Monday I sobbed over my cancer-stricken cat Mokie as our vet slowly, gently injected him with the sodium pentothal that would put an end to our collective suffering. He’d been losing weight since early summer, but never a thin man, he looked fabulous for a period of time before we realized something was wrong. Such a cruel irony that the boy we’d affectionately called “Fat Man”, who tipped the scales at more than 14 pounds at one point, whose head seemed too small for such an engorged body, was wasting away into a delicate skeleton. By the end, he lost more than half his body weight, earning him the new name of “Tiny Love Man”, or TLM for short. It was a mindfuck at best that our boy who once seemed to gain weight by breathing was in a weight loss free-fall, his appetite dimmed, muscles wasted, bones protruding.

Mokie went from a boisterous, energetic, curious big boy, passionate about food and attention to a tiny shadow of himself within a period of three months. Continue reading →