Boy, Vet Share Grieving as Pet Cat Dies : Heartbreak: The boy came full of trust, a faith in authority. How could she tell the youngster that his beloved companion was likely going to die?

I am not sure how he got to my clinic. He didn’t really look old enough to drive, although his child’s body had begun to broaden and he moved with the heavy grace of young manhood.

His face was direct and open, and when I walked into the waiting room my first view was of him unselfconsciously and lovingly petting his cat through the open door of the carrier on his lap. With a schoolchild’s faith in authority, he had brought his sick cat in for me to fix and sat waiting with patience and confidence.

The cat was about the boy’s own age, give or take a year, but she was a tiny thing. I could see how her spots and stripes and her fierce, bright face had evoked the image of a tiger in a child’s mind, and Tigress she had become.

She was an exquisitely formed cat with a delicate skull and beautiful markings.

I began to ask questions, trying to determine what had brought this charming pair to see me, and the boy answered them simply, directly and honestly, unlike most adults who dissemble, ramble or tell you everything but the answer to the question you actually asked.

In a matter of minutes I learned that Tigress had had a normal appetite until recently, that several days ago she had begun to vomit a couple of times a day, and now was not eating at all and had become withdrawn from her human family.

My mental computer did not come up with anything obvious from this history, so I petted and stroked Tigress and told her how beautiful she was while I examined her eyes and mouth, listened to her heart and lungs, and palpated her abdomen.

My fingers found it. A tubular mass in her midabdomen. Tigress politely tried to slip from my searching fingers. She did not like the mass being handled. She had also lost a pound, which is a lot when you only weigh 6 pounds.

I looked at the fresh-faced youngster and back at the cat he had probably had all his life. I was going to have to tell him that his most beloved companion had a mass, probably a cancer, in her abdomen. Even if her mass were surgically resectable, she probably would survive less than a year, and she might need weekly chemotherapy to get even that.

It would all be very difficult and expensive. So I was going to have to tell this child that his cat was likely going to die. And there he was, all alone.

Death is something that is pushed to the background and ignored as long as possible, but in reality every single living thing one loves will die. It is an omnipresent part of life. How the first death is experienced can be life-forming. Death can be an unbearable thing of horror and suffering, or a peaceful release.

I wondered why this child was here alone. I would have to guide him through this myself. I was tired from the long morning. I did not want this burden. It had to be done perfectly or this child, who was not even mine, might end up emotionally scarred.

It would have been so easy just to leave the room and call a parent and discuss this all with them and shirk this onerous task. But when I looked at his direct and open face, I could not do it. I had spent too long palpating the horror that was eating away at Tigress’s life and he knew something was wrong. I could not just ignore him and call his parents and have them explain it all to him. It would have been cruel.

So I talked to him as Tigress’s rightful owner and told him as gently as I could what I had found and what it meant. As I talked he jerked convulsively away from me, probably so I could not see his face, but I had seen it begin to twist even as he turned. I sat down and turned to Tigress, to give him some privacy, and stroked her beautiful old face with my fingers while I discussed his alternatives with him.

They are the same old unchanging options for bad disease--put her through the extensive pre-surgical work-up and then attempt to remove and biopsy the mass, let her continue to fade away at home or give her an injection and put her to sleep.

He listened carefully and nodded gravely. He said he didn’t think she was very comfortable anymore and he didn’t want her to suffer. He was trying very hard. The pair of them broke my heart. I offered to call a parent to explain what was going on.

Somewhat relieved, he gave me his father’s number in the city. I went over everything again with the father while the boy stood and listened and petted his cat. Then I let father speak to son. The child paced and gestured and his voice broke a few times, but when he had hung up he turned to me again with dry eyes and said only that they had decided to put her to sleep.

No rage, no denial, no hysteria, just rational acceptance of the inevitable. I could see, though, how much it was costing him. I asked him if he wanted to take her home overnight to say goodby. I thought she was stable enough to give him this time to get used to the awful news I had given him so suddenly. But he just said no, he just wanted to be alone with her for a few minutes.

I left them alone and went to sign out the barbiturate I would use to ease her into a painless sleep. I could not control the tears that were streaming down my face, or the grief I felt welling up inside of me for this child who had to become an adult so quickly and so alone.

I waited outside the exam room. In a few minutes he came out and simply said that he was ready. I asked him if he wanted to stay with her. He looked surprised, but I explained that it was often easier to see how peaceful it was than to forever wonder how it actually happened.

Immediately seeing the logic of that, he held her head and reassured her while I administered the injection and she drifted off to sleep, her head cradled in his hand.

The animal itself always looked quiet and at rest. The owner now bore all the suffering. This was the finest gift you could give to something you loved, to assume their pain that they might rest.

He nodded. He understood. Something was missing though. I did not feel like I had completed my task. It came to me suddenly that though I had asked him to become a man instantly, and he had done so with grace and strength, that in essence he was still a child.

I held out my arms and asked him if he needed a hug. He did indeed, and in truth, so did I.