by W.D. Ehrhart
Last Friday was a very sad day for me, my wife Anne, and my daughter Leela. We had to euthanize our cat Beanie, who had been with us for nearly 22 years. That’s almost half of Anne’s and my 45 years of marriage. And as anyone who’s ever loved a pet knows, Beanie was a member of our family. She wasn’t like a family member; she was a family member.
Our daughter Leela and her then-boyfriend found Beanie in the boyfriend’s yard one cold November night when Beanie was maybe five weeks old and weighed barely a pound. Beanie had gotten separated from her mother somehow, and probably wouldn’t have survived the night. But she ended up surviving longer than any previous cat either my wife or I had ever had, and we both have had cats all of our lives.
I suppose because Beanie was being handled by people so early in her life, she was friendly with everyone, and very tactile. She was completely comfortable being touched. She even seemed to enjoy having her tummy rubbed, which many cats object to and let their humans know it. She often sat with us and on us, and regularly slept under the covers with us. I’ve known and had some very affectionate cats, but Beanie was in a class by herself.
We knew, of course, that the end would come eventually. Most cats make it into their mid-teens at best: 15 or 16, maybe17. So we were surprised and delighted when Beanie made it to 20. And then 21. Our veterinarian said that he didn’t know how she’d made it this far, but whatever we were doing, we should just keep doing it.
But at some point after she turned 21, arthritis in her hips began to affect her mobility. Then in April, Beanie started having difficulty with bowel movements. She started getting shots for the arthritis, and we actually were giving her a small amount of a laxative daily, and these measures seemed to help with her bowels. But then she started having difficulty again. Earlier this week, the vet even gave her an enema, but two days later, she was once again struggling.
Indeed, she could no longer control her bodily functions. And she would periodically crawl under my desk where it was hard to reach her. She would occasionally come out for water, and still seemed eager to accept our attention and affection. But she was clearly trying to tell us that she’d had enough. She was ready.
We weren’t, but how could we ever be? And we could not let her go on struggling. Fortunately, our daughter and her fiancée, who live 20 miles away, were able to come within a few hours, and the four of us took Beanie to the veterinary clinic. She passed away peacefully with all of us touching and stroking her.
As I type this, I am sitting here crying again. I expect that will keep happening for a good while. I have to keep making myself see again our dear little Beanie struggling to move her bowels to remember that we did what she was asking us to do. That it really was time. That we had had her in our lives for nearly 22 years. And that they had been years filled with love for Beanie, and—in her little cat way—Beanie’s love for us.
But I’ve had to stop writing already multiple times in the process of trying to write just the paragraph above. My wife tells me I should just go ahead and cry, that tears are how we cope with grief and eventually come to terms with it and learn to live with it, and I am letting myself cry. But also finding myself thinking about other occasions when I’ve had to cope somehow with grief.
When my father died in 1988, I was sad, but my father and I had had a difficult relationship, and I don’t remember crying at all. A year later, when our cat Miranda died, I cried uncontrollably for a long time. I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
It’s true that Miranda had been Anne’s cat when we first started dating, and the fact that Miranda approved of me—Miranda didn’t usually like men—actually had something to do with Anne deciding I might be okay after all. Still, Miranda was a cat, and Reverend Ehrhart was my father! I’ve always wondered about that, but maybe it was just plain safer to let the tears flow for Miranda. Maybe if I’d started crying for my father, I might never have stopped. I don’t know.
I do know that if I am honest with myself, I have missed Miranda more than I’ve missed my father. And I will miss Beanie as well. Indeed, losing Beanie at this point in my life, when I am 77 and surely won’t be around all that much longer myself, creates a hole in my life that I seriously doubt will ever be filled.
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W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.