Sharing My Dream From This Morning Options

[hegelsmom]

I want to share my dream from this morning. I have so been hoping to be "visited"
by Hegel in a dream. Over the years, my 19 year old cat who died 7 years ago,
has occassionally visited.
This morning, I was dreaming about my grandmothers house. She has been dead
about 25 years. I often dream about her house for some reason. The family
doesn't even own it anymore. But I often dream of it.
This morning, I was dreaming of walking through it. I was in the living room, and there was Hegel! He was sleeping so peacefully in a rocking chair! I scooped him
up and said "oh it's you, it's really you!" It was so real, and he was so soft! I said
"I'm taking you home!" and I started to run. Then, there was a blinding white light,
and I woke up.
I was so upset, I nearly hyperventilated lying there in bed. In some ways the dream
brought me peace, as that house holds only pleasant memories for me, but my
"desperate psychosis" of wanting him back was disappointed.

I went to see my vet this afternoon, the one who sent me to the Animal ER.
I told her my dream, and she cried. She said she has had dreams about her past
pets, and is particularly haunted by her dog that had a brain tumor. She put him
to sleep herself! on her birthday! She got really emotional talking about it.
I was telling her what bad shape that I had been in. She tried to alleve my guilt
about my feelings of negligence for not noticing sooner how sick my cat was.
It helped as I sat there with her, but of course, I'm breaking down again now.

[Margie]

Hegel's Mom,

I know exactly what you're talking about! I keep hoping to dream about Butch, but I haven't, despite spending about 20 hours a day in bed since Friday. Yet, as wonderful as it would be to see her and hold her and talk to her in my dream, I can't help thinking about how sad I'll be when I wake up and she's still gone.

Your vet sounds like a very compassionate woman. Imagine how much she must adore animals that on her own birthday, she would make the supreme sacrifice to spare her pet from suffering.

While feeling guilt is part of mourning, you seem to be heaping so much of it upon yourself. Hegel's Mom, there's no way you could possibly have known what was going on inside Hegel's body. I would bet that given his medical history and his symptoms, if you had brought him to the vet, the vet would have given him prednisone, just as you did. I don't think it's a matter of not noticing that he was as sick as he was. Cats tend to carry on as though nothing is all that wrong up until things are VERY VERY wrong. That is their nature. The only possible thing a cat owner could do, I think, would be to bring their cat to the vet for blood work once a week for its entire life, and who would ever do that to their poor cat?

Please, Hegel's Mom, give yourself a break. It is not your fault Hegel got sick.