Rest Well, My Gizmo

On July 25th, we said goodbye to our Grand Dame, Gizmo. At 18, I knew that this would likely be her last summer, but the time came too quickly. 

Enjoying the nice weather and a good brushing,

Gizmo was technically Digger's cat, but she came to live with us shortly after we moved in to our little place. She was a spitfire from the get-go. In fact, it was Gizmo that got me arrested.

As she got older, she stayed closer to home.

She'd also smacked the crap out of my dad (not Bill, she loved Bill) at one point. When Gizmo and Ashee were living in my grandma's house with my dad, he wanted to take a nap on the couch, but Giz was already on the couch. He made her move, then stretched out on the couch. Just as he was falling asleep, she made her displeasure known by reaching down from the back of the couch, where she was lying and bam-bam-bam smacked him across the forehead before (wisely) quickly exiting.

She had her share of kittens, and didn't much care for them. Which meant she didn't love it when we introduced new cats to the household, but she always warmed up to them. Children, though, were just skin kittens in here eyes and she never liked them. Until the Gremlin came along and some milk leaked out of his bottle while he was sleeping, then she decided that skin kittens were okay as long as they spilled milk for her to clean up. I have a picture, somewhere, of them sleeping together, his hand curled in her fur. In fact, her name was one of the first he uttered, "Mo-Mo". We've called her Gimmo-gimmo for ages, and he renamed her Mo-Mo.

None of our animals developed much of a taste for human food, because we tried never to give them any. Ashee's dog Gracie was so uninterested in people food that we could leave plates unattended on the floor and she wouldn't bother them. Well, we could, until Gizmo taught Gracie that human food was yummy. Gizmo didn't love human food, and would mostly leave it alone, but her weakness was pepperoni pizza. She once jumped right into the middle of Digger's pizza to get at it.

She mellowed out with age - thank goodness! - and was just a steady presence in and around the house. She'd often just hang out with us outside, quietly keeping us company.

She put up with my stupid hooman tricks of dressing her up for Christmas card pictures and wearing a crocheted witch's hat last year.

She didn't love wearing the hat, but she allowed it.

A few weeks ago, she'd been bitten by another cat (who will remain nameless) and had developed a huge abscess on her back. I only noticed the abscess when it broke open and was streaming bloody pus. I feel a bit bad that I didn't realize she'd been injured sooner, but she'd taken to just hiding out in the bathroom or under the bed for the last couple of months. I figured, she's old, she gets to hang out where she wants to. However, on nice days, I did force her to go outside and sit in the sun. Vitamin D therapy and a dirt bath always did wonders for her mood.

I cleaned her abscess as well as I could, and sequestered her in the bathroom to heal. She did not complain about the pampering or the cans of wet food she got twice a day during her convalescence. She didn't, though, love when it was time to clean and dress the abscess. It became obvious, about a week in, that healing was taking a lot out of her, and when the vet came for the horses' well child checks, I asked him about euthanizing her. He didn't have time that day to do it, so we set an appointment.

On the day we chose, I made sure Gizmo had the best day possible. She loved being groomed, but in the day or so before her appointment, she'd had a hard time cleaning up after going to the bathroom. I couldn't let her be seen like that, so she got a butt bath. I had intended on giving her a whole bath, but she was so humiliated by a human scrubbing her butt that I decided not to do the entire bath. Other than the bathing ordeal, she had a great day. She ate what she wanted (wet food, dry food/milk "cereal") and hung out in the sun with me while getting brushed. Other than being humiliated by the bath, I'd say she had a 9/10 day.

Many moons ago, I had a vet tell me that he'd rather be way too early to put an animal down, than one second too late. I've tried to live by that and honor the life the animal has given us. We were right on the edge of almost too late, I think, but she had a good day the day we helped her across the bridge and that brings me a lot of peace.