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She sat motionless, waiting. It would be just a few moments now. It was coming. Thank God it was coming.
He gently stroked her back. It was more for his sake. She was beyond being comforted. The pain had become unbearable now. She set her head down and her eyes turned to slits. She waited.
The pain had crept into her body and first began to take hold four months ago. It started deep in her abdomen, a sort of unpleasant ache, and quickly became a persistent hot stab. Stomach cancer, the doctor had said. She didn't understand him, but she could tell by his tone and by their reactions that it was bad.
The pain escalated over the following weeks. The medication didn't even touch it anymore. She stopped eating. She stopped moving. She no longer wanted to breathe. In a few moments, she wouldn't have to. Finally, she was going to be released.
And she had lived a good life. A life filled with perfect little window perches, plenty of sunlight, naps on the old furnace, miles of yarn, and the occasional bit of fresh tuna right from the can. She had seen her humans live through a marriage, a birth, a divorce, a graduation, a death. She had lived half her life with an idiot of a dog she both loved and hated. She had used at least four of her nine lives after she chewed the leaf off of a day lily and spent a week in the hospital, her kidneys finally and miraculously recovering from the insult.
She had been loved. Loved to tiny bits. Dragged around the house when Stephen was only two, his little arms wrapped around her chest, her floppy body carried aimlessly throughout the house. And she had even tolerated the harness, the pink one with the shiny little jewels, knowing it was the only way she was allowed outside. Eventually all of the neighbors knew her, The Cat Who Went For Walks. She loved those walks, nose sniffing the air, tail erect and proud.
She had even had a litter of her own, and had experienced the wonder of single parenthood in the back of the quiet bedroom closet.
Yes, it had been a very good life. A wonderful seventeen years. But now it was time to go, and she was ready.
They were wiping their eyes. There were tears, so many tears, in that room. So much sadness. She longed for peace.
"Would you like me to go ahead?"
Yes, she meowed silently in her mind. Yes. Please. I need this.
They were nodding. More tears.
She closed her eyes now. And it came. First the gentle prick of the needle, then the drug coursing through her body. She welcomed the feeling, exploring it, feeling the relief set in. The pain finally began to lessen. The sobs became muffled. She drifted further and further away, until finally, she was home and alive once again.
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