'Never just routine' The story of Tigger's euthanasia

The story below was shared with me informally via WhatsApp message by artist Cheryl Flowers, a friend from Hogsback, who took it upon herself to look after the venerable old tabby, Tigger, in his last years, including taking him from Hogsback to Makhanda with her, when she moved there. I thank her for allowing me to use it as the centrepiece for this article.

Throughout my time in Hogsback, Tigger was generally known as ‘The Edge’s cat’ – which he was! My late husband, Norman, had known him as a kitten and he was sure the dignified, independent creature was already around 30 by the time I moved to the mountain, because Norman had been there for that amount of time!

The star photo of Tigger that still hangs in a frame at The Edge. Photo: Simon Pamphilon

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The relationship between people and pets is a subject all its own. What I find fascinating about it is that, as in any close relationship between humans, the unique individuality of each being finds totally specific resonance with the unique individuality of the other. I have never been your typical ‘animal or pet-crazy person’. Certainly I find it impossible to “love” all cats and dogs, as some people are apparently able to do. Many pets resemble their owners so closely that I often feel quite bored by their nondescript presences, so tame and unsurprising have they become. Far worse are those pets who act out all their owners’ aggression, arrogance or unruliness, often much to their owners’ delight. However, I have known highly unique, independent-minded and self-respecting furred beings, who know their own strengths and weaknesses and whose souls my heart simply carries on carrying – one of them being my son’s cat, with whom I could literally communicate via telepathy at a time when I was still quite sceptical about matters like that (it actually happened by accident, after which I paid a little more attention). These days I swear his gorgeous, humorous, lithe little spirit still sometimes approaches me now and then, eight years after he died. We – my son, his father, his father’s partner and myself – had all been in attention the day Charlie died. I kept a wake over his corpse that night and the following day we buried him in a little, simple and light ceremony, as befitted his spirit. I do believe that the presence of our love, and the rituals we spontaneously performed, sealed living bonds between him and ourselves. 

Charlie in his 'shroud' - a childhood t-shirt from my son. So, when Cheryl shared the story of her trauma about having Tigger put down I asked her permission to publish it here. The story shares the conflict between her personal beliefs and what she submitted to on the advice of her perfectly well-meaning vet. I feel purposed to honour both Tigger and Cheryl by publishing her words – not because I want to push any particular belief or practice down my reader’s throat, or to suggest that any wrong was done. No, there is absolutely no accusation to be read into any of this post, please. My intention is simply to encourage you to examine your own feelings about the matter of euthanasia and to remember to take each moment for the gift it is. There are questions that do not admit of ‘principles’, questions that have their utterly unique answer, depending on all the complexities of a particular context – and one of those questions concerns how one dies, closely related to the question of how a being one loves dies. Very often, somebody else’s manner of dying is altogether beyond one’s own as well as their control. What happens, if that is the case? That is the question I would like to leave you with.    * * *  “Tigger passed away on 26th January this year from old age (he was 24 and a half years when he died). The last four months of his life were hard for him, because he grew more frail by the day, with heart-breaking symptoms of kidney failure. Even though he was still happy, he walked very slowly and lost a lot of weight and wobbled when he walked. I allowed the natural process to take place as I didn’t want to end his life – I personally believe that is murder. We had a close bond and I kept him comfortable and warm and took him to the vet often for checks and drips, etc. Only when he started to die, then Nicola said to me: "It’s time now, Cheryl.” What still gives me daily nightmares, though, is the memory of the emotions in his very expressive eyes just before he died. I was holding him and he felt the gradual shutoff coming on too quickly for him to understand. I felt terrible when I witnessed, first confusion, then total terror and panic in his eyes. I could read Tigger emotionally very well, like no other person could, not even the vet, because our souls were connected. Tigger's eyes after the first injection (a large sedative dose) were panicky and my heart went out to him, but there was nothing I could do. He had been an emotionally independent little fellow. His awareness shut down before Nicola administered her second injection (this was the one to gradually and completely stop his heart). But with the first one, I felt totally helpless to comfort him. It was very hard for both of us straight after the first injection. Poor Tigger looked absolutely desperate to know what was happening to him. I could see that in his eyes. I was heartbroken to lose him and it broke my heart more to read that expression in his eyes. It took me three months to mourn him and I still miss him terribly. He was a very special cat, little Tigger.” – Cheryl Flowers, December 2024

"My last moments with Tigger just after his little heart stopped beating. This was when I said a prayer for Tigger to commend his spirit to God."– Cheryl Flowers The panic Cheryl describes is something I take seriously as a ‘not ideal’ situation in relation to inevitable death. Could it be that the imposition of a human will that is acting ‘routinely’ is a problem for Life? Possibly, if Cheryl had been given a day, or even only an hour, to talk to Tigger, to explain to him what was going to take place, the panic may not have been there? I have no doubt that the cat knew his end was near, as did Cheryl of course. She says the shutoff came “on too quickly”. Does that not signal that anything ‘routine’, even ‘routine mercy’, is something to approach with alert caution, even with fear? Because, like birth, nobody’s, nobody’s death is ever just routine. That is the thought I believe Cheryl and Tigger’s shared experience is destined to spread amongst readers everywhere.  * * * – Silke Heiss, 15th December 2024

Me at The Edge with Tigger, 2019

Vitally important

Characters

My longest-standing friend
Her husband
My beloved

Bird

Me

Story

It crashed hard into the window pane, soft down feathers flew. We rose, alarmed, to see it on the tiles, breathing heavily. Its head, slightly up, laid itself down after a while.

"Not looking good," my friend said.

"But look at that heart," I pointed out.

