Dagne Jones (1993-2009)
Forever in her favorite spot...
This post might be long and rambly, and it will likely make you cry. If you're not in the mood for either, turn away now.
In the fall of 1998 I was living in Baltimore, and Stephanie was in Seattle. Stephanie got a job offer to relocate to Pittsburgh, so we moved Steph east.
Prior to joining Stephanie in Pittsburgh full-time, a co-worker of hers stated one day that she'd found a stray cat, complete with a feral litter of 3 kittens. The co-worker had managed to trap the litter and the mama but didn't know what to do with them.
Steph said that she'd take in the mother as a foster (Steph had 2 cats at that time already) and found a lady in the area who was a specialist in domesticating feral kittens. Sadly, one of the kittens died within a week or two of ringworm, but the other two kittens got healthy and were adopted out.
I was excited about a new cat in the house. I said, "We could keep her. She could be mine, because you already have the boys." Steph found this a little weird, because I really didn't like cats. I've always been a Dog Person, and cats were always a bit too snooty for me.
We agreed to keep her, and I named her Dagne (after Gabrielle Anwar's character in "
Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead"). It took a few months for her to really warm up to Jasper and Edison, but she was happy to be around Stephanie and me. I don't know how long she'd been a stray, and we never really knew how old she was when we got her (we're guessing she was around 5), but when she came into our house...she never wanted to go back outside again.
She had good food, warm beds, lots of toys, and plenty of sunkissed window sills to keep her content.
We left Pittsburgh in February of 1999 and moved back to Seattle. It took that cross-country move for Dagne to really trust us, and when we settled into our apartment in Lynnwood she was fine. She was Home.
And Home she stayed. For 11 years we had the privilege of being Dagne's guardians. She outlasted Edison (who passed away in 2001) and Jasper (who has been living the high life at my in-law's since 2005), and witnessed 5 canine additions to the family as well as several short- and long-term foster pets. She didn't care. This was her home. "You can go. I'm staying right here."
We changed apartments twice, and then there was the move to the house. As long as her favorite places came with us (her blue ratty cat tree, our old office chair she liked to sleep in) she was not at all concerned.
For the last year, give or take, we'd been noticing a steady weight loss with Dagne, but she seemed healthy overall (vets confirmed this a couple of times) so we just let her be. In the last couple of months, she'd been barfing a little more than normal, and we attributed that to a change in formula to the prescription food she'd been on for years for recurring UTI's. So last week we switched her over to a raw diet and things got better.
She was fine Tuesday morning, and into the evening. Eating, sleeping, purring. Steph had gone out to dinner with a friend, and when she got home she noticed that Dagne wasn't ambulatory at all. Stephanie massaged her a bit, kept Dagne close, and told me what was going on when I got home from work. We agreed that Dagne should probably be contained for the night, that we'd get her to our vet in the morning, and then Steph continued to examine and care for Dagne for the next hour.
While Steph was getting the laundry room set up for the overnight stay, things went pear-shaped. Dagne started to vomit, and while Steph was cleaning that up Dagne lost control of her other faculties as well. This wasn't our first trip down this road, and we knew what had to happen next.
We put the dogs to bed, wrapped Dagne in a towel and water proof mat, and drove her to an emergency vet clinic in Issaquah. We both would have preferred to go to one of the vets we knew, and who knew Dagne, but we weren't going to wait until morning. Dagne wouldn't have made it that long.
The vet weighed Dagne at 4.5lbs (this cat used to weigh 10lbs back in the day). Dagne was lethargic, but was also purring non-stop at all of the attention. The vet said that she was having trouble feeling Dagne's kidneys, and said that it was likely that Dagne was in renal failure - a diagnosis that
Nathan concurred with - and we did what we had to do, without hesitation.
Because that's what you do. You love them, and you care for them, and in the end you give them that one last gift of relief.
Dagne knew. We knew. She purred right to the very end. We stood over her - comforting her, petting her, loving her. I knelt down, gave her a kiss, told her I loved her, and I looked her straight in the eyes as the doc administered the medications. The purring stopped; her pupils dilated. At a few minutes before midnight, she was gone. My face was the last thing she saw - her face hasn't left my mind since.
Now it's the little things. The empty windowsills. The quiet mornings. No constant purring to my right as she sleeps on the arm of my chair when I'm up late watching TV. Even the dogs are quieter right now. Dagne really was the Boss of Everybody. For a 4-pound cat, her absence is massive.
We made the decision a long time ago that Dagne would be our last cat.
I'm happy that we were able to give Dagne 11 years that she might not have had otherwise.
I'm thankful that she was willing to share those 11 years with us.
Sleep Well, Baby. We love you.
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