Saying Goodbye to George

Some of you may remember that we've been dealing with illness with our cat George. He had kidney failure and we've been trying to treat it and help him feel better. We've had to give him IV fluid treatments every other day to help with the kidney problems. As you can imagine, George was not happy about those treatments.

In spite of the treatments, he continued to go downhill to the point that we could tell he just didn't have any quality of life any more. We finally made the difficult decision that it was time for him to go and made an appointment with the vet for euthanasia.

Last night and today we encouraged the kids to hold and pet George and took some pictures with him. Before his appointment we all hugged him and petted him and told him goodbye. It was rough on the kids and hard for them to understand. It was rough on me, too. I've had George for 11 years, since he was a tiny kitten. It was hard to let him go and hard not to feel like I was betraying him by sending him away to die. We all cried quite a bit when it was time for him to go to the vet.

Aaron was sweet enough to offer to take George for the actual appointment. He knew I couldn't deal with being there. When he got to the vet, they gave George a quick exam and told Aaron that the fluid treatments weren't helping with the kidney failure anymore and that he was in heart failure as well. No wonder he hadn't felt good. They reassured Aaron that we'd made the right decision and that euthanasia was the best thing for George at this point. Aaron said George was very calm and just went to sleep. It was very quick.

It was hard all over again when Aaron got home and the kids asked where George was. We had to explain again that he had died and wouldn't be coming home to our house again. We had told the kids that George was going to heaven and that seemed to reassure Haley because she said that she was glad that George was going to live with God. Of course, later Haley informed me that she had said a prayer and asked God to send George home to us again once he was feeling better. I'm hoping I dealt with that the right way, but who knows...

At any rate, it's been kind of a rotten day here at our house. Hopefully everyone will feel a bit better by tomorrow.