A Suicidal Squirrel's Guide to Life

A blog about all sorts of things. And squirrel stories. Sometimes.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Good-bye Matthew

Matthew went away today. It was for the best. We weren't happy anymore. We made a good pretense for a long time. We tried therapy. We even tried mood-altering drugs. I did things I don't even like thinking about. Everybody knew it was coming. I just wasn't ready for it to be today. Sure, I had thrown him out of the house before, but then he'd always look at me through the door with those big blue eyes of his, and I'd let him back in again. I guess I just reached my limit. There's only so much a girl can take.

Things had just seemed better this week. He slept with me every night. He was even all snuggly. He pretended to like my cooking. I knew he didn't really, but he was at least willing to try the tuna. I didn't send much money with him, so I don't think he'll be having anything like that for supper tonight. I hope he won't be too sad. I hope he sleeps alright alone.

Am I having regrets? Yes. And no. I just keep finding things. The picture of him on the living room mantle. His brush. My pillow smells like him, I think. I'm pretty sure I'll cry myself to sleep tonight. But I did the right thing. I know I did. It just wasn't easy.




It was the poop, you know. We couldn't keep cleaning the poop off of the rug. So maybe he was trying to show us that he didn't feel good, maybe that was the only way he knew how, but we had done everything we knew to do. Oh yeah, Matthew is a cat. Hadn't I mentioned that?

Matthew has Irritable Bowel Syndrome. For the past couple of years, we've been trying to control it, and it had gotten better, but it never went away. We tried amitriptilene to help him de-stress. That seemed to help; he at least stopped pulling his hair out which helped the fur balls. And he stopped peeing on my laundry then. When your husband lays down a pair of jeans and picks them up ten minutes later and they're all wet and that's not water... Well, let's just say there were days Matthew was lucky to have survived. He would get steroid injections from the vet when things got really bad, but he couldn't have those too often without risking liver damage. He was taking prednisone daily. There was still poop on my rug daily, too, though.

We gave up. Maybe that makes us bad people. But I don't think Matthew was really happy with us. He loved me. He loved P. But he didn't like the other cats very much once they weren't tiny kittens. And he was only mildly tolerant of the dog (who was scared to death of him). And he really didn't care for the child running around the house all the time. And he hated it when we went out of town. He hated it when just I went out of town. He always had bad flare-ups when we got home. He really needs to be an only pet for an elderly shut-in who has nothing to do but sit around and hold him all day. I honestly think the IBS would be better if he had a home like that.

We gave him back to the adoption shelter where I found him in the first place. Hopefully he'll have better luck this time. I'll check on him and make sure he has all of his medicine until he gets a new family. And I'll miss him. Always.