Biff’s Last Day

“I’m sorry to bother you, but do you know whose cat that is?” 

She said it as she approached from the end of the driveway.  I had just put boy number one into the rolling trash heap I sometimes call a minivan.  It was going to be a tough day on the front lines of parenthood.  My wife would be sleeping most of this Saturday to prepare for a 7pm to 7am shift at the hospital, so I had command of our four little ones.  I had a loose plan involving Starbucks, Target, and one of the two local parks with an enclosure that lets Dada relax a bit on toddler suicide watch.  

Since Biff was technically our cat, you’d think it was a softball question.  But a couple of years ago he bailed on us.  At first we thought he’d disappeared, as cats sometimes do.  Maybe a mountain lion had gotten him, or maybe he’d gotten into a fight.  Then one day a neighbor a few doors down from us mentioned a cat she’d been taking care of lately.  Pretty quickly we realized Biff had quit us and adopted a new family.  It was hard to blame him.  We’d had four kids in four years and, well, toddlers are not the gentlest animal wranglers.

I walked over with her to a storm drain across the street.  I could only see his tail sticking out of the drain pipe he had crawled into, but it was definitely Biff.  I gingerly pulled him out.  He was clearly in distress – a lethargic lump of overly prominent bones and rubbery skin.  He was much lighter than I remembered and his eyes were dull.  We brought him inside and gave him food, water, and lots of love.  A few hours later he seemed even worse, so we prepped for a trip to the vet.

Taking a 5-year old, a 4-year old, and two 1-year old twins to the vet is a daunting undertaking.  I knew it could work, but the timing had to be on our side.  A long wait and we’d have to pack it in and try another day.  As it happened, we were second in line.  Lunch was still an hour away so I knew my four little stomachs would need some fuel to keep it together through this appointment.  Within a few minutes I had distributed Pocky sticks to the older ones and Goldfish to my little dudes.  I figured that would buy me five minutes.

Four minutes and thirty seconds later my boys started tossing their fish all around the lobby and giggling hysterically, as if pigeons were there in the lobby gobbling them up.  What had originally been the typical, pitying “aww, look at that Dad doing such an admirable job with his kids, even though he’s probably way out of his league” look from the woman at the front desk had given way to the “dude, get control of your kids NOW” glare.

After taking the Goldfish away and cleaning up the cracked and maimed fish carcasses all over the lobby floor, I went outside for a change of scenery.  After doing some stroller wheelies and making funny faces, I headed back in, hoping we could go to our exam room.  Five more minutes, I was told.  Both boys, almost on queue, started to cry and try to wriggle out of their seats.  I gave them their bottles and both squawked with pleasure as they tilted them back to suck down the lovely nectar.  A few minutes later we were finally called back.

The vet tech and I took Biff out of his carrier.  He was dirty from laying in the storm drain and looked like a bag of shit.  I waited for her judgment – the silent condemnation that I was a horrible pet owner.  I may have caught some of that, but it also may have been the typical vet tech demeanor that says, “I should have picked nursing for humans so I could move out of my parents’ house.”  A few minutes into the exam, Liam started screaming.  He said nothing intelligible but the message was crystal clear – get me the hell out of this stroller, dude.  I took a look around the room and happily realized there were no cabinets, no chairs, and nothing destructible within arm’s reach of my little two-foot men.  I could let them out and they would just run around this little 8×8 box, bouncing around like pinballs.  And the exam table was just a few inches over their heads so they couldn’t even pull their regular head-into-corner-of-table routine I’d grown to love.  Having taken his temperature and vitals, she informed us the doctor would be with us shortly.

“When do we get to go home with Biffy?,” my oldest daughter asked after the tech left.  I took a moment to answer because I knew, from the moment I saw him in the storm drain, there was a possibility he would never come home with us again.  “Hopefully soon,” I answered, avoiding the conversation until it was time.  I wasn’t afraid to expose my girls to the concept of death or to have our first real discussion about it.  I just didn’t want a false start.

The veterinarian came in and started by asking some historical questions.  I gave her the answers she needed, but also made sure she understood this cat had been loved from the time he was a newborn kitten.  I didn’t see any condemnation in her eyes.  She understood the situation and had empathy for everyone present.

