{"id":2316,"date":"2009-03-17T11:15:13","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T17:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2009-03-17T11:17:05","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T17:17:05","slug":"day-74-midnight-burial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/phil\/day-74-midnight-burial\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 74: Burial"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Day<\/a><\/p>\n

I knew I was going to have to write this post eventually, and for many months now, I knew the time was creeping closer and closer. I just didn’t know how close. And then Sunday things just sort of fell apart and difficult decisions had to be made and here we are. <\/p>\n

Felix battled his insulinoma like a trooper, but you can only fight your body so long. And Sunday, after so many seizures and him yelping the most pitiful yelp of an animal shocked and in pain you’ve ever heard, we decided \u2014 after the vet confirmed our hunch that there was really no guarantee that any treatment option we pursued would help him \u2014 it was time to put him to sleep. It happened so fast. He was in the other room, yelping, and then he got quiet and they brought him in, zonked on Valium. We had to make the call. I couldn’t look the doctor in the eye, even though he was being so nice to us. We had some time alone with Felix, but he was already gone. Wasn’t even blinking, just shivering. And then suddenly I was standing there with Phil, watching the doctor inject blue and then clear liquid into his little leg catheter. He stopped breathing and that was that. They put him in a box for us so we could take him and bury him in Saltillo beside Gonzo. <\/p>\n

Two hours on the road. <\/p>\n

At 1 a.m., Phil dug a grave and I held the flashlight. He said a prayer and went about the business of covering up the grave. There was crying. I was crying for the end of an era in my life as much as I was crying for Felix himself. So much has changed, and I’m not sure it’s all been for the better. <\/p>\n

I will miss him so much. He was my first pet \u2014 a pet I picked out and raised and cared for. He was tiny, tiny when we first got him, and we were so clueless about ferrets that when we let him have too many dried apples to eat and he was horking them up, we honestly thought we had killed him. There was one time in Havenwood in Murfreesboro when we couldn’t find him, and realized with that gut-walloping horror that he had escaped through the dryer hose and was outside. He’d gotten downstairs and was happily on his way to adventures in wilds of the ‘Boro, but we spotted him and snagged him and utterly foiled his plan. He tried to get away again in Memphis when we lived in Lynnfield Place. One of our neighbors found a little sable ferret in the monkeygrass and notified the office. The apartment was so big and the ferrets had so many places to hide that we didn’t even know he was missing.<\/p>\n

He was so smart and so good and such a little boy scout. I’m glad he’s not suffering anymore.<\/p>\n

\"felixcouch2\"<\/a> \"felix\"<\/a> \"peeking\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Project 365<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I knew I was going to have to write this post eventually, and for many months now, I knew the time was creeping closer and closer. I just didn’t know how close. And then Sunday things just sort of fell apart and difficult decisions had to be made and here we are. Felix battled his insulinoma like a trooper, but you can only fight your body so long. And Sunday, after so many seizures and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[481,683],"tags":[899,2170,645,805,2149],"class_list":["post-2316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phil","category-project-365-2009","tag-burial","tag-felix","tag-ferret","tag-pet","tag-project-365"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1jWWl-Bm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}