“Just press this button when you’re ready,” the woman said after handing me my friend of 14 years. Then she closed the door so we could sit together in that quiet, comfortable room for as long as I needed to say goodbye.
That was cool.
Because I’ve lost many cats, but I’ve never gotten to say goodbye in such a soothing manner. And many times, I didn’t get to say goodbye at all.
Especially to my sweet boy Oz, a fluffy orange kitten I found crying up a tree. After eight years with us, he got very sick right before I was flying to visit family in Denmark, and died in the hospital before I got back home.
But the one good thing to come out of all the time and money my husband spent trying to give Oz, who was still a relatively young man, every chance to keep living — and yes, for me to see him again — was how respectfully that hospital treat both Oz and my husband at the end.
So when it came time to say goodbye to Bootsy, we went back to that hospital to put ourselves in the hands of their kind, respectful staff.
They began the process by giving me a quiet room before taking Bootsy into the back with the doctors. When they returned him to me, he was wrapped in a blanket, which helped hide the catheter now in his leg for administering medicine.
“Take as much time as you need,” the woman said after handing me that very skinny, but still very handsome, tuxedo cat, explaining that if I didn’t want to be present for his last moments, she would take him back to the doctor when I was ready. But if I wanted Bootsy to stay with me, the doctor would come to us after I pushed the button.
Wearing a Bigfoot shirt I chose in honor of his brother, Sasquatch, who died suddenly a year earlier at 14, I sat with Bootsy and thought about how much nicer this goodbye was than all the others, even the other very expected one I had with another black and white cat I had for 20 years.
Because while the vet who put that dear friend to sleep had also been incredibly kind and respectful, the process was much more disturbing: Standing at a table which we already associated with countless stressful visits, watching my beloved friend be poked with a needle under fluorescent lights, then being left with his limp body in the room where I would later take our much younger cat, was a distressing way for us both to spend his last moments.
Not like being given a calming room reserved for just such occasions, sitting down with him wrapped in my arms, allowed to quietly say goodbye for as long as I wanted.
“It’s OK, Bootsyman,” I whispered to him at the very end, and when the doctor bent over him, he said, “Goodbye, Bootsyman.”
That was very cool.
Coolest of all, though, is how Bootsy and his brother chose us to be their humans.
Hear that story and see both cats in the video below:
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