Ember

In the beginning, there was a cage.  It sat behind closed doors in the office of the local Humane Society where the kids and I volunteer, isolated from all the other cats.  When I peered through the bars, I understood why.  Four kittens stared up at me and I stared back with fear.  One kitten, who would later be known as Ember, had an eye that was clouded over and weepy and that appeared as if it belonged to something dead, while the eye of one of his littermates was sealed shut, the tissue around it an angry red and swollen like the flesh of a puffer fish.  Nothing had prepared me for that sight, and the paper fastened to their cage warning about the importance of handwashing and taking care not to spread their infection left me all the more anxious.  Whatever this horror show was, I didn’t want to bring it home to our cats.  In the beginning I didn’t handle them any more than necessary and I told the kids to keep their distance, but as a volunteer I felt duty bound to learn how to safely address their needs, and soon enough my anxiety began to ease.  I came to understand that this was probably a common, typically mild virus that was simply behaving with ferocity because their young immune systems were ill prepared to fight back and because they hadn’t gotten the medical support they needed.  I started to relax a bit.  I told the kids that they could take the kittens out if they wanted, so long as they followed strict hygiene practices.

 

In those very earliest days, I never allowed myself to truly see Ember.  Keeping some emotional distance from the animals housed at the shelter was a coping mechanism.  The first time I really, truly saw him was when Lily introduced him to me.  He was stretched out across her lap, belly side up, paws splayed.  This is an incredibly vulnerable position for a cat, but his expression conveyed contentment and trust.  Lily, clearly lovestruck, beamed down at him and declared “This is my son.”  She had only ever described one of our own cats that way, but seeing them together, I understood.  Their bond appeared sacred, and her love, untarnished by all the things that may have caused others to turn away, was as unconditional as that of a mother.  

 

Ember didn’t possess many of the cherubic qualities that most might consider conventionally cute.  His eye, besides appearing a bit grotesque, altered the symmetry of his face, making it appear lopsided.  He was a skinny little thing, his body full of sharp angles.  His shoulder blades protruded in a way that appeared a bit jarring against his small frame and his long legs bent at the joints with an exaggerated quality.  His tail was thin and rope like, reminding me of a rat’s, and when he hunched down, his spine rose up in a high curve, causing his fur to stick up from his back at still more harsh angles.  The fact that Lily picked him to call her son told me something about the purity of her heart that made me love her all the more.  She didn’t choose him based upon superficial qualities, as most tend to do.  She chose him out of the purest kind of love.

 

That night, I barely slept.  My mind whirled.  I thought of all the adorable, fluffy, healthy kittens at the shelter; so very many of them.  And I thought of him, sick, with his eye clouded over.  I felt this sense of premonition, that people would take one look at him through the bars of the cage and imagine the stress and the vet bills and instantly reject him, because after all, there were other kittens to love who were so much less complicated.  By the time all the other kittens had all gone off to their homes, he would no longer be so little, and then his chances would decline even further.  I considered how crushing it would be to Lily, to have to lock him back into his lonely cage at the end of each day and to be the source of yet another rejection.  Maybe it would have been crushing for me, too.  Of course, I couldn’t know for certain it would turn out that way.  Perhaps another volunteer would decide to take him, or maybe he would pull at someone else’s heartstrings.  But there was also his sister, who had needs similar to his, and few people would be in a position to take in two cats with high medical needs and the expenses that came with that.  The solution seemed clear.  Lily needed him, and he needed us. 

 

Adam was initially resistant to the idea of adopting a fourth cat, but he agreed to meet the little guy.  We returned to the shelter, where Lily scooped Ember up in a loving embrace.  Only, this time was different.  He was limp in her arms and looked like he was dying.  Before the night was over, we had talked it through and come to a mutual understanding.  Adam agreed that we could adopt Ember, but we all acknowledged that he might not make it.

 

I reached out to the shelter’s director the following morning to express our interest, but in doing so, we came to learn that he had been living in a hoarding situation and that the owner had not surrendered legal rights.  He had simply brought them to the shelter in search of temporary medical care.  Trying to force him to hand the cats over would require more resources than the underfunded, understaffed shelter had access to.  We would need to wait and see whether he was willing to give the cats up.  The weeks that followed were grueling.  I knew the shelter was doing the best with the resources they had, but money was scarce, the sole part time staff member was dealing with an overwhelming surge in need, and much of the care was being provided by an assortment of volunteers.  I doubted medication was being given consistently.  During this time, his sister (whose eye had also been destroyed by the virus) lost control of her legs, collapsed in her water bowl and died in transit to the vet.  I anxiously awaited the day we might be able to bring Ember home.  I told myself that once we did, we would be able to provide him with things they could not, and we could nurse him back to health.

