A cat’s tale

 After my husband and I learned our 17-year old cat Sol had kidney disease, we scheduled an animal communication appointment with Judy to have the very difficult conversation with him about his end of life desires and feelings. We wanted to know if he wanted us to give him the daily fluid injections that would cause temporary discomfort but maintain his quality of life as much as possible. We wanted to know if he was in pain. The question we really needed to know but couldn't bring ourselves to ask, was if he wanted us to let him go all the way through his end stages of illness to a natural death, or if he would prefer to be spared the discomfort with help from euthanasia. (Gratefully, Judy picked up on that and compassionately suggested the right words for us to ask that question.) Most importantly, we wanted to make sure he knew how dearly we loved him and that we were doing our very best to honor his wishes. It was a tearful, heartbreaking conversation. But it was also one of the greatest gifts we could have received.

Sol

We received answers to all our questions. Sol said the daily fluids were fine and they did make him feel better so he would agree to them for a while, but that there would come a day where he would choose to stop the fluid treatment and that he would let us know by refusing. That gave us peace of mind during the heartbreaking experience of having to stick a needle into our sweet boy on a daily basis. We didn't have to question if we were torturing him, or doing it against his will. He was very tolerant, and occasionally even cooperative. We gave him fluids daily for six months, and then suddenly one day he refused, and we knew that was his choice.

He said he wasn't in pain from the kidney disease, just his arthritis. This gave us peace of mind that he wasn't suffering and that we weren't contributing to his suffering.

He said he did not want euthanasia, that it was important for him to transition out of his body on his own. He said he knew what that entailed, and he was at peace with it. He said he wanted to choose the time and have control over when he made his transition. He said that he didn't want us to worry, and that we needed to trust that everything would happen exactly as it should. That didn't stop us from worrying, but it did help guide us in the decisions we made for his end of life care.

Ultimately, a few weeks before he died and had reached the point where he required 24-hour round the clock care, we started to second guess ourselves and wonder if we were doing the right thing by trying to let him die naturally at home. We were worried he was suffering. So we scheduled another communication appointment, almost hoping that he had changed his mind and would prefer euthanasia since from our human perspective, that seemed to be the most compassionate option. But he hadn't changed his mind. He told us his spirit was spending a lot of time outside his physical body at that point, and that he wasn't suffering. He repeated what he said the first time, that everything will happen exactly as it should and that he didn't want us to worry. I think that was the hardest part, the fear of the unknown - a peaceful, at home death is never a guarantee and we were worried about something going drastically wrong that would be painful and traumatic for all three of us.

Judy recommended some mobile vets and we were able to enroll him in the home hospice program with Dr. Monica Turenne, from Four Paws Veterinary Wellness. Dr. Turenne was able to come to our house to do an end-of-life consult for Sol, to assess if he was suffering and where he was in the dying process. She did not know about the specifics of any of our animal communication conversations with him, only that we were hoping to pursue the path of natural death. Everything she told us reinforced what Sol had told us during our communication sessions - that he was not in distress and was very at peace. She told us that he was in the stages where his body was starting to shut down but he wasn't in the active dying stage yet. She said he was a good candidate for natural death and that he appeared to know exactly what he was doing. She told us what we should expect as things progressed, and what signs of distress to look for that would necessitate a change of plans (euthanasia). That night after we emailed the daily report she requested, she sent us an email with a line that said "It just sounds like he truly is doing such a good job of this so far. I don't know him well at all but I want to say how proud I am of him. Is that silly?" No, it's not silly we wrote back.

Ultimately, Sol died naturally and peacefully while sleeping between us on a Tuesday morning. He took his last breath right before we fully woke up, it was so close in timing that we couldn't even tell right away if he was still with us or had gone. He was still so warm and so soft, our precious snuggly boy. As we cried and kissed him, gave him our final hugs placed his body into a pine box, I knew that he chose that time intentionally, so that we would wake to find his body still warm and soft and so that he could do what he needed to do by transitioning out of his body on his own as the sun was rising. He is, after all, named after the sun.

It has been one month and twelve days since that morning. Our grief feels so deep and our hearts are raw. There is little comfort to be had when you lose a pet. But we have taken great comfort in knowing that Sol had free will up until the very end, knowing that he didn't suffer and that we did our very absolute best to care for him even though pursuing the path for natural death felt nearly impossible for my husband and me to continue at times. Had we not had the gift of animal communication through Judy and the compassionate support of Dr. Turenne, we would not have been able to stay on that path, and would not have the same peace of mind we have now about the decisions we made for his end-of-life care. The greatest comfort is that in the end, Sol was right about everything and he was able to have the peaceful, natural death he desired.

The most valuable thing we learned in this process is what Judy called "holding souls". Through a guided exercise, she taught us how to hug Sol's spirit and feel his spiritual presence. This, she told us, is so you can hold his spirit even after you can no longer hold his body. We hold souls with Sol every night. 
                                 

A. B., Michigan