June 6

It's Sunday. I am in Montauk for the weekend. Julie is back at home in New Jersey. 

It’s hard for me not to feel some guilt about this. Julie only has a limited time left, a fact that I know and she, presumably, doesn’t. I want to spend every moment I can with her. And lately, she’s obliged me, cuddling up in my lap on the regular as we perfect our new routine. 


She eats a little later than she used to. Prime Julie — and I’m talking about her just a few months ago when I use that term — would wake me up every morning with a cascade of meows, after spending most of the night asleep on my legs. Then she flick around the bed, bedroom, and bathroom while I got up, got dressed, and got ready for work. And she’d guide me downstairs, sometimes going down the steps with me side-by-side, and lead me to her bowl, as though she fretted that I had forgotten where it was. 


Now, Julie often joins me for the morning routine, but the meows are less frequent and more muted. She’s there, but she seems weary. She does not accompany me as I go downstairs; instead, she finds a quiet, comforting spot for a morning nap. 


If I’m home later, like on a weekend, Julie will meander in for breakfast a few hours later. She still eats; her appetite is no longer that of the ravenous depravity I once knew, but she finishes her meals. Then she will hang out with me for most of the morning and afternoon, disappearing at some point for another nap in one of her various hideouts. By dinner, she’s hungry again, but it’s a tempered hunger. After dinner, she’s with me on the couch like old times. 


We left on Friday night at around seven. I fed her and gave her a dose of her chemo pill. Her cat sitter will visit daily on Saturday and Sunday. I debate whether I should ask her to give Julie her Gabapentin or the chemo drug on Sunday. I decide not to. Would stress Julie out to have someone else do it, and for all I know the cat sitter will just waste time chasing Julie around the home in a hapless attempt to medicate her. No, I will give her a dose of both drugs as soon as I get home on Monday. 


Julie takes Gabapentin twice daily for pain. I mix it into the squeeze-up treats she has come to love, and it goes down easy. Aside from those two treats, she just eats one cat of wet food a day these days. Every other day, I give her Palladia, the chemo pill. This requires that I wear latex gloves. If Julie sees me putting the gloves on, she will run, so I have to do it on the down-low, right before or after giving her a treat. I’m able to get the pill down the hatch without too much trouble, but it doesn’t mean she enjoys the process. I’ll cradle her in my left arm, pry her jaw open with my right, and push it down, then hold her mouth shut for a few seconds until I know it’s gone. She’s cranky afterwards and will typically scoot away to a hiding place. 


Such is our regimen now. In 24 hours, it will resume. For now, I am enjoying a nice day on Montauk, but feeling guilty that Julie is home alone. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Julie Reminders

Julie reminders abound.   In the downstairs bathroom trash can, I can still see an empty Squeeze-Up treat packet. It’s the last thing she ever ate.   I opened the adjacent closet, and see two cases of her prescription cat food , Royal Canin Urinary SO. I still haven’t decided what to do with all that food. Feed it to the dog? Lord knows she ate plenty of Julie’s food over the years, but she’s on her own bougie diet these days. Return it to the store? Maybe, but I probably don’t have the receipt. Toss it? That seems like quite a waste, especially considering how much this stuff cost, and what a nuisance it so often was to acquire.   And the reminders are in the absence of Julie-related things, as well. The white space on the ledge where I fed her. The vacancy in the sun room, where she once had her downstairs litter box. The voids in the various spots in the house where I usually found her, or where I’d try to find her when I couldn’t.   And, of course, the subtler di...
Read more

Fourteen Days

September 7. It’s a Tuesday. I’m home, in the middle of a long weekend. Yesterday was Labor Day, today and tomorrow are Rosh Hoshanah. So I’m home, and it’s a slow, sad five days in a house without my Julie.   She died two weeks ago. Fourteen years with her, fourteen days without her. Somehow the latter feels longer than the former.   I keep thinking that I hear her. The house emanates sounds it didn’t used to make. I keep thinking there’s a rustling sound from the next room over, or that I hear her jumping up on the table in the other room. Lord knows why, but I always get up to look to see what I’m hearing, and I’m always a little surprised when she’s not there.   And she keeps popping up in my dreams. The old Julie, that’s the one I dream about. Full of life, never far away from me.   It’s not just me, for what that’s worth. Angela said the same thing the other day — that she keeps thinking she hears Julie. Maybe it’s her spirit, still in the house, saying hello. ...
Read more