She said she smelled what she thought were ketones on his breath, indicating ketoacidosis, which would mean diabetes.  This would require insulin shots every day and lots of special care.  She could validate for sure with a test, but the test would cost several hundred dollars.  She told me Biff was seriously ill, whether it was diabetes or not, and whatever he had would no doubt require much more care than we were used to giving.  Given Biff’s age and the fact that he was so sick, we had a decision to make.  She paused a beat to measure her next words.  “I just want to be clear.  We’re talking about –”

“LIAM, STOP!”  Delaney cried out, as Liam gained a tight grip on a handful of her curls and was pulling her head down to the ground, all with a sanguine little grin of satisfaction.  He was barely 24 inches tall, but the little guy had some strength.  Mia, seeing the pain Delaney was in, started crying for me to stop the onslaught.  Then Lucas started crying because it was all the rage and he’d be damned if he was going to miss out.  After I had unclenched Liam’s little vise grip, settled Delaney, then picked up Liam to settle him from the extreme disappointment of not being able to rip out his sister’s hair, the doctor continued.

“We’re talking about…euthanasia.  I just want to make sure we’re discussing the same thing.”  I paused, then looked at Biff’s weakened, lumpy frame on the metal table.  I flashed back to getting him as a kitten and bottle feeding him because he hadn’t completely weaned from his mother.  I recalled how, when I had gotten him, it had been a very lonely time in my life.  Biff had been there for me when no one else had (even if being there just meant laying on my chest while I watched a Laker game).  When he was a kitten, he used to fall asleep on my neck and often, for months at a time, his soft little body was my only tactile connection to other living beings.  He mattered to me at an important time in my life.  I felt emotion start to creep into my face.

For a few moments, I didn’t hear my noisy, fighting kids.  I didn’t feel the doctor’s presence, waiting for my verdict.  As I welled up a bit, I stroked my cat and reminisced on our time together.  We’d had a good run, and I truly appreciated what he had given me.  This 15-pound little fur ball had provided me a measure of happiness in some tough times and I, hopefully, had accorded him the love he needed, as the covenant of pet ownership should require.

“If my situation was different,” I said, as I motioned to my brood with my head, “I would try to help him through this.  We’ve been through a lot together.  But honestly at this point, with the family life we have, there’s no way we can give him the care he’ll need.”  She nodded her head in sympathy.  “I understand,” she said.  “It’s a totally justified and understandable choice. We do it very humanely and it’s peaceful for him.  Would you like to be with him during the procedure?”

I wanted to.  It felt right, but I couldn’t integrate my family circus with that moment and I didn’t want to expose my girls to an actual death.  I chose option two:  they would prep him, then we would be allowed to say our final goodbyes to Biff.  After the doctor left with Biffy, I turned to my daughters.

“Alright girls – huddle up, come close.  I have to tell you something.”  After I said this, I grabbed each boy and put them back in the stroller.  I knew after the period of activity, that I could buy some quiet time if I gave them their bottles and cinched them back in their rolling penitentiary.

I continued, “Biff is very, very sick.  He’s also in pain – lots of owies inside his body.  I know this will be hard for you to understand – it’s even hard for me – but he can’t come home with us today.  In fact, he’s not going to come home with us ever again.  I don’t know how to say this so I’m just going to say it:  Biffy’s going to…we’re – we’re going to end his life today.  Biffy is just too sick to keep living.”

I didn’t know how the first real conversation about death with my kids would go.  I had imagined it but now here it was for real.  This kicked off lots of immediate questions:  Why?  What do you mean, Daddy?  When can he come home?  When will he get better?  After a minute or two, the gravity of the moment started creeping into my 5-year old’s face.

“Will he go to heaven?”  I knew we’d get to this one but I hadn’t planned my answer.  It’s super easy to default to heaven, because kids hear so much about it even if they’re in public school and are totally non-religious.  It would have been an easy way to get through the question.  But I am an agnostic, trending strongly toward atheist.  Heaven for me is a nice, imaginary kingdom that may or may not (but almost definitely does not) exist.  I paused, then answered:  “I honestly don’t know, sweetie.  No one really knows where we go when we die because anyone who actually knows is now dead.”

As tears started welling up in my daughter’s eyes, the door opened.  The vet set Biff on the table and said we could take as much time as we wanted with him.  For about 10 minutes we stroked Biff and told him we loved him while I answered more questions.  I tried to differentiate between Biff’s physical body by explaining the concept of a soul, wrestling with my beliefs in the process.  We also talked about cremation and drifted into human customs.  When it felt like the right time, I called the vet tech into the room and they took Biff away.  Both my daughters started to cry, and we had a nice group hug on the floor of the exam room.  My little hombres were quiet, almost somber, throughout.  After a few minutes, we slowly gathered ourselves and made our way back to the van.

A week after Biff’s death, a package arrived from the vet hospital.  They had taken an imprint of Biff’s paw as a memento for us and coupled it with a condolence card.  I didn’t expect this kind of touching gesture, but it was was a nice bit of closure to Biff’s life – a life lived in the present tense, full of love, daily adventure, and ample rest.  We could all do much worse.

R.I.P. Biff Borghi

2005-2018

I love you, buddy.