Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment. --William Shakespeare It was an innocent enough question, but one that had the impact of knocking the air out of my lungs: "So what do you picture life like after Oscar passes?" My brain grappled with the question that my well-meaning friend asked me that Sunday afternoon. In one fell swoop she had knocked me out of my brain and into my gut. I drew a blank; I literally could not imagine what the picture would look like, in fact all colors faded. For the next 5 minutes I struggled, I opened my mouth and nothing came out, I tried to say something, anything. Finally all I could muster was, "this is more than just a cat we are talking about, isn't it?" Yes, it is often more than just a cat, a pet. According to therapist Deborah Antinori, in her chapter from the Pet Loss Symposiums by Delta Society, a companion animal can hold both physical and symbolic attributes in our relationship with it. The physical being the unique characteristics of the individual animals and the symbolic being the "qualities pet owners ascribe to them often unconsciously, for example the pet as another child in the family, or as an ideal parent symbol (Pesso & Crandell, 1991) due to the stability they provide making them "someone" upon whom we can depend." All of this means that our relationship with our companion pet is often multi layered and complicated. And when we are faced with considering the end of that relationship both the head and the heart search for meaning. My head has been involved for some time in the preparation of the end, after all Oscar is 21 years old and that is about 115 in human years. Logic dictated to me a long time ago that he has had a wondrous life but his body simply cannot operate indefinitely. But I did not know exactly what was going to happen and that brought anxiety. For geriatric pets this is the time of hospice, you do not know when the end is but you do see a slowing, a weakening in his limbs, and his ability to do things he used to do. For me having a veterinarian who could answer my direct questions was crucial. I needed to understand how his old age diseases would progress, how they would manifest in his everyday habits, and what suffering would look like. Suffering was the hard part and one that my veterinarian could not definitely answer. Weight loss, hydration and loss of muscle control would all create situations of discomfort and even pain. So we came up with two plans: a Quality of Living list and a General Welfare plan. The Quality of Living is a list of 5 things that Oscar enjoys in his life. For example, my Oscar is an independent guy, he enjoys his mobility, his ability to walk on his own and use the litter box is important. When he no longer has an item on the list, it is marked off. When all of the quality of life items are marked off we have the difficult discussion of quality in general. My veterinarian reminds me to think of Oscar first and what is best for him. Putting Oscar first is crucial as we consider his Welfare Plan. Essentially this is a mitigation plan of what we will do as each of his diseases progress, keeping in mind that he is too old for any surgeries and some medications have side effects that will bring more pain than comfort. It also includes any end of life decisions. All of this may sound detached and logical and that is in a way the point; when only the brain is engaged we can sort out all these uncomfortable but crucial decisions that we, as the animal's caregiver, should make with the animal's best interests considered and that are sometimes hard to do when we are too emotional and thinking of our desires exclusively. I imagine it will also allow me to go into auto pilot when the time comes. Because make no mistake of it, I am certain that all of the colors will fade from my sight and I will be frozen and struggling for meaning and for air. After all, this is my "'someone' upon whom I have depended" for so long. In my next blog entry, I will continue my look at pet loss and grieving only this time from the heart's vantage point. By Tricia Lipin