Sunday, November 16, 2008

A very sad day

To many people losing an animal may not seem that bad. I've had a lot of animals in my lifetime and I've helped put a lot of animals to sleep. You would think that I would be used to an animal dying.
The first animal of my own that I ever had to put down was my hamster Gus. That was a very hard decision that took me a few days to come too. See, I thought that he had a tumor growing off of his butt so I got really concerned and I called the vet and asked him how much it costs to make a regular appointment and it cost 35 dollars which I couldn't afford since I was 13. It only cost 5 dollars to put him down so I went with that decision. Later on in life I discovered that they were just his testicles and that he was probably perfectly healthy.

The next animal that I witnessed dying was my little sister Emily's hamster Starlight. Emily was on vacation in California when her hamster got sick. I tried everything to get her to eat and to play but she ended up dying while Emily was gone.

The third animal was my second hamster Penny. She was probably the easiest death to deal with because she died in the middle of the night while working out on her wheel. I was okay with her death.

The fourth animal was probably the hardest of all. Dukie was our family cat for 14 years. I loved her so much. She got extremly sick and had a tumor on her jaw. The only way that they could fix it was to take her lower jaw off which would have killed her. We decided that it would be easier on us if we just took her to the vet and had her put down. We were quite a sight to see all four Heiss women in the room with Dukie all of us in tears when she was put down.

Which leads us to 20 minutes ago when Daxter passed away. Daxter was Lily and Haru's little kitten from her most recent litter. All of us had been trying to nurse him back to health. He started down a deadly spiral when his brother from the same litter was taken to a different home. He got really depressed which made his immune system weak and he caught something that I couldn't stop. I felt so helpless. He died in Chris's lap very peacefully.

I feel like maybe I should go back to school and get a refreasher course. I feel like I failed him. So, this is my list of animals that I have been close too that have passed away. I feel miserable right now. Oh, well I've still got my three big cats.

2 comments:

Diana said...

Oh that is so sad! I am so sorry Kath. I remembered when my hamster, Malli died when we were in Grover. I was so distraught, and you were the first person I came to because you understood what it was like to lose an animal. I still remember feeling so comforted by you that day.

Dae said...

Oh, I'm so sorry. We have 5 pets right now. They are like my children. I don't know what I'll do if/when that day comes.