The copper room

2 p.m. Monday: I am bored. And frantic. And bored. To distract myself, I look across into the other room. The walls are painted peach, with a darker accent wall. I imagine the paint color is called dried apricot, or maybe copper pot. The large copper lamp, obviously expensive, casts a warm glow. The sofa is black, leather, maybe even Italian leather. It's a nice room, far nicer than any other room in this building.

I will give anything not to go into that room.

I am standing in the room across the hall, a utilitarian room with white walls, a paper towel dispenser and two phone jacks. I am leaning on the surgical steel table. My right arm is resting atop 11 pounds of cat, my fingers urgently scratching her head.

She is purring. She is panting. She is suffocating.

The copper room is too nice. Too soothing. This is the room where you wait and hope, and hope in vain. This is where the word "humane" becomes a horrible, hostile word. This is where you play God. This is where you choke on a sob as you nod. This is where you decide if you want to say your goodbyes and then leave before the end comes, or if you want to see this life all the way through.

I don't know the answer. I stayed with Zach until the end. I changed my mind just as the poison slid into his vein. I realized it was too late. I realized that believing in death with dignity is one thing; carrying out that belief is quite another. A second later his long and complicated life was over and I gasped and sobbed "I'm so sorry" as the finality of my decision sank in. He purred til the end. That was the worst part -- that cat loved and trusted me even though I'd only had him for a month.

I've had Syracuse for seven years. Since she was eight weeks old. And I cannot kill her today.

Two days ago she was fine. Now she is lying motionless in the base of her carrier, purring not in happiness but in distress. She is soaked with urine. I cleaned her up as best I could with paper towels, but they didn't help much. Other than her hindquarters, she is an ideal patient today. And it's breaking my heart, because she can't even summon the energy to hiss.

One week ago I finally crossed "Syracuse vet" off my to-do list. Distemper shot? Check. Claws clipped? Check (long overdue) Anything else? Well, she's been pulling out clumps of fur lately. The vet was reassuring; it's probably allergies. The weather -- downpours followed by long dry spells -- has bred pollen galore. The vet said he's seeing worse allergies than usual this spring and based on my Zyrtec use this year, I agreed. He said he could give her oral prednisone or pills. I thought back on the time I discovered her pill stash -- a week's worth of antibiotics that she hid under her tongue, pretended to swallow and then spit out behind the dryer -- and I chose shot.

It was such an innocuous conversation. Neither of us had any idea that in the next few seconds we would trigger a ticking time bomb.

The prenisone stopped the fur-pulling.

It also triggered heart failure.

5 p.m.: I have been sent to the Annapolis Mall (excuse me, the Westfield Shoppingtowne at Annapolis, which just rolls off the tongue) to "get a cup of coffee" while the cardiologist does an ultrasound. I have been here for two hours. This is what I have learned today: men's polos are 1/2 off at The Gap. Red Robin's burgers are mediocre. There are people in this world whose profession is "cat cardiologist." None of these people work in D.C.

I am sitting in the food court, flipping through Glamour and pointedly wiping the ice cream off my arm. I am directing angry thoughts at the parents of the child pounding his spoon onto his ice cream four feet from me. They are ignoring me, or perhaps they are not telepathic. I have turned the volume on my ringer all the way up and all four of us jump when it rings.

The medical term is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy -- the left ventricle of her heart is twice the size it should be. The defect has been lurking there for years, waiting for the perfect stressor to kill my cat.

The prednisone was just the excuse it needed. Her heart stopped pumping fluid properly, so the fluid filled her lungs and chest cavity. She is struggling to breathe.

The doctor is wonderful (side note: every vet I've worked with has been a far more thorough, caring and compassionate doctor than any doctor I, as a human, have had. I can't help but wonder if this is because pets don't have HMOs). He assures me that no one could have known about the defect without a chest X-ray, that I am not to blame for pushing for the prednisone. (And, he emphasizes, neither is my vet.) He compares it to high school football players who drop dead doing wind sprints because nobody tests a 17-year-old for heart disease. He says that in a roundabout way the prednisone fiasco is a good thing, because we caught it early. Otherwise she might have just dropped dead a few months from now. He says she's responding well to treatment and she doesn't need to be admitted.

He wants to recheck her in four months. That means he thinks she'll be around in four months.

Monday, 9 p.m.: She's not out of the woods yet. She's still not eating, and she's lethargic. The doctor says the first 72 hours will be the worst. She's on four medications; she'll be on some of them for the rest of her life. One drug is taking care of the fluid in the lungs, but the heart defect cannot be repaired. I am now the owner of a chronically ill animal.

But we dodged the copper room. And I will take a defective cat over a euthanized one any day.