Passing
I should be packing for our sorta-impromptu trip to Squamish, BC tomorrow, but here I am instead, revelling in your attention.
Our household is down a man since yesterday. When we returned from Ashland last month, we observed that our 12-year-old cat Simba was looking a little portly, and presumed that he’d wheedled extra feedings from the caregivers we’d retained to sit with Mrs. Perils’ mother while we were gone.
He kept the gut in spite of a return to a more usual feeding regimen, but seemed his “normal” self (I’ll qualify this later) until Monday night, when he seemed to have hit a wall and started acting very mopey and sluggish.
A trip to the vet yesterday confirmed that he had a large “mass” in his abdomen, and the outlook wasn’t good. For $450, we could get an ultrasound and diagnosis, and then pursue whatever treatment might be indicated. $2,000 to medically torture a cat that hasn’t done me any harm seems like money ill-spent, so we had him euthanized. Mrs. Perils had feared a round of guilt-tripping from the vets, but they were very caring and professional.
We obtained Simba from a litter dropped by our across-the-street neighbor’s cat. Our son picked him out and named him. Then, when it seemed another from that litter was not going to be claimed, we got his brother and named him Rico, after the MTV eminence Rico Suave. As time wore on, Rico became the dominant cat in the house and intimidated Simba. Simba, never a really bright boy to begin with, spent more and more time outside and became sort of feral. When he could slip by Rico, though, he’d slink into the house or into bed with us and be very affectionate.
You would think, since Simba made a career of being virtually invisible for long stretches, that Rico wouldn’t even realize that he was gone. Oddly, though, Rico seems a little disoriented since Simba’s Last Ride. Makes you go “hmmm” a little.
He wasn’t much of a pet in the usual sense, but I miss him a bit.
Simba, left, and Rico, right, caught in a nanosecond of truce.
