Never Easy To Do

Kitiara was suffering. She had to be put down. That doesn't make the act any easier to face.

Good pet owners treat their beloved pets like children. They’re companions, members of the family, sons and daughters who don’t speak the same language as we but we can learn what they mean just the same. The problem lies in that they don’t speak our language and we don’t speak theirs. They can’t tell us what’s wrong like a person can. We rely on what we know; by comparing how they act to how they used to act, and by taking the advice of experts on who we rely to help us when our general knowledge fails. We do the best we can with the knowledge that we have at the time. Sometimes it serves our furry family well and sometimes it does not, but it’s all we have to work with.

If nothing else could be done but to let her live until she died, would that have been right? Would she have been happy, spending her days playing and eating and sleeping and playing some more like a rat should? Or, would she have spent the time lying around, not playing, not happy and ready to make her way to the Rainbow Bridge where she would not feel the pain that the end of her life caused her?

It’s never an easy decision, and we end up second-guessing it for a while. But I think we must know when it is the right thing to do, or we wouldn’t have gone through with it at all.

Peace, my friend. You didn’t cause what was killing her, and euthanizing her was an act of mercy and love. I know your heart knows that.