Lucas's+Memoir

by Lucas
 * __A Year with Nigel__ **

In 2010, when I was 10, one of my 3 cats, Nigel, was diagnosed with Feline Infectious Peritonitis, a fatal disease with no known cure. Not much is currently known about F.I.P. and research is ongoing. Although there is a vaccine, it doesn’t work very well and isn’t used very often. F.I.P. usually affects kittens and younger cats; the longest surviving cat with F.I.P. being 26 months old. Nigel’s death really affected me and it is one of my saddest memories.

Nigel was a gray cat with lighter gray tiger-stripes. He had orange eyes just like his brother Spike, whom we still have today. We got them when I was 9. They were really cute together.

I was in the Miquon school, in 3rd grade, when we learned that Nigel had F.I.P.We were heartbroken when we learned that it had no cure and would eventually kill him; we caught it very late into the usual lifespan of a cat who had it, and most likely would only have him for about 2 months at maximum with the symptoms he was showing.

Unfortunately, after my 10th birthday party he was whining and crying, and we rushed to the veterinary hospital to put him down. We had him sit on my lap on a blanket on the car ride there; this was my last good moment with him. When we got there, it's all kind of blurry. I don't really remember much of it, probably because I was crying and thinking too much about the whole event to really take note of anything else. A few minutes after they took him away, they asked us if we wanted to: take him home and bury him, cremate him and take home his ashes, or donate his body to science, and we chose to donate it to science.

After we left on the car ride home, I was crying a lot and then I remembered that I wanted to get the full version of doodle jump, and playing it would take my mind off of the event. We got it, but there was little to no joy in playing it, just less grief.

This has taught me how quickly one’s life can go, and to make the best of it while you still have each other.

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