JANUARY 10 — One of my cats died last week.
The 13-year-old calico I'd had as a kitten was found in a drain, after going missing for days and was duly hastened to the vet.
She had a growth in her heart, which caused a pulmonary edema (fluid building up in her lungs) and the vet said that the prognosis was grim even with surgery.
He suggested the only option was to euthanise and I agreed.
Trying to prolong the life of a pet in an invasive and painful way was something I'd never supported.
If my cat was diabetic and needed insulin? Fine, I'd just learn to chase her around with a syringe.
However, she was old and in human years, nearly 70 with persistent digestive issues to the point I couldn't give her “human” food because it would just make her ill.
Animals won't understand why you'd leave them alone at the vet's and force them to endure painful procedures.
I feel it's just too cruel to subject much older animals to invasive surgery especially with low odds as I've known friends who've tried to save their aging pets, and they just ended up dying on the operating table.
I couldn't be there with her because I was too far away, at work, so my brother stroked her little head as she went under and sent me a video of her as she passed on to the realm of Morpheus.
He'd sent the video because I had asked him to tell her she'd been a good kitty, not that she would understand what that meant as of all my pets she was the least sharp knife in the drawer.
The vet bill was a thousand ringgit, and perhaps some of you would perhaps think it was a steep price to pay.
Maybe the gods knew better than me what the fates had in store because the morning my cat was found, someone paid off a debt they'd owed me so I had money in hand so I didn't need to claw out my savings or charge it to a credit card.
I know I was lucky. Many pet owners often struggle with vet bills and face ridicule — why have a pet when you can't afford one?
It's simply because for some people, pets are themselves a lifeline. In my 20s and 30s when I struggled with major clinical depression and suicidal ideation, I got out of bed solely to make sure my pets ate.
Yes, I feel like dying but my pets will die if I don't go to work.
Some people have goals, some people have therapists or medications. I had one sticky ginger tomcat whose favourite place was wrapped around my ankle.
At the same time I know full well that it is a privilege to be able to pay that much when that amount of money would have fed a poor family for a month.
It sickens me to read about how in Canada, the disabled and ill are pressured into choosing euthanasia instead of being offered accommodations for their situations.
We can't get you a better apartment so why don't you kill yourself? Sorry we can't give you access to a specialist so perhaps consider just dying.
The alternative to not paying the vet was to watch my cat slowly over days starve and struggle to breathe, while being in immense pain.
Yet offering euthanasia to a human when there are far more options, when a human has the right to choose life and could very well live if society and governments step in feels like cruelty and not mercy.
I also think about the many strays that are killed indiscriminately at pounds, culled in ways that are inhumane and their last minutes being filled with terror and pain.
It's not much different from how we round up foreigners except instead of killing them, we leave them open to assault and illness in crowded immigration depots that are little better than stray animal pounds.
When we repatriate some to their countries of origin, we ignore that we are signing their death warrants.
There shouldn't be a weighting of human or even animal lives; there should be no assigning of value, no quibbling about costs.
Yet here we are in the 21st century where instead of a utopia we are reminded again and again that a corporation's hypothetical life is considered more important than the people that make up a corporation.
What can ordinary people do in the face of reminders of the injustice of the world and the cruelty of some of our peers?
Sometimes all we can do is hug our pets and send them off when it's time, to spare them the pain they helped us forget while they were still alive.
My cat was dying from a growth in her heart but I'm glad she was around to help keep my own heart beating.
Goodbye, Savant. You really were a good kitty.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
