Pets aren't LIKE Family, They ARE Family

Skeeter died today.

Well, no that's not totally accurate. What really happened is that I had him put down.

Funny how we have almost as many euphemisms for death as we do for sex.

I first met Skeeter a long time ago. At the time I was working graveyard shift and my mom came into my room and woke me up by putting this little ball of fluff on my chest. I opened my eyes and looked into the most incredibly gold eyes I had ever seen. Mom said, "Look what we got! What are we going to call him?" And me, still half-asleep and looking into his eyes said without thinking, "Skeeter." He obviously had told me what he wished to be called and that was that.

Skeeter was not actually mine, not then. My step-brother had adopted him from the Humane Society of Broward County as a gift for my niece Rochelle who was a very young girl at the time. Being a child, Rochelle had no idea how to deal with a rambunctious kitten and after a nearly a year of her being scratched, my step-brother told Mom he was taking the cat back to the shelter. I said, "No bring him here. This family rescues animals from the shelter, we don't take them there."

Funny, I took Skeeter there this morning.

So at the tender age of one, Skeeter came to live with me and Mom.

We immediately ran into trouble. Skeeter, as previously mentioned, was rambunctious and my mother had two small lovebirds, two parakeets and a cockatiel. The war was on. Despite having had him declawed (my mom was diabetic so it was a necessary decision) Skeeter was determined to enjoy the birds, especially their different flavors. Mom had to give away the birds because there was no way I was giving him up. On the day he came to live with us, he crawled into my lap and started to fluff my belly. (Making biscuits, as Tamie liked to call it.) Talk about soul mates.

Skeeter was constantly in trouble and his nickname was CWA (cat with attitude). One time a stray cat got into the house and Skeeter nearly took its head off he was so pissed for someone daring to invade his territory. As I was pulling him off the other cat, Skeeter tore open my arm (with his back claws) and left me with a gash six inches long. He also liked to knock things off of tables and countertops, especially glass things that make pretty sounding noises when they hit the floor and he always waited until we were watching but were too far away to stop him. Sometimes his feistiness was a good thing, like the time a mother mouse decided to have baby mice under our washing machine. Skeeter spent nearly three days waiting for each curious little nose to poke out and after that we never had a mouse problem again.

Mom always complained that Skeeter didn't love her until the time she got sick and spent six weeks in the hospital. When she came home, he immediately crawled on to her bed and snuggled against her side and stayed there until she felt better. She never complained after that.

He was always trying to get outside. He loved the outdoors, but a city is no place for cats. One time I was carrying a citronella candle I had lit to grill our dinner and when I came in the back door he tried to make a dash outside. I tried to stop him and the candle was poured all over him. He wasn't burned, thanks to his thick coat, but he was covered in wax and oil and spent the next few hours in the bathtub, thanks to his thick coat. Another time I returned home after a three-day visit to Jacksonville and Mom said, "Skeeter got out." "How long has he been out?" I asked. "Two days," was the reply. Mom and Grandma were sick at the time and couldn't go chasing after him. I finally found him happy as a bug and eating bugs in our neighbor's back yard.

His behavior finally changed when he decided to swallow a penny and it got lodged in his intestine and blocked him up. By the time we got him to the vet, he was in pretty bad shape and it took them even longer to figure out what was wrong with him. Finally they showed me the x-ray with a perfect penny-sized spot. They had to do emergency surgery on him and I kept the penny for a long time, showing it off to friends as the "Miraculous $400 Penny."

Funny, I don't have the penny anymore either. It was lost when I lost all of my other belongings.

After that, Skeeter changed. It was like he took stock of his life, said to himself, "Okay, I nearly died, now I'm gonna take it easy" and with that decision, he became the most laid-back cat you ever met. You could hold him and he'd lie in your arms like a rag doll. The only time he ever complained was when you took him in the car. He hated riding in cars, probably because it was usually to the vet and he hated the vet. He even bit old Doc Schenholm one time and after that I had to sedate him before I was allowed to bring him to the office.

The main consequence of all this laid-backness was he grew fat. Really, really fat. I was too distracted trying to take care of my increasingly sick mother and grandmother so I'm afraid it was my fault. Not good and I'm ashamed, but that's what happened.

It was never a problem until about three years ago and he had a bad bout of constipation that required another emergency trip to the vet. During said visit they neglected to muzzle him despite my making a big fat check mark in the box that said yes to the question of "Does your pet bite?" I even circled it twice. This time the vet tech had to have stitches. Well, what did they expect? Can't blame the poor cat for biting when they stuck a tube up his ass and in all fairness I did warn them. Tamie (my partner who loved Skeeter as much as I did) and I were in the waiting room when from within came a really loud howl immediately followed by someone screaming "Ow Ow Ow!" Tamie asked, "What the hell was that?" I replied, "Skeeter just bit someone."

The vet told us that he was "pre-diabetic" and needed to make a radical change in his diet and behavior to prevent him from becoming diabetic. Tamie and I discussed it at great length and decided that rather than making his last few years utterly miserable, we would just give him lots of love and attention and let him be happy his last few years.

That's what I did. Other than drinking a lot and hence urinating a lot and unfortunately missing the litter box, he's been happy. Until a few weeks ago when he started to lose weight like crazy and grew increasingly frail. Being unemployed means no money for a vet so I couldn't take him. I expected him to go at any time, but his stubbornness won out and he just kept hanging on. Finally last night he could barely walk and he started to cry in pain so this morning I asked my roommate to take us to the Humane Society and they promised to 'take care of him.'

There's a euphemism again. Can 'euphemism' be used as a verb I wonder? Hmm...how about this? "I needed to write something about death so I euphemized a new word today."

Not long after the constipation scare, I had a nightmare that Skeeter died and I woke up sobbing. Literally sobbing. After today, I can safely say that reaction was pretty darn accurate.

Alex said that Skeeter will be even happier now than he was before because he's got Tamie waiting for him on the other side. If that's true, I guess he's got Mom and Grandma there, too because they loved him just as much as Tamie did.

Funny, it's a nice thought and maybe someday I'll even believe it.

But not today.



Skeeter Carr
1991 – 2009