anguish

I am a tearful zombie today. It has become obvious that I can no longer keep one of my companion cats. I must surrender him to the shelter as soon as I can bring myself to do it and am devastated. We are bonded and I love him like crazy but he has issues that make him drain my positive energy too much.

He is 10 years old and has had a good life. I say it that way because I know he is not adoptable and will probably be euthanized. Do NOT try to convince me I am a horrible person. I already feel that way. My niece gave him and his “brother” to me because after nine years they could not handle him anymore. He is very stressful to have. He is what is known as a “scarf and barf” cat. In spite of feeding him food for a sensitive stomach and doing other recommendations from the vet, he eats too fast and throws up a lot. Some weeks it’s multiple times a day. This is not hairball-related, and yes, I have tried special bowls to slow him down. Don’t get on my case. I have tried everything and this is tearing me apart.

He is also very aggressive and gets in my face and his brother’s face regularly. It’s nice up to a point, as he often just wants to extreme snuggle, but overall it’s invasive. He also has very long, very sharp claws that he cannot seem to control. I am covered with scars and scabs and fresh bleeds, not because he tries to hurt me. It never happens in anger, just every time he needs leverage to hang onto me or push off to go somewhere else. When he is happy and kneading me it includes painful claws, although he is purring at the time. My clothes all have holes from loving this animal.

He is abusive to his brother, regularly biting him in the back of the neck when he is sleeping. His brother is very meek and shows signs of trauma from this.

Many of my days begin with the sound of him wretching. I am constantly cleaning up vomit from the carpet, from the cat tower, from furniture, from my comforter, from literally any surface. I often find it dried somewhere because I didn’t hear or see him do it. It is burdensome.

He can’t help it. I understand that. But it weighs me down on top of having chronic pain, depression, anxiety and other health issues, plus the relentless burden of being the sole caregiver without respite for my disabled husband who has no short-term memory or executive function. I have to do everything for him, including making all of his decisions about what he needs and when. He looks completely normal and is ambulatory, but cannot connect his thoughts to expressed words anymore. If he is watching a video and it ends he just sits there looking around with out the capacity to start another video or call out and let me know he needs help. It is an overwhelming and daunting way for me to have to live. Oh, and we have to move and I have no help to make that happen.

So I have to get rid of my sweet cat friend to try to minimize my stress. I have more to say, but… I have reached the character limit.