Meal Time

A dying cat enjoys a meal while his distraught owner simmers with anticipatory grief.

Photo by Agape Trn on Unsplash

Owen lifts his head from his bowl, strings of drool and soupy, light brown food dangling from his chin. He licks his lips and glances my way, blinking slowly as a wad of food falls from his whiskers onto the counter.

I smile because I see him. He is still here, and he is trying in his own way to adapt to this new arduous reality… but then I frown, because all of this happened so quickly. A month ago he was only drooling. He wasn’t yet bleeding and he wasn’t yet restricted to a liquid diet, but now he can barely eat.

I grab a paper towel to help wipe things up, and Owen allows it, turning back to his food. He ignores my overbearing attentiveness like he ignores my tears. He doesn’t seem to see them, but this is something I take comfort in. If he doesn’t see my pain, then perhaps he isn’t perceiving this fussy, neurotic, heartbroken parent that circumstance has morphed me into. And maybe if he continues to believe in the kind, loving parent I have always strived to be — the one who taught him that no matter what happens, I will fix it — he won’t ever realize that I have sold him a lie.

Cancer, it turns out, isn’t something I can fix.

Tears roll down my cheeks. There is a subtle but distinct satisfaction on Owen’s face. He laps up his meal slowly, staying vigilant even though his tongue doesn’t work the way that it used to. It doesn’t allow him to ingest much, but this is still better than what he could do two weeks ago, when I was feeding him through a tube.

I watch him from a distance, rooting him on and hoping beyond hope that the calories will slow down his rate of weight loss, and I am reminded, as I so often lately am, of Carter.

That Owen was born on the exact same day as the family dog we lost when I was a teenager has always felt significant. The idea that while Carter was lying there on the table, looking up at us as we tearfully said our goodbyes, Owen was somewhere else being brought into the world felt special. Fated, even: one life ending while another began.

Carter died of cancer, too.

His was of the stomach, while Owen’s is of the mouth, but it’s ironic in the worst possible way: their connection revealed to be a circle, extending beyond life, and even their appetites, to death. Carter only seemed to care about food, too, but while he enjoyed many long years of a longer-than-expected life, Owen is fading at just half of his.

We have reached the agonizing end much too soon, only this time it is not my parents making the difficult decision. It is my husband and I who must decide when, exactly, he is going to die, after years of doing everything we can to keep him happy, healthy, and alive.

I try not to think about these things. They make my chest hurt, like there is a heavy weight that makes it hard to breathe. They make my heart feel like it’s being torn in half. They remind me that the end is coming, but I will deal with that when it does. It hasn’t yet, dammit, and I don’t want death and all of its changes to get all of the attention and power.

I can focus on it later; I can focus on me later.

Right now, I need to focus on him. I need to stay vigilant in order to do what the vet suggested: to make our one and only goal the minimizing of his suffering.

I don’t want him to suffer for my sake. That wouldn’t be fair. But it’s difficult to just go about my day, trying to play video games and scratching his little head, not knowing if today will be his last. Sometimes I’m able to forget, but other times it hits me out of nowhere — a thought; a memory; a glimpse of his failed attempts at grooming himself with his swollen, dribbling tongue — and my insides practically burst.

This isn’t fair.

He’s only 10.

We were supposed to get so much more time.

I don’t want him to die.

…Owen is finished eating. I know this because he lifts his head from his bowl once more, only this time he turns away from his food and pads over to the edge of the counter. I grab a tissue and get closer to him, his little sallow face tilting upward to allow me better access to clean his coated mouth. I wipe, he closes his eyes, and I feel a deep and palpable understanding between us. He knows that whatever I am doing, I am doing to help him. He accepts it with only some irritation, which is more than I can say for my attempts to help him clean his legs and balding, raw, and matted backside.

When I am done, I give him a kiss on his forehead, which he also tolerates.

“All done?” I ask him.

His tail flicks to the left and then to the right, his form of an answer. He licks his lips, looks back at the amount of food still in his bowl as if asking himself the same question, then dives back in for thirds.

I can’t help but smile, glad that he’s still got some of his appetite. But before I can get around to having the inevitable next thought (that he will lose it and be gone someday very soon) I lean over the kitchen table and whip out my phone to distract myself. Trying to find something, someone, or something to fixate on — and fast — I wait for him to need me, and I allow myself to pretend, if only for a moment, that he isn’t really dying.

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