Home with Heavy Hearts: Cappy Left Us

Cappy left us yesterday. He didn't want to go. We didn't want him to go, either.

But the little guy, our beautiful white Persian cat for 17-plus years, had to. We had rescued Cappy from abandonment as a kitten. It was not within our power to save him this time. Breast cancer was taking its unrelenting toll. He had a growth removed only six weeks ago. We got the worst news possible...it was cancer of a very agressive nature. At his advanced age, radiation and chemotherapy were out of the question. Cappy bounced back from the surgery with the heart of a champion. Considering what he had endured, he and we enjoyed a few good weeks. Then came the setbacks...diminished appetite, harder and harder to walk, sapped of energy, difficulty breathing. It would not be fair to let Cappy linger on.


With heavy hearts and tears that kept coming no matter how hard you willed against them, Carol and I carefully bundled Cappy up and took him for a solemnly silent ride to the vet's. We had called ahead, so the doctor, a young lady who had migrated to Chicago from Germany, was waiting for us. She had tended to Cappy just 48 hours earlier. Not that she knew Cappy well, but she seemed to genuinely share the sadness of our impending loss. Probably because Cappy had an uncanny way of quickly earning affection from virually anyone whoever met him. And in his final days, under the most dire of circumstances, Cappy gave you reason to love him all the more. He seemed to accept his fate with pride and composure. As beaten down as he might have been, he did not allow the ravages of his disease to diminish his regal disposition. His mellow behavior. His splendid good looks. Somehow he managed to keep it all togther right to the very end. Cappy, you were a Godsend. You will always be in our hearts.