Rest in Peace, Jerry

Just an informal thought and image dump. I've had this in my drafts for a while now so I'm just going to go ahead and finish it up and publish it as is because I don't want to forget about it. I'll try and go back and add alt text and fix formatting later.

Last week (3/6/2025) we put down our cat Jerry. He was somewhere around 16 years old and had diabetes. Technically is name was actually "Jere" short for the prophet Jeremiah, but pronounced Jerry, but explaining that to people is too hard so it just became Jerry at some point. My mom named him. After our previous cats had died, a family friend had a litter of kittens, and she wanted us to take the black one specifically because he was her favorite and she wanted him to go with someone they knew. Along with Jerry, we also took his sister, Zocha (I named her. I don't know how I came up with this name.)

Jerry had a very aloof and "cat-like" personality. He was scared of people other than our household. He loved being brushed, and sometimes liked being pet, but only on his own terms. He'd bat at people passing by him. He loved eating and would sometimes bully Zocha away from her bowl while eating.

A few years ago, we noticed Jerry was drinking more water than usual so we took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with diabetes. My mom struggled with giving him his insulin, she would get nervous which would make him nervous, so I took over that duty. Next time, I'm going to make sure to monitor my pets' weight more closely to help prevent them from developing diabetes in the first place.

Things went smoothly enough for a while, but at some point he started going outside the litter box. At first, just occasionally, but then all the time. We basically restructured our lives to accommodate him, it became a known fact that whenever we woke up or came home, there'd be cat shit to clean up. We tried all sorts of things, puppy pads (worked for a while, but then didn't), litter boxes with low entrances for senior cats, we even got a baby gate to block off half the house so we could at least go to the bathroom at night without stepping in anything.

As this problem got worse, I started bringing up the possibility of putting him down. Frustratingly, my mom thought I was being cold-hearted, that I was just grossed out, and I'll be honest, living like this WAS miserable, but my view was that if he's having trouble using the litter box, he must be in some kind of pain. My parents kept saying he "didn't seem like he was suffering" but I couldn't understand how they thought that. I was so scared of him suddenly getting a seizure or something and having to watch him die in pain.

Then, one morning he stopped eating. Litter box issues aside, he was always hungry, so this change got my mom to accept that it was probably finally time. We watched him for a day or so, gave him lots of towels and boxes to sleep on, tried to offer him his favorite food and treats to see if he'd eat them, but he didn't get up to do anything other than change sleeping spots.

So my mom took him to the vet to be put down. I wasn't able to go because I had classes, so when I came home, he was just gone. I'm sad of course, but also relieved. This is the first time our family ever really had senior pets (our previous cats died young) so it was definitely a learning experience.

Zocha is still with us, and as healthy as can be. We didn't think she'd be that affected by Jerry's death, since they didn't seem that close and he was mean to her sometimes, but she's been extra needy lately. I guess the change is still hard to deal with.

I'll miss you, Jerry, but I'm glad you're not in pain anymore.