Rabbit Droppings

a fond farewell to a friend

This is the story of the guilt of a mother who had to kill her first born.

This is the story of how I killed my beast friend.

This is the story I am haunted by, and hope to release by writing it down.

The ceiling came down, the floor came up to meet me. My back broke, my neck broke, my face broke, my head broke. The cage round my heart broke open and my heart came out. I think it was my heart. It broke out of my chest and it jammed in my mouth. This is how it began. For the first time (too late) I knew how my heart tasted.

I was with him in the beginning. And I was with him in the end. The beginning was exciting, Sandy was having her first (and last) litter, and I was going to pick one. My mother named him Jinx, but he was mine, my pick of the litter. I was eight (or nine) and we grew up together. And now I’m turning twenty-five, he grew up so much quicker than me, and now he won’t be here when I reach my quarter century.

This is the story of the end, not the end of a spirit, or a love, or a memory, but the end of a life, and the end of a moment, a series of moments that separates who I was and who I am.

He was my partner in crime, he was there when I had pneumonia (twice), when my heart was crushed (more than twice), and when I lost my virginity (accidently). I was there when my uncle was throwing him out a second story window (drunkenly), when he got diabetes, and when he died. He used to sit at the end of the bed when I had sex and look at me annoyed for moving the bed, he made my boyfriends nervous sometimes, he was that kind of cat. I’m not sure what that means, or what I want you to get out of this, only know that I spent seventeen years with him and by the end of it we had a lot in common.

When I told people that Jinx had died I never said he passed away. He didn’t pass away, that implies some peaceful death, some serene ending to a distant struggle. He didn’t pass away. That’s what I want to confess. He didn’t die of natural causes. He would have; I’m almost a hundred percent sure, but he didn’t.

When I came back from New York he was emaciated, he was sicker than I had thought, It scared me. The next morning I brought him to the vet. She said that his insulin levels were way off, and that if it was her cat she would leave him in the hospital. I didn’t leave him in the hospital, I couldn’t afford to, I told her that and she said that as long as I could get him to eat and increase his insulin levels, we could probably get it under control, and then I could bring him back in to check. When I got him back home he wouldn’t eat, the whole day he wouldn’t eat. This is the cat who lived in the kitchen with the hope of any scrap or morsel. So the next day I brought him back, it was a different vet who told me to increase the levels of water I was injecting him with to hydrate him, he said that was the best we could do.

Jason keeps giving me excuses for why this isn’t true, but it is, if I hadn’t gone to New York JInx would not have gotten as sick as he did, this was the first in the series of events that led to his death, the second was not leaving him in the hospital in the beginning. These thoughts sit in my stomach, and gnaw at my dreams while I sleep, I was more concerned about money than Jinx’s health.

As I increased his water, he would eat a little now and then, we were very excited, especially because he wasn’t throwing it up. A few days later he still wasn’t eating normally, but he was looking better all the time. I had planned to go to San Jose for the night and next day and Jason said he would watch Jinx. I was scared to leave, but he was doing so much better, and I’d really been looking forward to the trip. That night Jason called me to say he had acted really weird, but now he was acting normal, an hour later he called me to tell me he had had two seizures and was probably going to die. My mouth filled with iron, I said I’d come home. I drove ninety and made it there in forty-five minutes, the only desire I had was for him not to die till I got home, I wanted to be with him. I got home and ran up the stairs, he was lying there on a urine soaked dog bed. He had pissed himself during a seizure. John was crouched next to him crying, and Jason stepped back as I kneeled down next to Jinx. I was so happy he was still alive. I called his name and he looked at me. “That’s the first time he’s really responded,” someone told me. I put food near him and he went for it with a ravenous appetite. “We’ve tried to get him to eat all night.” It seemed the crises had past, and no one can quite believe it. They tell me he’s been out of it all night and had a series of seizures that racked his body. And now that I’m here he seems fine. I felt like as long as I stayed with him he’d be ok. He just didn’t want me to leave. I slept with him on the couch that night, every time he mewed I woke up to look at him looking back at me. The next morning I did not take him to the vet. He was eating again like normal, it seemed miraculous, but he was acting normal if a bit beaten up from being so sick. Things were going to be ok.

