The sun is rising while I type this. Everyone is off at Katy's to watch it, but I have no heart for any celebration or even semi-public exposure today.
On Friday, Kaiju spent the whole morning wandering around. She went to her bowl and touched it, she went to the pool in the yard that she was so proud to finally be able to drink out of, with her newly attained height. She put her foot to the surface of the water, snuffled at it. She sat next to Jessie and Kuma a while, in the sun. Watched the cats. She looked at us, she put her face in her toy basket and every hour without fail I forced more pedialyte down her. I cleaned up vomit and bloody mess, changed my clothes every few minutes it seemed. I put her in a towel and held her, she watched the fire crackle in the wood stove.
At 3:30, I gave her another round of liquids and dabbed some yogurt in her mouth. She licked it and swallowed, I gave her a little more. She swallowed that and more pedialyte. I put her in her bed and she laid down quietly, seeming to really be resting for the first time. I watched her a while-none of the groaning or shifting she had been doing. I ran to the store convinced she was getting better and needed calories. I bought more yogurt, baby food, even some canned cat food-anything I thought she might be interested in.
I got back home at 4:20 and Jake picked her up to hold for the next round at 4:30. She was limp. I knew then, but hoped something would change, unwilling to concede I had been so wrong. He held her head up and I tried to get more liquids down her. She swallowed a tiny bit and the rest dribbled out. I was crying so hard I could barely breathe in, Jake was bewildered. He had his hand on her chest and she was laying in his lap, head at his knees with her bottom curved up against his stomach. Matt said maybe we should get her more flat, that she was kind of squished like that. I turned to grab her bed and he said, "Honey". Jake screamed, "I can still feel her breathing, she's okay, she'll be okay." I lifted her head up again, ready to try mouth to mouth if it would help. She looked at me, her eyes were so far away. She threw her head back and howled one long note. I put my hands on her shoulder and side and looked at Jake. He was crying and his eyes went wide. He had felt her heart stop. We all had our hands on her when she went, we were telling her she was a good girl, that we loved her. That it was okay.
I took her from Jake to wrap up. Her eyes would not close all the way and I was suddenly beyond upset that dirt would get in them. I shifted her weight-12 pounds, she was 16 pounds just last Sunday-and it pushed out the last of her air, making her mouth open a little. She still had all baby teeth, had not even lost the tiny ones on the bottom.
All her walking around was just saying goodbye. Her tiny world, her miniature and incredibly short life. Like, here are the things I know-the food bowl, my kennel, the big dog water, the good cats and the bad cats, the big dogs, my people. That last howl. Goodbye
It hurts and it sucks and it's unfair that there is any type of disease that attacks babies like that and does that kind of pain to them. But what is the worst is not knowing if I sealed her fate by not leaving her at the vet's. I feel like something happened in her tummy, that something stopped working and I can pinpoint via hindsight when that was that she stopped losing body fluids and just started turning into a melon. If that's the case, she was a lost cause no matter who had her. An operation to fix that would be well beyond our means. And at home, she got more love than she would have being scared and alone and feeling so awful on top of thinking we threw her away. She went to the last second and beyond knowing we wanted nothing more than for her to stay here with us.
I am the only one who is still really upset and I have become a killjoy. I am not complaining that they did not love her enough, just that they have all come to peace that we did all we could and I have not-if I had just paid more money, she might still be here.