 

When Ember’s human at last agreed to hand over the kittens, we were ecstatic!  Before taking him home, I brought him to the vet, seeking assurance that it would be safe for our other cats and also eager to start things off on the right foot for him.  I knew he was unwell and wasn’t surprised to be told that he had a severe respiratory infection, a badly damaged eye, an ear infection and what was then believed to be an umbilical hernia (they would later discover during surgery that it was actually a significant deformity of his abdominal ligaments).  As it turned out, he also had a heart murmur.  His vet wanted me to understand that it might be nothing, but it might also be serious.  Worst case, she told us, he might have a congenital condition and might die within the year.  My own heart sank, but I also knew that it changed nothing.  If he was going to die, he could spend his final months in a warm, cozy home being loved, or alone in a cage.  Adam agreed.  We already loved him.  It was too late to turn back.  It wasn’t even a question.

 

When the kids came home from school that day, I once again had to explain that he might not have a long life, but he could come home.  Our happiness overwhelmed anything else.  We hoped that the more ominous predictions would never come to pass.

 

His months with us were filled with ups and downs.  We alternated from one medication to the next and from one condition to the next.  One week we would celebrate his improved health and the next we would be rushing him in for emergency care or trying to figure out how to tackle a new and chronic ailment.  Everyone in the local veterinary office came to know him by name and I could sense that they loved him, too.  It was impossible not to.

 

His story is filled with so much sadness and suffering, and sometimes I wondered if he looked at the other cats and questioned why they were big and healthy, while his body appeared stunted and was constantly failing him.  At peak weight, he was still only seven pounds.  It often seemed as if he were part kitten, part old man, with his tiny body and his slew of ailments.  Yet, for most of his short life, I don’t think he saw his story as tragic.  When we first adopted him, I advocated to name him Ember because I wanted a name that meant “light”.  My wish for him was that his life going forward would be filled with light and that he could leave the darker chapters behind.  And, in a very literal sense, he did indeed surround himself with light!  As a kitten, he would drape his little body over my lamp every day and bask in its warmth and glow.  Later, he would sometimes perch on top of it, doing his best to maintain his balance.  But more often than not he could be found stretched out in the sun, pressing his body against the screen door in order to soak in every last ounce of its warmth.  Most cats adore sunlight, but he took that love to the next level, clinging to it with all his might.  But, more than a seeker of light, he was a giver of light.  He had an unsatiable zest for life and a tendency to get into all sorts of shenanigans.  He would try to leap up walls as if he believed he could climb them.  He would knock Gabe's Lego creations and rocks off dressers and react with glee to the explosion (the louder the better) before trotting off with a look of self satisfaction.  He would race up and down the stairs with his favorite toys while the attached sticks rattled noisily behind him.  He would stare in fascination as water moved through drainage tubes, as power lines swayed in the wind and as birds and squirrels danced around the back deck.  He would follow us around with persistent curiosity as we completed work and tasks, always interested in each new object and what we were doing, and frequently eager to “help”.  It might have driven us mad, except that his combination of excitement and innocence made him incredibly adorable, and so instead we smiled and reminded ourselves not to take life too seriously.  When his boundless energy finally wore out, he would snuggle up to us with the loudest, most soothing purr, jutting his chin into the air in a state of complete bliss as his little fangs protruded in a comical grin.  I have known a lot of cats and have loved a lot of cats, but Ember was one of a kind.  He was a tiny little guy with a huge spirit.

 

But despite his remissions and all the joy he managed to find on his good days, he was never truly well.  We had always believed he was likely inbred, as did the director at the shelter.  Moreover, it became evident that his early infection and chronic stress experienced as a kitten left his body vulnerable.  Despite some victories along the way, over time his health challenges only grew.  The treatments for one condition would conflict with the treatments for others.  His allergies caused difficulty breathing, but steroids could stress his vulnerable heart.  His FIC could lead to a life threatening urinary tract blockage, but the food used to help treat it risked triggering his allergies.  The treatment for FIP was the only way to prevent certain death, but involved the stress of daily injections, and stress was bad for his FIC.  Over the months we spent thousands of dollars on veterinary care, and sometimes it would seem to pay off and we would be overjoyed by his progress, and then everything would come crashing down.  There were so many days I feared would be his last. 

