Holding on

I am so worried about my Miles today.  He hasn't been eating very well and has been lethargic for a couple of days.  Several years ago, I bought a wooden chair at a furniture store's closing sale to use while teaching piano lessons.  Miles claimed it as his chair and was often on it or under it from that point on.  He allowed me to use it for my lessons but that was all.  Since we moved into this place we keep his chair upstairs and I keep the blinds pulled halfway up all the time so he can have the sun come in and so he can see outside.  The past two days he has done very little other than just lay under that chair all day.  He spends his nights sleeping on me or Johnny or under the chair.  I've been giving him pills to help stimulate his appetite.  At the beginning of the week our vet gave him a vitamin B12 shot to see if that would help.  These things do help but usually only for part of a day. I had to give him the shot that stings a lot today and he was very good for it - which worries me.  The better he's doing, the more he struggles and fights his medications.  I had to go upstairs and carry him back down to feed him.
I keep saying that I understand that he doesn't have very long.  I've been told that I am approaching things with a mentally healthy attitude.  But, to be honest, part of me is dying with him.  He's been like a child for us.  He kisses my face, clambers up onto my shoulder to hang out when I come home from somewhere, meows and scurries over to me when I sneeze so he can check to see how I'm doing.  He wakes me up in the mornings with little mews and chirps and touching me gently with his paw (though in his younger years pulling my hair with his teeth was his favorite way).  Whenever John is looking for me he calls out, "Honey?" and Miles learned the tones and meows them when he's calling me.  We take naps in one another's arms and know each other's thoughts.

The truth is, I'm devastated.  And the more time that goes by and the more weight he loses (he dropped some more and is down to 8 lb 14 oz) the more it hurts.  In the words of Sylvia Plath, it's like an owl's talons clenched around my heart.  And all there is to do is keep fighting it with medicine and love until we both can't hold on anymore.  He's my demon, my familiar; he is a part of my soul in the form of an animal.  It's so hard to watch him fading away.  But I can't stop trying.  Not yet.

Miles is the little gray puff in John's hands.