RIP Annie

We put Annie down Thursday. She was dying of kidney failure.

She looked and acted like her usual, long-suffering self when Nora and I left for California a week before. When we returned Tuesday evening, our roommate Erin reported that Annie had been hiding in the bathtub, shunning the cooler downstairs. When she came out of hiding long enough to greet us, she looked thin and frail. Nora took her in to the vet on Wednesday. He gave her fluids and kept her overnight for monitoring. Annie came home Thursday morning, and seemed to be recovering. She napped on a cold air vent for a few hours. But when she woke up, she started howling, vomiting, and soiling herself. Erin and Nora picked me up at the lab and we all went to the vet to put her down. Nora and Erin dug a hole in the backyard while I returned to work. They cleaned her up a bit, wrapped her in an old bedsheet for a burial shroud, and laid her in a box. Nora and I put the box in her grave and buried her after dinner than night. We left an old brick as a marker.

Nora took a few photos of Annie while she was napping, just a few hours before she died.


She looked at us like this all the time. She always looked maligned and long-suffering.


But she also looked very peaceful and content when she was asleep. We had her for almost a year. Nora sent a nice note to Lindsey, Annie's previous person. Annie seemed generally happy while she was living with us, and we were glad to be able to give her a nice retirement home. We're all sad to see her go, and it was especially sad that she had to be in so much pain the last day or two. But we were glad that we could all be there together with her at the vet when she died. The method of euthanasia was an overdose of barbiturates, so at least she had some relief could die quickly and painlessly.