The Old Cat and the Litter Box

I spent ten hours cleaning last week. I cleaned for my mother and for a one-time client. My own apartment smells like urine.

Don't look at me -- I generally make it from the living room to the toilet without incident. My ancient, wizened tabby, Spenser, has taken to peeing outside the box. While some would commend him for his maverick ways, I cannot. I've had Spenser for fourteen years. I got him in East Lansing, where I spent a miserable couple of years flunking out of grad school. I came away from MSU with one good thing: a 12-pound silver tabby who loved me to pieces.

Spenser would curl up around my head whenever I was sick. He'd groom my hair and stay with me. When I weighed nearly 600 pounds and took a hard fall on a wood floor, he laid down next to me and wouldn't leave me til I'd righted myself (nearly an hour later).

Now that he's old and weighs about six pounds because his kidneys are failing (slowly), Spenser has become a crusty oldster with a limited sense of humor. He hates the kids and their music. He wants you to stay off his lawn. He has an autographed picture of Wilford Brimley and moons over cheesecake shots of the late Estelle Getty dressed as Sophia Petrillo on the Golden Girls.

My old man pees everywhere and on everything. He pees on my rugs. He peed on a pillow, soaking the sham I'd sewn and embroidered by hand. He pees behind the bathtub if I forget to close the bathroom door. He can't sleep with me. If I leave the bedroom door open, he pees on anything he can find on the floor. Like my clothes or bedsheets I kick off in my sleep. This means that my other cat, Siouxsie, can't sleep with me, either, despite her own fastidiousness about the box. She meows piteously outside my door every morning.

Spenser needs to go on one last visit to the vet. I don't want to take him. I have no idea how putting him to sleep will make me feel. Also, putting him to sleep will cost money I don't really have. I studied up on it online; do-it-yourself home pet euthanasia is a very bad idea. It's like the last twenty minutes of Blood Simple, only your cat is Dan Hedaya. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that to any pet, let alone my sweet boy who still licks my face between trips to the corner to whiz under the radiator.

So. What to do? I'm thinking I could by him a copy of Final Exit. That could work.