Driving back I almost threw up in my mouth, the thought of him dying without me, because I’d been selfish enough to leave, made me think of crashing the car. I was in shock, and almost hysterical, and then I said out loud, “He isn’t dying,” and relaxed. And when I got home he wasn’t. It was like an incantation, and I wanted to believe it, it seemed so true. He was eating, and I was able to increase his levels of insulin. But really, I don’t know why I didn’t take him back to the vet the next morning, it didn’t really come up as a serious consideration. We were going to bring him back in a few days to see if his insulin levels had stabilized. He didn’t like the hospital and I hated to keep bringing him back, but I think the real reason I didn’t think I had to bring him back was that I felt I had his health under control, that I cared enough and Loved enough to keep him from getting too sick, and to get him better. I was his mom and I was going to make him well. And that day it seemed like I was right. I had come home, and now he was fine.

Let’s end the story there. If I hadn’t already gave away the end of the story, this would be the peaceful moment of hope. You’d know that things were probably going to get worse again, because you’re clever like that, and you know what things seeming ok foreshadows, but you’d hope, it would be your moment of reprieve before I crush your heart and make you sad (if you’re the sort of person who finds stories about childhood pets dying sad). But I can tell you the end and you can stop reading now because I promise that it was hard to foreshadow how much worse this story gets. Jinx doesn’t make it.

That day, with Jinx seeming on the road to recovery Jason and I went to see Superman, it was a good movie, you should go see it. When we came home JInx was in John’s room. I looked at him, and he was just sitting there normally, and I knew it was wrong. I picked him up and he whined, he’d been very sensitive to being picked up while he was sick. I brought him in the living room and he started shaking, “That’s what he was doing only a lot worse,” Jason told me. I held him and called his name and he relaxed. He got up and walked away and his back legs were weak. He limped over to Sugar, and sniffed her bone. Jinx enjoyed bullying Sugar out of her food and treats, he was a pretty tough cat. He walked in front of the TV and his legs gave out on him, I caught him as he tumbled off. In my arms he felt light and limp, his softness was overwhelming. I sat on the kitchen floor with him in my lap, I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to give him water. I had John hold the bag while I put the needle in his back, he was too weak to struggle so it was easy.

He had more seizures, none of them severe, and I was able to hold him close and calm him, but every time his eyes opened wide and he had no control over them and he looked terrified, I held my hand down to close his eyes forcefully, it seemed to calm him. I brought him into my bed and held him under the covers on my chest, I scratched his ears, and his neck, and he purred, he was still happy to be near me, he was still enjoying life. We lay like this for awhile, but soon he wanted to roam around, he tried to stumble away, but I held him a little longer.

After we came back into the living room his seizures started getting more severe. I told Jason I didn’t know what to do, and he told me Jinx was dying, and asked me if I would rather have him die at home where he was comfortable or at the hospital where he would be even more scared. He had said it, Jinx was dying, and now it was true, those words said out loud made it seem inevitable, now we were merely waiting.

Ok, this is how it ended, I keep putting off writing it, but the memories are fading, thankfully everything hurts less with time, but I want to share this, and I need to just finish it, enough prologue- this is what happened.

JInx kept having seizures, and they were getting worse, with one his front legs shot out and stayed there stiff, at the same time he made this horrible sound like he was letting out all his air, like a final breath, but it wasn’t, he kept breathing, well panting more like it, his tongue hung out of his mouth and he stared blankly, but still somehow looked frightened. Jason was sleeping on the couch and said he needed to go to bed. I followed him in there with Jinx wrapped in a blanket. I gave him a large dose of insulin to try to “put him out of his misery” also known as killing him, it didn’t work. I remember a friend telling me how he had tried to kill a cat with insulin overdose but couldn’t, I think maybe it just manages to put them in a coma. I curl up with Jinx in bed. I’m cold and I try to position us under the blanket, Jinx keeps making terrible sounds, finally Jason says he’s going to sleep on the couch. I sit with Jinx and try to sleep with him in my arms, as I’m drifting off he screams, I mean screams, a noise I’ve never heard him make before, his limbs all jerk forward and his eyes go wide, I think this is it, but it isn’t. He stops breathing, but then he starts again. My mind is reeling, I don’t know what to do, it seems he’s in terrible pain, I imagine that his cells are starving, or something is terrible is happening inside of him, and he is having to experience it. I hope that he can’t really feel what is happening, but I don’t know, I don’t what to do, I’m terrified, I want to protect him, or help him, but I don’t know how.

