After the necessary paperwork, the process itself was relatively calm; he complained a bit, but only half-heartedly (a sign by itself of how weak he'd gotten). We set him down on the pink towel we've been keeping in the carrier as a touchstone during the relatively frequent trips to the vet this year. She examined him, confirming that he was as sick as we thought. The dehydration was fairly serious, the cancerous mass had gotten quite large, and kidney failure was beginning to set in. So she gave him a sedative so that he would be calm for the final injection; we skritched and held him a bit as he got tired. Then she shaved a bit of fur from his right foreleg, and we held him as she gave the shot, keeping up a steady soothing patter as she did so. We both sobbed like babies -- if anything, it was even more visceral an experience than I'd expected. That said, I suspect it was good for us: as
My only error was looking into his eyes a bit too closely.
We sat quietly for a few minutes, still crying a bit and stroking him. Once we were done, and dealt with the final paperwork, she swaddled him in the pink towel and took him away. The two of us just hugged for a very long time, and then went back to the mundane world. Despite not moving out of the living room, the sensation of moving from ritual space to mundane space was very dramatic, and quite intentional on both of our parts -- we needed to distract ourselves a bit, to immerse ourselves in trivia rather than wallowing too much. So I brought in the laundry as she did the dishes, we both gave Merlin (who slept through the entire proceedings) a good skritch, and went on with life...
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