Life and Island Times July 27 2016 – Honey Boy
This one is from March of this year.
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Marlow awoke early on the ides of March with an upset stomach. He had forgotten to take his nightly tummy medicine and had sipped a half glass of red wine just before bedtime. He and W had spent wonderful evening with Richard and John playing cards at the dining room table, endlessly chatting about movies, plays, jazz clubs, travel, health and people who populated their honey suckled coral island.
He padded down the darkened hallway to the front room, where his laptop lay, to review the postings from near and far about world happenings, both foreign and domestic. There in the darkness was Honey Boy, splayed out on the circular woven rug in front of the door to the porch. This was not his normal spot. He was listless and did not offer his normal call for Marlow to climb the stairs chop-chop to open a can of pâté for his morning meal.
He just laid there, only raising his head to accept some gentle head scratching from Marlow, who was now kneeling next to him. Honey Boy had lost weight in recent weeks, despite W’s offerings at all hours of the day food that was his most favored from tins and table. Not even a bowl of half and half interested him.
Honey Boy was impossible to dislike. Big but not a bruiser. Black but with a white g-spot. Food obsessed. An ardent lover of warmth in sunshine filled window sills, doorways and people’s laps. So ludicrously placid that everyone from casual strangers to his cat-sitter (he called her staff) adored him.
They suspected his part in their lives might be coming to a close, when he refused to eat macerated medium rare steak– his favorite table scrap. He had stopped grooming himself, was drinking practically nothing and had started hiding in places he never had in the past. W suspected a failure to thrive, while Marlow held out for something that could be treated with pharma and couple of days in a pet ICU in Marathon.
The ides led the three of them to a small treatment room at the veterinarian to hear the news. No masses, no blockages, but a barely perceptible yellow tint in his ear skin. Full serum and blood labs with a pathologist review were necessary before treatment could be even considered.
After paying up, they left, slightly dazed.
Upon arriving back home, they started creating a slurry of his tinned cat food and injecting it milliliter by milliliter directly into his month to give him more calories. W did this four to five times a day. W cleaned the cat, herself, and the kitchen after each session.
On St Patrick’s day, the vet called them back and asked W to bring Honey Boy back for more labs that they would run in house. Honey Boy was bleeding internally and very dehydrated. He was given a bag of saline interstitially.
The vet called back this morning. It was all bad news. It was time. For their third trip to the vet, they wrapped the limp Honey Boy in a brightly striped beach towel and proceeded directly to the vet’s OR, where they said their goodbyes before, during and after the injection.
Arriving back home they were greeted by Angel, Honey Boy’s best friend and fellow black cat.
Honey Boy had raised her since she came to the house as a foundling six years ago.
She has mewled about the house off and on since, looking for him.
They miss him.
Honey Boy (l) and his sweet Angel (r)
Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat