Positions to Be Put In

Just last month, there was an article in Veterinary Practice News about "convenience euthanasia". It actually mentioned that as a private practice vet, if you are uncomfortable with the reasons for a euthanasia given by a client, you should refer them to a local SPCA or humane organization. Hi. That's me.

Thankfully, even we have standards and will not put animals down just for shits 'n' giggles or out and out "convenience." I have to sleep at night. It's nothing taken lightly. But I suppose I have done, or participated in doing, plenty of them that a private vet may not have done. For example, our "clientele" tends to be that of the lowest income bracket. People who cannot afford extensive supportive care for a degenerative disease. People who are not capable of proper treatment for something as manageable as, say, diabetes. People who cannot afford possibly pointless chemotherapy for cancer...or even expensive NSAIDs for advanced ortho problems. In the scheme of things, having come from private practice, it does bother me. But, this is their pet...their family member. Suffering is directly around the bend. I feel okay with having a hand in preventing that suffering by euthanasia.

Same with aggression. I respect the courage it takes to undertake the responsibility of deciding such a thing when human safety is at risk. Lesser people dump it on a shelter and let us be the "bad guys." These cases are hard and sad. But in the scheme of things, it, too is preventing suffering.

Then there are the nebulous ones. Case in point: a couple owns two teenaged cats. Neither is in ill health, particularly. Foreclosure, going into assisted living, whatever...but cannot keep the cats. What are the possibilities? Put them in the shelter where they will be overlooked and miserable, ripped from their known lives of over a decade to be put into a cage to compete with kittens? To be put in the path of the upper respiratory infection that we are never free of, the catching of which is directly related to stress? Will some miracle person fall out of heaven and come into our shelter wanting not a kitten, not a young cat, not a pretty cat, but coincidentally two nondescript, teenaged cats possibly on the brink of costly degenerative health issues? Is it fair, for them, to force them to endure a hellish existence on the off chance that monkeys might fly out of my butt? Add onto that the fact that we are full, and in order to undertake this doubleforcing of hell onto two older cats, some others will have to go? These are the sticky, judgement call situations that happen in every shelter. It sucks. And I am the one who has to carry it out and go home at night. I know, I feel, I did the right thing. It was gentle and peaceful and dignified and number one, it was the choice, the responsible choice, in the given circumstances, of the legal owner of the cats. It was the best that could be done for them. Until you are willing to go to your local shelter and adopt two teenaged, un-special, nondecsript cats yourself, then you shouldn't say a thing. It was the best thing for them in the circumstances. They would've been stressed and confused and frightened and lonely otherwise. Death cannot be worse than that. Yet, it tore me up. Know that should it come to this in your life and with your animals...that there will be someone aching at the task they must perform for your convenience. I do it because someone must...someone who cares. Someone must be gentle and apologize to them for you...must tell them they are beautiful and special and that things will be better for them on the other side. But it sucks. And it eats my soul. I can only hope that upon my own death, I am not met with a mob of angry animals.





There I am, right in the dead eye. She was a pretty cat, to me.