Emerson

On May 1, 1998, I was wandering around Stockertown, PA, looking for a yard sale. I was on a back road, lost, when I came around a corner to find a car stopped in the middle of the road. A woman was standing by the open passenger side door, looking distressed. I stopped, and got out of the car to see if I could help. She told me that a cat was stuck under her car. I bent down, and saw a white cat, crouched underneath the car. I called him, and he came right to me. When I picked him up, he put his arms around me as if he were hugging me. The woman got in her car, and left.

The cat was pure white, wasn't dirty, so I didn't think he was a stray. Otherwise, he would have been dirty and thin. To this day, I believe that he belonged to that woman, and she was getting rid of her cat. He was friendly, so I put him in the backseat of my car, took him home, and named him Emerson Stuart Bacon. He quickly became the love of my life.

Emerson is dying. I found out in October that he has lymphoma. Because of his age (estimated to be 14 or 15 years old), I decided not to go through with surgery to remove the tumor in his spleen, and not to go through with radiation treatments. The vet said that he may not have survived the surgery, and the trips for the radiation treatment may have stressed him out too much. So, I decided to just enjoy whatever time I had left with him.

For the past several months, he's steadily lost weight, and spends most of his time sleeping. But he still had a good appetite, purred, still loved to cuddle, and seemed ok. The past few days, though, he's been having diarrhea. Yesterday, he had it in the dining room.

I know that soon, I'll have to make a very difficult decision. I don't want him to suffer. But I honestly don't know how I'm going to be able to say goodbye. It absolutely breaks my heart. I don't think I can do it.