She agreed: we both saw it pumping relentlessly, lifting the small, green torso up and down, up and down.

None of us dared go near the concussed creature, for fear of shocking him or her the more.

Time went by. Neither did the head lift nor did the heart stop beating.

Under my breath - what a vitally important place that is! - under my breath I asked whether there be guardian angels for birds as small as this, but I did not wait for an answer as I summonsed a guardian angel for this miniscule bloblet of warmth in the universe.

I pulled myself on my knees a little towards him and spoke softly and he blinked.

That gave me hope. "Hope is the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul."

No, I did not think of Emily Dickinson's poem while I was oaring myself towards the tiny being, willing it to know I meant no harm. Dickinson's poem is in my marrow and needs no conscious articulation.

I stroked it once, expecting it to take fright.

It seemed to relax. My friend's husband encouraged me to take it in my hands.

"Just don't let it fly into the house," warned my friend: the bird faced the open door into the house.

The two men stationed themselves in the door to discourage any thought of flight into the house.

I edged in from behind and lifted the bird. Its claws immediately gripped my fingers. A good sign. I stroked and spoke. It blinked, looked, turned its head. Perkily, actually.

My friend stepped outside and the bird pooped.

"That's a positive sign!" we chorused.

"He looks like he'll stay there forever," my friend's husband said.

Yes, the little soul was comfortable, albeit his eyes remained surprised at the shape his heaven seemed to be taking: full of great, featherless entities making strange sounds.

At length, I got up, rested my hands on the balcony railing near a tree and suddenly he fluttered away. Landed on a steep branch, hung on admirably.

I shook the poop off my fingers, it splashed on the tiles.

We went inside.

I was aware how we had left him to himself and to the guardian angel of his life's flame.

When we went out again, he wasn't there.

He'd asked for nothing.

In extremity, he'd given us all his trust.

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all."

Under your breath, in your marrow, in your hands - vitally important places!

The fragrant ground and I

If you want to live happily ever after - and whatever place or realm (on or off earth) you finally (or not so finally) end up in, presumably you do want that - it is a good idea to stop at times, turn around and take in the view presented by your life thus far.

I bet you it's an amazing landscape, which you may be glad not to have to traipse through again, but which you're justifiably really proud of having got through. I mean: look at those cliffs of conflict between yourself and others; curious wetlands, alternating with high-lying plateaux, of love, relationships and friendships; deserts and forests you survived of classes, courses, exams, jobs, all kinds of duties; rapids of ill-health; oceans of grief; lakes and waterfalls of indolence and fun; fruiting orchards of joy ...

If you keep looking, you'll be bragging before long about all your adventures and tests of endurance and how often you definitely had enough, but, somehow, here you still are. So claim your title: top topographer, flagbearer, first explorer! Which you are: since none of us have ANY competition when it comes to our own life paths. We're once-offs, forever.

Each month I create a new cover for my Facebook Page, Give Your Writing The Edge, whereby I aim to project a concern or feel for the weeks ahead. Often, I allow my choice to be intuitive, but this month, both the picture as well as the poetry were a leap into the unknown as never before. I chose two poems, separated by more than 35 years (which is currently 63% of my life) - poems, which speak mysteries to one another.

I authored it, and can recite it on the spot, but I have never understood the first poem, Dog. However, a dear old friend, who has always favoured it, reminded me of it recently. Not only did that inspire the second poem, but also a new curiosity: what on earth (on earth indeed) was the language doing with me? 

I aproach the poem like any reader, tip-toeing carefully towards possible meanings. 

The houndedness of the faceless, fallen rose connects it, of course, to the dog - who doesn't even dig, so opposed is it: it "nibbles (nibbles!) own spaces in the ground" where nothing is wanted. The scene is tragic, a picture of perfect disempowerment, an apparently necessary secreting away of natural is-ness. The treasured symbol of love is nothing but an old bone.

The second poem launches on that connection between the rose and the bone and it turns out that not only has the flower survived, but it has multiplied subterraneously over three and a half decades. 

"in the ground" becomes, in Dog 2, 'under the skin', deep inside the tissues: the identification of rose and bone has built a structure, which not only has an I, but an unopposed, fearless, fragrant (!) inner body that can speak and declare its old ("after all these years") aliveness.

Whence comes this sudden up out of the adult marrow?

Certainly the identification between the "ground" (where roses and bones are buried) and the "I" (where years and sorrow have been buried) is a powerful place to begin. And end.

Photo: Detail from a picture I took of my potted peace rose. 

Time as an organic fact

One of the 'bibles' that has guided my life is the children's book, Momo (pronounced 'Mawmaw') by Michael Ende. The book is essentially a narrative about the treasure of time. The main character is an orphan girl called Momo. She is shown the origin of time in the form of 'hour-flowers'. These are literally blooms of hours that break from bud to full unfolding and, necessarily, wilting at the end of each precious hour.

Each person is allotted a specific number of hour-flowers in their lifetime. It is as momentous a concept as it is simple, shaping time as a friend, rather than a foe; as an organic fact, rather than a random invention.

To feel time as a natural sequence of moments blossoming their opportunities takes me to the freedom of an infant basking starry-eyed in a kind of milk of existence: the nourishment of life itself being nothing other than time - the hours we are given to build our selves towards as complete an end as we can.

Cover of the K.Thienemanns Verlag 1st edition, Stuttgart, 1973, by Gustav Reisacher

The third draft of the second-last section of Greater Matter is with my readers.

Step by step I climb my Heffalump. Minnesinging is the penultimate section, confronting the socially disturbing presence of the single woman. And the question that burns differently for every widowed creature: where to with love when your loved one dies?