 

We fought so hard to save his life, but eleven months after adopting him, things had taken a significant downturn.  After countless interventions, I watched as he struggled to move his head or his mouth to eat the food that he clearly desperately wanted, I watched his pain and confusion, and I no longer felt we were doing right by keeping him alive.  Somehow with Adam’s help I pulled through that despair and grabbed onto what little hope remained.  We were walked through the process of treating his FIP by a series of volunteers who made highly effective treatments available and who educated us about how to administer them.  I spent six hours driving in order to pick up five days worth of medicine from a volunteer living across state, and later that night I was pinning Ember down while Adam injected acidic FIP medicine into his side, hoping the rewards would make the pain worthwhile.  I was sure Ember would hate me for it, but soon after he dropped his toy bird as a gift at my feet and stared up at me, as if to say he forgave me.  I scooped him up and brought him to bed and he curled up at my feet for what would be the last time, looking peaceful.

 

I went to sleep with hope that maybe this would be “the” answer and things could finally turn around, but when I woke the next morning he didn’t swarm my feet with the other cats in pursuit of food, so I began to search the house for him.  I found him laying in the litterbox and immediately my heart sank.  We had been warned this could happen and I knew what it meant.  He had a urinary blockage, which was a life threatening emergency.  We could have sent him to the emergency vet for the weekend, spent thousands more on treatment and hope it would fix that one issue, but it wouldn’t fix the underlying condition, so the same thing could happen again.  And then there was the FIP, and the liver disease, and the possible heart disease, and the allergies, and all the unknowns, and I felt in my heart that even if we spent all the money in the world, which we didn’t have, and put him through dozens of tests and procedures, which would result in yet more stress and pain, his story was never going to have a happy ending.  He was only fourteen months.

 

Before heading off to the vet, we woke the kids and gave them time to say their goodbyes.  Soon after we were in an exam room at the clinic talking to his vet.  With her voice cracking, she confirmed his condition and agreed that given the big picture of all he was facing, euthanasia made sense.  She administered the sedative and Adam and I stroked Ember’s fur and told him how much we loved him as we wiped away tears and as our sweet little cat slowly slipped out of consciousness.  One more poke and his vet softly informed us that he was gone.  Everyone cried.

 

We brought his body home with the intent of burying him.  The other cats sniffed at him briefly and moved on.  I’m not sure they understood he was dead.  Even in death, he looked much as he had in life.  He was beautiful.  Later, Socks would roam the house, peering into each room, searching.  


In the end, burying him was too hard.  Adam brought his body back to the clinic and requested cremation.  I don’t know what we’ll do with his ashes.  Likely we’ll scatter them, but it’s hard to breathe when I think of him outside, alone in the bitter cold.  So, maybe we’ll keep them.  I don’t know.

 

There is so much I don’t know.  I don’t know why it had to be this way for him.  I know he was uniquely vulnerable, and maybe that was reason enough.  But maybe, and this is my worst fear, we could have done something differently that would have saved him.  There are so many questions left hanging that we will never truly know what he needed in order to be okay, or whether different diagnoses or more treatment would have made things better or worse.  We tried to do right by him, and I think we did, but we'll never know for certain, and having him gone will never feel right.  What I do know, though, is that for all the unbearable pain I feel, I will never regret loving him or welcoming him into our family.  There has never been and never will be another Ember, and we were so lucky that for however short a time, he was ours, and we were his.

 

We always knew it might end something like this, but somehow, we all failed to mentally prepare all the same.  Maybe part of him knew, too, because almost as if he suspected his life would be short, he seized every moment he had.  We rode his waves of happiness and suffering right along with him, and when at last his light went out, so did ours.  We are so profoundly sad, and I don’t know how our family can ever feel whole again without him.  This is not our first loss, but it has been a long time since one has hurt so much.

 

Little Ember-Ree…  I miss you beyond words.  We all do.  I saw a bird flying past the patio door yesterday as the sun shone its beams through into the kitchen and I thought of how much you would have loved basking in the sun and watching it.  It’s an agony to know that you can’t.  I wonder how I will ever walk by that spot again without crying.  I have cried so hard that my sinuses hurt almost as much as my heart.  I see your memory everywhere I look.  I pour over pictures of you, but they are just that; pictures.  The world will never be the same without you, and my love will never abandon you.  I’m so sorry, sweet boy.  I wish more than anything in the world that you were here with us.