Kitty Hospice—Tuesday | Life on a Colorado Farm

My precious, sweet, loving kitty–Sammy-Sam, is sick. Very sick. It all started this late summer, although, I didn’t realize it.

See his cheek on this side facing us?

He has a cancer growing there. It breaks my heart.

Sammy has been with us a long-long-long time. He is a year older than Blade, our grandson.

Right now all we can do is keep him happy…whatever that is–

Gradually the meat grinder of a cancer will completely close off his throat—it hasn’t yet—but the time is coming.

So I give him anything and everything he could ever possibly want to eat…Milk (yes Milk–he loves it and tolerates it.) He gets little dribs and drabs of it. Tuna in the canned for humans, which I mash up into teeny tiny bits, his very special roll on the ground it tastes so good expensive canned cat food, cooked chicken, beef, or turkey shredded into itsy bitsy pieces, and his all time favorite of all time…lunch meat sliced very thin—of which I once more tear into bits so small he can capture them on one claw and put them in his mouth.

When Boomer was horribly sick Sammy stayed by Boomer giving him strength and comfort–so now Boomer seems to have a watchful eye on Sam.

For years he slept on the bed, but since this slow suffocation has begun he likes to sleep in my sewing chair or by the wood stove—I check on him often throughout the night.

How can I not.

I also had to make the decision to ‘make’ him stay inside or to let him come and go as he wants.

I made the decision to let him come and go as he wants.

“You know”, I was told…”you might lose him out there. He just might die someplace out there on your farm and you won’t be able to find him”.

I know.

But he has always been and indoors/out-doors kind of cat. Mostly outdoors. I refuse to take his freedom away from him now.

So—-

Until that day comes, however it comes, I will do everything I can to make his life good.

I will still take him with me to gather wood in the wheel barrel, I will feed him whatever he wants, I have even got him some medical hemp to help him with pain management

And sometimes, well, lots of time, I will cry as I hold him, or when he and I sit quietly outside smelling the air, and I will tell him in no uncertain words how much I love him, but if and when he ready, even in the midst of my despair, I will honor his wish and let him go.