It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again*

I’m writing this longhand on the edge of “Possum Highway,” on high alert to protect the pooch from the skunks and opossums who frequent this stretch of our yard. It’s nearly 4 am on Easter Sunday, the hour I would have risen as a child to peek out my bedroom door for evidence of the Easter Bunny’s visit. Now, it’s the hour of watching people return from the clubs, listening to hawks search for breakfast, and waiting for a decent time to phone my husband so he can carry our hound up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. Just the start of another typical day at Lull HQ.

Three drops of water glisten on our Japanese snowdrop tree. Gravity pulls them into the squill below, one by one. The hubbub of human activity has ceased and the pooch and I have a rare starlit sky and predawn hush all to ourselves.

The pooch received a death knell this week from our vet. She’ll be 14 next month—the same age my precious first cat was when a vet sounded the death knell for her back in 1998. Kidney failure was the culprit for the feline. She would last a few more months or so with “juicing” (daily injections of subcutaneous fluids), but old age was taking her, claimed the vet.

And then, quite unintentionally, we had a pooch in our pantry (that’s where we kept the Spotted Thing initially until she and the White Thang got accustomed to each other). My first cat and our first dog became pals at first stare.

At the next health exam, the cat surprised the vet with perfect test scores—no signs of kidney disease. And she continued that way until she was a month shy of her 24th birthday, when cancer abruptly took her from us and from her canine best friend. Had I not been hopeful about the feline’s recovery, had I not been willing to spend the effort and money in sustaining her life back when she was 14, we would have missed 10 great years of her companionship.

“Never give out while there is hope; but hope not beyond reason, for that shows more desire than judgment.”
—William Penn

Could the pooch be in the same situation? Could she be nursed through this painful stretch? Yes, I understand the pooch is a much larger creature, which puts her years beyond the cat at this point. I understand the potential dire outcome of her current state of health. But how many pets are too soon given up on, too soon euthanised? And who would deny me hope?

It’s Resurrection Day for those who celebrate it. For me, it’s a renewal of optimism.

* Headline hails from Yogi Berra.