Pharley is gone

He was sick, and we’ve known for months that his time was short. We all love him–loved him. He was small, and soft, and blind as a bat, relying on his whiskers and sense of smell to navigate the house for the past many months. And tonight, as he lay listless and shivering, wrapped in a towel, we cradled him in our arms and kissed him goodbye.

We all cried, petting his small weasely head. We told him he was a good boy, and we loved him, and it was OK. Everything was OK. My daughter sobbed, and I bit my tongue. Steve stood in the small room and stared at the wall as she crawled into my lap. She was warm, and shaking. And when Steve sat down, for a moment I didn’t know what to do–who to comfort, her or him, or me. Not me.

Not yet.

I crossed the small room–the comfort room, furnished with a soft beige loveseat and chair, a table with Pet Loss Support Group pamphlets photocopied on blue paper, a plastic stand with a Newsweek article about making your pets’ ashes into windchimes, or suncatchers. I sat next to my husband and pulled his head to my shoulder. Now him. I was torn, watching Lauren watch me. I started to cry. She came to me, put her arm around me, telling me “It’s OK Momma.” Comforting me.

When Steve found Pharley stretched out in the bottom drawer of his dresser this evening, we knew something was wrong. Jack, his bonded friend, had been acting strangely, racing around and licking my feet, but I didn’t think to check on Pharley. Once we found him, he was panting, and his belly was at least twice its normal swollen size. We scrambled, using pliers to open the stuck-on cap of the emergency sugar-water bottle we kept in the fridge for this. For emergencies. He had insulinoma, a tumor of the pancreas that causes extreme drops in blood sugar. He was in shock. We raced through the house, pulling the pasta off the hot burner, finding shoes, wrapping him in one of our good bath towels. Steve drove. I held him. Lauren stayed quiet in the back seat.

Our dog Sunny died this year, too. Two pets gone in a year is too much for an 8-year-old.

I’ve been to the Animal ER a few times, most recently in a similar situation with Pharley back in February. Then, his tumor was still small. We could manage it medically. We did it for months, with twice daily doses of pred and a sweet, high-calorie gel. He continued to lose weight. You could feel his ribs when you pet him. Except for his stomach, which was a big bubble. The tumor was palpable this week.

Lauren pushed the ER door open for me. A tech whisked Pharley to the back room. We sat on hard, blonde benches and waited. A great dane came in with a scraped nose. The phone rang. Someone used the bathroom across from us. Lauren played a videogame on my phone, and Steve paged through a copy of US magazine. None of us breathed. We knew this was it.

“What I’ll remember most is Pharley with his truck,” I said, stroking Lauren’s hair. Ferrets are funny. Some fall in love with shiny things. Others with chewy things. For Pharley, his only love was a toy truck, the kind you wind up by rolling it backwards. He’d hear the sound of the truck being revved up and come running, like “Hey, that’s MY truck! Stay away from my truck!” We’d find it hidden in the funniest places. “Remember that time it was still going, and it was bopping him on the head as he tried to drag it downstairs to hide it from us? That was so funny!” We all laughed a little.

I thought of him and Jack, the terrific twosome. They rarely slept apart. Often I’d find them twined together in my robe, a single ball of fur. They loved each other. They were brothers. Jack will be devastated.

The doctor came out, told us his blood sugar was 41. I looked at Steve and he looked at me. “Are you thinking of humane euthanasia?” the doctor asked. We could only nod.

Then we were in the comfort room, and the tech who had whisked him away distracted my daughter by showing her the tricks her great dane, Judge, could do, because no child should ever see her pet die. The doctor brought Pharley in, wrapped in our beige, brown and blue striped towel. Tears dripped down Steve’s cheeks. Down mine. The doctor explained the procedure, flushed the line, injected the pink serum. Pharley perked up, jerking his head up, looking at us with his cataracted eyes. It was awful. Just awful. I wanted to tell her to stop, let’s give the medicine another shot, keep him overnight with an IV. But I knew that we’d just be back here tomorrow, or next week or next month. I’ve been here before, too, on the edge of life and death with a pet. I knew this was kindness, even if it was breaking my heart.

We pet him, and kissed him. After a few minutes, Steve asked in the smallest voice I’ve ever heard, “Is he gone?” My heart shattered into a million pieces. Because my husband has the sweetest heart, and he loved this little guy, this weasel who we rescued with Jack two years ago from a household full of neglect. The ferret that we all named–Phil, Arnold, Riley, or Pharley for short.

We didn’t want the towel, which Steve pulled over our pet’s still body. The doctor left, telling us to take our time. We sat side by side on the soft beige love seat in the comfort room. My head fell to my hands and I sobbed.  He sobbed next to me. Separate from me. We pulled ourselves together. Steve took Lauren to the car while I paid the bill. The ER did not charge us the ER fee of $110, a small kindness. I could not take the receipt for my credit card transaction. The tech understood.

We opted not to receive his ashes. He weighed less than 2 pounds–how much could there be? Sometime soon, we’ll bury his truck in his honor, put it in a place he’d have thought he was so clever to have hidden it in.

I miss him already.