Merlin: a tribute to a cat I love

Merlin was cradled in Julie’s arms like a baby while I gently stroked his head and whiskers. I had figured out (through 6 years of trial and error) the way he most enjoyed it. An hour went by this way, and my shoulder ached from the repetitive motion of stroking, but I kept at it because I knew he liked it. He even started to purr.  

We knew that, at any time, we could push the button on the wall. Then the doctor would enter the room, take out her syringes, and end the life of this cat that we love. 

They told us we could have as long as we wanted with Merlin in the “euthanasia room.” Having as long as you want is beautiful and also terrible. How do you decide when the right moment is to end your cat’s life? Do you do it right away? Obviously not. Do you stay there all night? Then you risk being kicked out, or worse, his last moments being painful rather than pleasant ones. 

I was grateful for a Schelling point to help with the impossible decision – we learned that the doctor who had been caring for him was going off duty soon. We told the staff to let her know that we wanted her to be the one to do it before she left for the night.

I tried to memorize the feeling of Merlin’s fur running between my fingers. It was like tufts of velvet. I buried my face in his fur and tried to memorize his smell. Usually, deeply earthen, almost like the smell of wet clay. But now, with an added sharp note of rubbing alcohol.

The euthanasia room was pleasantly arranged, with a small sculpture with running water. It was also a bit too cold, especially after sitting in there for two hours. The only other bad thing about the room, other than its very nature, was a giant picture of a very sad-looking dog with a saccharin message written on it about hope. This is a picture for a pre-treatment room, not a euthanasia room. You go to this room when there is no hope left.

The contrast between how well Merlin seemed and how sick we knew he actually was blew our minds. What if we just snuck out of the hospital with him and brought him home? Maybe this was all some kind of horrible misunderstanding.

When the doctor finally came in, we could see the compassion in her eyes. She calmly explained to us the series of injections she was going to give Merlin – first general anesthesia, then saline, then a medication to stop his heart, and then more saline. She said that he would be fully asleep before his heart stopped. She promised us he would not feel any pain.

I asked her to wait a moment. He had gotten distracted by the doctor, and I wanted to make sure his last moments were calm. I gave him some more gentle strokes on the forehead and around the ears. He calmed down. I looked at Julie for confirmation and then at the doctor and told her it was time. 

We were in shock at how fast it happened. It takes literally less than 90 seconds to go from someone you love to lifeless fur. We looked at each other with tears streaming down our faces. Our hearts were broken. How could it be that he is now gone? Our brains couldn’t comprehend it. He was peering into our eyes just moments ago. It took millions of years to evolve these incredible beings and thousands of years of partial domestication, but 90 seconds for one of their lives to end. Can life really be that fragile?

Three days before, everything had seemed normal. He had spent the day watching birds at the window sill, trying to figure out how to play (mostly unsuccessfully) with his new cat sister, getting the occasional pet, and sleeping.  

Two days before, he had seemed sluggish. Not quite so bouncy on his stay. Maybe just a bit sleepy? 

One day prior, we realized that he hadn’t been eating much. We weighed him and were surprised to realize he had lost weight – something that we’d never seen happen before.

Maybe it’s just a stomach bug? Maybe his stomach hurts, and he can’t eat much?

I wasn’t too worried. Julie felt that something was really wrong. I trusted her judgment, even though his symptoms didn’t seem so worrying. 

So we cleared our work schedules (it’s hard to believe, but that was this morning), and we planned to take Merlin to the vet regardless of whether they said there was an opening. We’d just wait until they let him in. Thankfully, they did so right away. 

I got a call from the doctor that afternoon. Merlin has a fever and inflammation in his abdomen. A worrying sign but too non-specific for them to diagnose him. They recommended we come to pick him up and take him to an animal hospital immediately, which we did. 

Merlin was a very big boy. About the size of two normal-sized non-obese cats. Merlin was muscular and swayed his hips like a tiger when he walked. He had a majestic, confident, and semi-wild look. He was social and loving but also fierce. Many of our friends simultaneously loved and feared him – which, now that I write it, reminds me of Machiavelli’s famous advice for princes. I also loved and feared him. I learned that if he wanted to play, then it was time to bring out a dangling toy for him to hunt – otherwise, you might be the prey!

The only things that Merlin really feared were balloons and men in boots. Whenever someone working in our building came into our apartment, he would commando crawl to the closest hiding spot and stay there for two hours. One time, we were sent a big bouquet of balloons for my birthday. Its string got wound around his tail somehow, and he tried to run away, only to have the terrifying experience of the balloons following him around the house.

Merlin was a people cat. He would want to be in whatever room you were. If we closed the door, leaving him on the other side, he’d stand at the door and meow pitifully until we let him in. Then he’d flop down near us. 

He would hang out by my feet on the chaise, and I would often stroke him behind his ears or gently rub his whiskers. On weekends, when Julie was away, he would be so excited to see me in the morning that he’d press himself against me while I attempted, with difficulty, to walk around in order to do my morning routine.

One of Merlin’s greatest achievements was reinventing the concept of blackmail. He discovered that it was not possible for us to get him out if he jammed himself into the space within my bedside table. Our only hope was to lure him out with a treat. This soon became a nightly ritual. Eventually, we didn’t even need the blackmail anymore – he knew he would get his before-bed treat regardless. But part of the deal is that we’d make him work for it – he’d have to give high fives when we asked and do a spin when we made a hand gesture. Some nights, I would give him “the mother load” and dump far more treats out than usual for him to enjoy. Just to reward him for being himself.

