Caring for Upper West Side Pets at the Tail End of Their Lives

By Andrea Sachs

When I first spotted Jimmy at an animal shelter in 2011, he was a long, lean one-year-old cat. His sister had been adopted separately the day before, and he was already lonesome. When I petted him, he licked my hand.

Troth plighted!

Three weeks later, I skeptically asked the animal behaviorist at a different shelter to find me a young female cat who got along well with other cats. Amazingly, she did. Abby had just delivered two kittens at the shelter and, newly spayed, was ready for a home. She and Jimmy hissed at each other when they were introduced.

By the end of the day, they were best friends.

That was 14 years ago. Since then, I have been the fortunate pet parent of what are referred to as bonded cats. They love each other dearly and spend most of their days spooning or toddling after each other. I have been blessed.

These days, though, la vie chez Sachs is more complicated. Jimmy and Abby are each on three pricey veterinary medicines for different conditions. Sometimes, their symptoms take the spotlight. When that happens, they show unmistakable signs that they have entered what might be indelicately called the “pee-poop-puke” portion of their lives.

Dr. Rich Fried, the founder and medical director of Lincoln Square Veterinary Hospital, has cared for Upper West Side animals for 30 years and has a more erudite way of saying that.

“Pets suffer from many of the same things that we suffer from as we age, only their time frame is very compressed. They get arthritis, and they get cataracts, and they can lose kidney function and so forth; it just happens in a shorter period of time,” he told West Side Rag. “Because of that, and especially in cats, they’re really good at not showing symptoms until their problems are very advanced.”

As a result, Fried says, it’s advisable that pets older than seven be examined twice a year instead of annually.

“We are more likely to do routine lab work during those visits, looking for conditions that owners might not yet be aware of,” Fried explained. “For example, people come in and say their pets are slowing down. They’re walking slower, slower to rise, not as eager to go for walks. It may be because they have arthritis, which is treatable. It’s not curable, but it’s often manageable.”

“Even some incurable cancers in pets, like lymphoma, may also be manageable,” Fried added. And there’s actually a screening test for the early detection of some kinds of canine cancers.

“With aging pets, we’re generally looking to monitor and carefully treat problems as they develop — earlier is always better — and to help them maintain the best quality of life they can for as long as they can. Our goal is not necessarily to keep them alive to the last possible second, it’s to keep them alive as long as they have a good, comfortable quality of life,” he stated.

Having a healthy older pet can be a costly privilege.

Advises Fried, “It is absolutely best to get pet insurance before your pet has anything the insurance company would consider a pre-existing condition. There’s no Affordable Care Act for pets. There are many good pet insurance companies now, and I strongly recommend getting pet insurance at a young age, before they have a pre-existing condition.”

Fried generally recommends that pet owners, at minimum, get the equivalent of major medical insurance, covering major illnesses or injuries. “You don’t need policies that cover every physical exam and vaccine and deworming,” he says. ‘But if your pet hurts itself and needs surgery or it gets a serious illness and needs to be hospitalized, you want that to be covered.”

Returning to my world, something happened down the hall from me recently that brought the issue of aging pets into painful focus. My neighbors Dave and his husband Michael had two friendly dogs, Ray-Ray and Libby, who frisked by my door every day.

In February, they had to put down Ray-Ray, the 13-year-old chihuahua, because of heart problems.

It was an excruciating decision for them. “I know we did the right thing, and my rational mind knows that we would certainly want to have another dog down the line after Libby, our 10-year-old labrador,” says Dave. “But there was a part of me when I was putting Ray-Ray down that was like, I can never do this again. It’s so heartbreaking! Just the thought of getting a puppy and having a great 10 or 15 years and then having to put them down…it’s really tough.”

As for me, my beloved cat Jimmy is no longer lean and lanky; truth be told, he is rather large and lumpy after a lifetime of too much kibble. Abby, the jumper of the two of them, rarely does dazzling feline acrobatics anymore. They sleep more than ever, usually with the other nearby.

I won’t lie — I’ve shed tears for what’s about to come. Who will go first? How will the other one survive the loss? How will I survive the loss? But I am determined to baby them and treat every day with them as the gift it is.

As writer Anatole France wisely said, “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”

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