, wearing his bandage with aplomb and style. Even a chest tube couldn’t keep him down.

I’m really going to miss him. He was a great cat.