November 21st: They cut off his head and refuse to give it back! Today was perhaps the most devastating day of my life. It wasn’t just that Wally died, it’s how he died, the process that took place and the sadistic NY health policies that stole the last bit of Wally’s dignity from him, even in death. Tonight as I write this I am but a shell, much like the lifeless remains of my dear friend. I am trying to find reason and positives in this experience but all I am left with is the loss of breath, the weak legs and the devastating feeling of sheer emptiness that follows.
Tuesday night we took Wally in for one of his regular tapping. We were in and out in under an hour. We told the attending to please be careful because Wally hated the procedure and had bitten and scratched technicians in the past in an effort to protect himself from the large needles. We had just passed the 10-day period that the NYS had put in place to ensure an animal or the bitten person did not have rabies, which of course he didn’t, being an old house cat that had spent the last 30 days in ICU or on our bed and nowhere in between. With a collective exhalation, we had just submitted the completed form to the Westchester County Department of Health, giving Wally a fresh start. as we entered the AMC that night, we put on Wally a clear cone, an Elizabethan collar so that Wally couldn’t bite anyone that night.
This morning as we were going through the already horrible process of trying to figure out how to let Wally go, we received a call saying that the AMC had reported another incident from the night before and now we had started the process all over again with the ten days, except that today was Wally’s last day alive. We were told that if we euthanized Wally, they would cut off his head to do a rabies test and then to make matters unbelievably worse, we were not allowed to retrieve the head even after the reports came back negative, which of course they would.
Wally’s case # is 882383, the bite # is 965 and the person he scratched, (not even bit) is Genevieve Arroyo. This occurred on 11/20/2007.
At the bottom of the form, it was written that if you wanted to retrieve the head after the test, please call Ed Boyce at 212-676-2116. I called the number in advance only to find that Ed had passed away almost a year ago and now they were not returning the animal heads. There is no reason for not doing this, only a policy to make their lives easier with no thought to our beliefs or the dignity of keeping the animal together in death as he was in life. So it is just after 3am in the morning on Thanksgiving and beyond mourning for our cat, I am sending e-mails to every NYC politician that I can find to plea for their help in retrieving Wally’s head after the tests are complete.
It is also with this in mind that I plea for your help, anyone that knows anyone in NYC government that might be able to intervene.
Please help Cindy and I know that Wally will be able to go into his next existence in peace, please help us to retrieve the head so we can have his remains cremated together. Knowing we have ashes of only half of his body is unfathomable to us. His face was everything about him. His crossed eyes, his velvet ears, his big teeth and warm purring mouth all defined Wally for the past 16 years.
Before I go on, I realize that this blog was meant to be a reference for those interested in performance and personal improvement. It was never contemplated to be a place to record the final days of a family member, feline or otherwise. I think I’ve taken to typing because I don’t know any other way to deal with the sheer helplessness that I feel minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. It’s 3:53am on November 22nd, Thanksgiving but neither Cindy nor I can sleep or close our eyes without the horrible images returning. I keep hoping that writing all of this will be cathartic for me and quite frankly I could just have easily bought a journal and written in it. For the last 30-plus days, stripping myself bare, I kept hoping that by writing of Wally’s condition publicly, there might be someone out there who has seen his condition before and might respond with an 11th hour treatment that would save Wally’s life along with Cindy’s and mine. Now I’m continuing to write to let people know of a terrible and unfair health policy that other pet owners may face in the hope of bringing this to light. I’m sure some of you must be reading this, thinking to yourselves, “it’s a cat, get over it.” To those people, all I can say is that the abyss that I live in today is scarcely different than what I have felt when others in my family have passed and the process that we have lived through is much worse. Wally was my friend, my companion and my confidant. He never asked for anything more than a few pieces of turkey and the ability to nuzzle up against my face and purr.
Animals are like running, pure. Perhaps that’s why I relate to both. They are uncomplicated, uncompromising, and give back without exception. Pets feel no pity for themselves and show sensitivity for others. At times it takes years to earn their trust but once you do, they are faithful for life. They understand that we are imperfect, and that sometimes we have accidents, and they think nothing less of us for doing so. I don’t expect that my missive will be of interest to anyone else except for a few spammers that insistently troll the internet looking for key words so they can try and peddle their products and attach links to semi-popular blogs. But maybe, just maybe someone will read this and help Wally have his dignity back and allow us to finally fall asleep.
