we took my cat to the vet and had him killed. i know you're supposed to say 'put to sleep' or 'put down,' but those phrases don't quite cut it with me. we brought him there alive, and took him home dead. it was very sad, saying goodbye to him at the vet's office. the first thing the vet did was to tranquilize him, and leave us alone for a few minutes with him. so after he is all relaxed from the tranks and we've had some time to say our final goodbyes, the vet comes in with the real thing. this is an injection that must go into a vein. (another reason for the tranquilizer, so there are no mess ups from the animal jerking away at last second) and that is it. the injection stops the heart. the vet listened with a stethoscope to be sure. and then kato is dead.
ephelba cried. we had left boy at home. he knew what was going to happen, but we thought it would be too much for him to actually watch it happen. he is a very sensitive and caring boy. i let him see kato when we got back home with him. i buried him next to the house in a cardboard box. i still miss him, i still expect to see him, i keep turning, expecting him to come out from a quiet corner or from behind a door. i don't think he'll ever be totally gone from me. kato and i found each other about sixteen years ago, just after i had separated from my first wife. he was too little to be separated from his mother and was slowly starving when a friend of mine found him.
i had decided that i now wanted a cat. it was a big change for me, having been a dog person most all my life. i wasn't going to be home enough for a dog, but i wanted the companionship, so cat it was. i was testing my theory that all you have to do to get a cat is to tell three different people that you want one. it worked like a charm, i only had to tell one person. she worked on at the local community college where the young kato was abandoned. she intervened and stopped a group of boys who were throwing sandwich bits at him, who knows why. they said that they were trying to coax him out from under a bush where he had retreated. well, my friend just reached in there and scooped him up and kept him in her office until the end of the day and then called me to get him. and so i did. he had yellow parking lot paint on him (they had just repainted the parking lot that day) and was covered in dirt and fleas. he got his first (and last) bath that evening, ending up so fluffy and cute, all jet black and lovely green eyes. he would sleep all nestled up under my chin. at that time, i was working nights. i would come home about 6:00 am, and kato would come trotting down the stairs every day to say hi to me. then we would go back upstairs to hit the sack for a few hours, with kato like a fur stole about my neck. he was my first cat, the king of all cats.