He was my cat.

I have to do it. I have to write a sappy post about Duncan. 


For those of you that don't know, Duncan unexpectedly died on Monday. He had been kind of drowsy all week, but I just thought it was the colder weather. He's always been sensitive to temperature changes, so it didn't strike me as odd that he spent most of the week sleeping in the closet. By Sunday he had stopped eating and drinking and could barely stand. When he stopped purring I knew something was really wrong. We took him to an emergency vet Monday morning. While she was treating him for dehydration and a possible bacterial infection his heart and lungs basically just shut down. After he died she found tumors in both his lungs and his brain, and said that it was lymphosarcoma.

I knew when we took him in that it was likely we were going to have to put him down, but I didn't expect him to just die while he was being treated. I had signed a DNR order and gave him a quick pat on the head before leaving the hospital. But I figured we would get a chance to come back and say goodbye before he got the shot. That wasn't the case and now I feel bad because I just dropped him off and left him there to die. He was such a happy little cat and it makes me really upset to think about how sick and sad he was, surrounded by people he didn't know in a strange place. 

And the fact that he was such a young cat (only 5 years old) makes it only that much sadder. He was a healthy, active cat that should have lived to 20 years or so. And that's what we were all expecting. He and Lily were fast becoming friends. She would squeal and clap whenever he appeared in a room, and he would come over and let her try to pet him. He was fascinated when she started crawling and standing up. In the afternoons we would all sit together in the living room and play together. Cat toys and baby toys are remarkably similar, as are cat and baby attention spans. 


I could write forever about all the ridiculous things Duncan and I have done together. He was my companion through graduate school while Joe was deployed, we've moved across the country 3 times together, he's escaped more times than I can count but always found his way back, and he never met a person he didn't like. Duncan, you were my cat, you were my friend.