It’s five in the morning and I’m sleep deprived and alone, the creature who has been there since I was eight already looks dead, I can’t imagine he hasn’t suffered brain damage. I think about taking him to the emergency pet hospital to have him put down, but it doesn’t seem like an option, he’s my partner in crime, I don’t want him to die somewhere so clinical. So I close his mouth with my hand and cover his little nose. He doesn’t fight at first, he can’t, he doesn’t have control over his limbs anymore. After a minute his eyes get really wide and his body starts convulsing away from my hand, I can’t do this my brain is no longer having comprehensible thoughts it is only amazed that I am trying to do this. I take my hand away and he takes deep horrible breaths, I can’t stop here, I can’t torture him, I get a bag and put it over his head, I’m sobbing hysterically now, I don’t even think I can feel anymore I feel like my heart has blown up. I am shaking and I catch a look of his eye through the bag his eyeball touching the bag, and that picture sits in my head, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen and it’s my fault, I am killing the only thing that never seemed distant, no matter how depressed I got Jinx always made me feel better, even when everything and everyone else felt scary and unfamiliar there was JInx and he was right. And now his body was convulsing at my hand, and let me tell you it isn’t quick, death isn’t peaceful or beautiful, it’s long and horrible and painful, and the body fights, it tries to live. And finally his body lay limp, but there were still a few breaths, and then he was still, and I waited a little longer and then took the bag off and looked down on his lifeless body, his little furry self not moving and I took it all back and wanted to do mouth to mouth and I just lost it I picked him up and rocked back and forth crying like I’m crying now trying to tell you this, and I can’t quite remember why I wanted to tell you except that I think I wanted you to forgive me. I’ve never felt anything like that, and I hope I never will again, a mother should never have to kill her baby. I was holding Jinx and I didn’t know what to do, but I had to wake Jason. So I set Jinx down and went into the living room, and told Jason, you have to come here, so he did, and saw that he was dead and told me he was sorry, and I said no, I killed him, and he said that I should have let him do it, and he’s right, and I kept shaking and we took turns holding him, and then eventually I had to put him down and I didn’t know where to put him, and Jason found me a box, and I didn’t want to put him in a box, but I remembered JInx like boxes, so I did. And then I took a couple of tranquilizers, and I think I slept, and every time I woke up, it hurt, so I went back to sleep, so I stayed in bed. I spent most of my time in bed for the next week or so.

Everyone has tried to convince me that I did the right thing, but I can’t convince myself. I believe that things are basically going to take the course they are going to take no matter, so I should accept that in my world I had no real choice, but I can’t forgive myself. I have since read that seizures are a normal part of diabetic shock, so I wonder now if I had just taken him to the vet, if he would be curled up in my lap right now. It’s hard to get used to him not being here, I see him out of the corner of my eye constantly, and often when I walk into the living room I automatically look for him, and then I remember.

It’s been nice though, everyone that knew him, says that he really was the best cat, and they say they miss him. It makes me feel better, that people still think about him, even if remembering hurts, I want people to reflect the importance I feel for him. Everything is different now, he was my childhood, he was security, I now have no real responsibilities, no one relies on me. I am alone, and when that feeling comes back, where no one seems familiar, and I am afraid, there will be no reprieve, who can fill his place? He was there for seventeen years, he was a cat so he couldn’t hurt me, he only needed everything.

“The ceiling came down, the floor came up to meet me. My back broke, my neck broke, my face broke, my head broke. The cage round my heart broke open and my heart came out. I think it was my heart. It broke out of my chest and it jammed in my mouth. This is how it began. For the first time (too late) I knew how my heart tasted.”

-Hotel World, Ali Smith