Merlin and I developed a language together. It involved using my wireless scale. If he weighed himself while I was eating food, he would always get a taste of a cat-safe portion of it. If he weighed himself when I wasn’t eating, then that meant I should try to pet him. If he dodged my pet, then that meant he wanted to play. So, I would first try one of the toys that I would swing to make him run and jump. If he didn’t go after it, then that meant he wanted to lazy play. I would dangle a toy just over him while he flopped on his back, and he’d attack it in a leisurely manner without even having to move. 

It breaks my heart that he is gone. Sadness is a funny thing. If a human described sadness to an alien, the alien might assume that when someone you love dies, you feel sad continuously for a long time. But for humans, or for me, at least, it comes in waves. A sudden swelling, like being punched in the gut with emptiness. And then, a few minutes later, it’s gone. The world is okay, and then – whoosh – it’s back again, and you feel queasy, and now the fact is staring you in the face again that the world is no longer okay, that it’s now missing something that was deeply important to you – forever.

Many people reported that Merlin had something magical about him. So, it was fitting that he was named after a wizard. But we didn’t name him – we meta-named him. Shortly after getting him, we ran a study where we showed pictures of him, along with a description of his personality, to 200 people, and they submitted name ideas. We then looked at names that more than one person had submitted, leaving us with “Merlin” and “Chester.” Our friend told us that Chester brings up the phrase “Chester, the molester.” We hadn’t heard that phrase before, but being on the fence, it was the feather that tipped us toward Merlin. 
 
Merlin was a mischievous and very goofy cat. He often liked to lick zip-lock bags. The noise of him doing so was shockingly loud – his tongue was basically like sandpaper. One of our cat sitters reported having no clue what that sound was or where it was coming from until she eventually found him hidden in a drawer, licking a zip lock bag into shreds.

When we got home, he would run to the door in a mad dash, dart past or between our legs, and go for an adventure in the hallway. Eventually, we stopped trying to prevent this, and it became part of our daily routine to follow him in the hall while he explored and sniffed around. Every once in a while, a neighbor would emerge by chance and, upon seeing him, exclaim something like, “Is that a cat?? But he’s so big???”

Another time, when I was in the shower, for no clear reason, he decided to leap onto the show curtain and then cling to it with his claws. This immediately caused the bar holding up the curtain to collapse, and to my great shock, the bar, cat, and curtain all tumbled to the ground.

Once, when I was alone with him, I couldn’t find him anywhere in the house. I began to panic. After eliminating all of his favorite hiding spots, I started checking weirder and weirder places. I finally found him sitting calmly inside a closed bathroom cabinet – he had opened it, climbed in, and then the door closed behind him.

Another crowning mischievous achievement was when he stole the sticky tape from the back of one of our paintings, one piece at a time. When I noticed him trying, I would stop him. Then, one day, the painting just fell off the wall onto my head (thankfully, I was not injured).

Today, at the cat hospital, I was a bit concerned, but the news was still very vague. His abdomen was swollen, but they had no idea why, so they gave him an ultrasound.

The doctor came in and gave us news. I tried to read on her face what it was going to be. She seemed calm, which gave me some relief. But then she blurted it out: a cancerous mass in his small intestine. Merlin was only 6 years old. Maine Coons often live 15 years.

The doctor explained that removing the mass would be a very dangerous type of surgery. Should we biopsy it or just wait for the serum test to come back first? How great is the infection risk from a biopsy? I pressured the doctor for probabilities – what’s the chance that the serum test will be inconclusive and, therefore, a biopsy will be needed regardless? Doctors don’t like to give probabilities. I changed tactics. “If it were your own cat, would you biopsy right away or wait to get the serum test back first?” “I hate when people ask me that.” She said, looking momentarily stricken by grief. She has cats of her own. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I can go take a closer look at the serum cells – if there are lots of cells there, the serum test is likely to be conclusive, so no biopsy will be needed.” We thanked her.

When she returned to the room, her voice was different. She was not calm anymore. “He has sepsis,” she said. “We could do emergency surgery. He would be fairly likely to die during the surgery. If he survives, he’ll be fairly likely to die a few days after surgery. But if he survives that too, you can put him on chemotherapy, and he might live 6-12 months.”

That’s the moment when your heart lurches, and suddenly, it is real. Before that moment, it was hazy, a cloud of possibilities. Now, death was staring into my eyes, inches from my face.  

“Would you do the surgery if he was your cat?” I asked. “No. No, I wouldn’t.” We called our cat’s main doctor. Merlin’s life is worth a second opinion. He told us we can keep fighting – that it is our right not to give up – but that the right choice is to stop fighting.

How could it have progressed so far? The doctor explained to us that cats are masters of masking their pain. In the wild, they have the strange predicament of simultaneously being predator and prey – and as potential prey, they never want to appear weak. Five months prior, they found nothing wrong with him during his checkup. I could not help but replay subtle interactions over the past months and wonder – was there any sort of sign that I had missed?

Tributes are a strange thing. They pretend to be for the dead, but the dead can never benefit from them. They are stranger still when they are about a cat. Even if you could get a cat to understand what a tribute is, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t care. So tributes are about the dead, but for the (temporarily) living. And, of course, most of all, they are for the tribute writer to do something that feels productive with their despair. 

I still can’t believe that this happened today. It’s uncanny to have someone you love be missing. Hearing me crying, Merlin’s cat sister just nuzzled up beside me. There’s no way she knows yet that her brother is gone forever. But she seems to know I could use her affection.

I’m sure that some people reading this think that it’s ridiculous to love a cat. I think that if you have one nearby, it’s ridiculous not to.