As for overpopulation, I’m a pretty strong advocate of low-cost neutering for low-income people, and trap/neuter/release programs for managed feral colonies. A colony of well-kept, healthy ferals is not a nuisance, and it’s even easy on the city budget because TNR is cheaper to do than to trap or poison the cats repeatedly, especially if you can find (and you usually can) enough volunteers to do the trapping, spay/neuter, and feeding/management.

Anyone who would ignore someone screaming from pain, and just give them pills to shut them up, does not belong anywhere in the medical business, period!

My partner and I now have three kittens, due to be spay/neutered next month. And from the day they came home with us, I’ve had a low-grade fear of that situation -of standing in front of another vet who assumes that I will kill them at the first sign of illness. Who will suggest I simply ‘replace them’. As if they’re interchangeable.

This isn’t a very useful comment, I guess. But thank you for this post, because it’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one who finds that horrifying.

Well that’s not my entire take on it but it’s the basic reason I have a pretty firm stance on it in humans despite not wanting to prolong suffering while someone is dying – the “abuses” make up the vast majority of times when it happens, and I can’t in good conscience promote something that does that to people. If the safeguards actually worked, I’d believe otherwise

*nods* I can definitely understand that. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that very few people even think about these atrocities, much less try to stop this from happening. And the point, in other cases, about choices made out of internalized ableism is a good one. I just don’t think that anyone else has any right whatsoever to decide that another person’s life is not worth living. Though, in cases of terminal illness with severe pain (even with good treatment), I wish people were given more control over their own lives–even when that includes suicide. It is very frustrating indeed that these very different things get all tangled up together in the minds of so many people–and tangled up with power weirdness–in a way that hurts pretty much everyone affected. If that makes sense.

The trouble with human euthanasia being similar to feline euthanasia in that it rarely has anything to do with intractable pain while someone is dying already. Most of it happens to people with non-terminal impairments, or to people who are said to be terminal but aren’t that near death yer and are freaked out by sudden incontinence (fear of being “a burden” plays another large role). And much of it is either involuntary, or else “voluntary” but with a huge pressure to die, and with this weird assumption that when a disabled or terminally ill person expresses suicidal feelings then it never has to do with depression so people don’t need, say, counseling (and even if they get that, they’re often dealing with professionals who believe disabled people are burdens and it’s better to die than be incontinent or dependent). So even where it’s not legal it results in people dying anywhere from, say, 5-70 years before they would have otherwise. But those situations (which are by far the majority, and which given that they already happen, are not easily preventable by “safeguards”) are not the ones people generally think about when they want it to be legal.

Which is why I’m not all that torn about it being illegal for humans. It’s not that I want to condemn people to dying in agony (and I’ve experienced that level of pain during a close call with death myself, where I was completely sure that if I were definitely dying I would want to die earlier than the natural course of things). It’s that basically too many completely non-terminal people die already and that the majority of the population can’t tell the difference (and that even most terminal people who request it where it’s legal, are requesting it for reasons that a person could easily be pressured into (“being a burden”) or that are basically internalized ableism, and nobody questions it).

Well that’s not my entire take on it but it’s the basic reason I have a pretty firm stance on it in humans despite not wanting to prolong suffering while someone is dying – the “abuses” make up the vast majority of times when it happens, and I can’t in good conscience promote something that does that to people. If the safeguards actually worked, I’d believe otherwise (and there are still situations it doesn’t bother me in, such as when someone is dying in a war too far from help for that to be any good, and is begging a friend to kill them in a situation where help would be no good even if it were possible to get help, and other extremes). But I really hate situations like this where I feel like either choice will do something really bad but it’s clear the “in between” stances aren’t realistically possible as far as how they’d be implemented. Maybe some day disabled people will be valued more, and there will be a better choice than the basically binary one that exists today though. :-(

I’ve been horrified at the attitudes that show through some people’s approach to euthanasia, for a lot of the reasons brought up here. Lots and lots of projection and control going on. :( And the connections to attitudes toward human disability are frightening.

Emily’s comment had me crying. Nobody should be put in that kind of situation.

Most of my experiences with making this kind of decision have been with hamsters. (And I just stopped having dealings with several people who acted like it was amazing that I even took them to the vet; they’re “just hamsters”. Never mind one toilet flushing comment… *shiver*) I was “lucky” to see vets who, while they hadn’t treated a lot of hamsters, saw the point in doing so. One was ready to do surgery on a broken leg, with plates and pins intended for birds. (It healed OK without.) Still, a couple of them got sick to the point that I didn’t feel like I had any choice, because they were sufferering badly with not much to be done about it. Had there been better/any palliative care options, those decisions might have been different.

One of the things that scares me badly is just how lightly a lot of people seem to take the responsibility for these life-or-death decisions. I’m a little conflicted when it comes to the very different standards applied to humans, or at least to ones who were not previously disabled in certain ways. (Then again, experience with a terminally ill close relative, in severe pain in spite of hospice care, repeatedly begging me to kill her complicated things a bit.) It bothers me that, most places, terminally ill humans are not allowed to make these decisions for themselves. While it may be at least partially intended to prevent abuses, that’s still insisting that you know better than the person in the situation what is best for them–and are entitled to make decisions about the value of other people’s lives.

I’ve been glad that the vet we’re seeing now is not just excellent in emergency situations 24/7 (and he’s been needed multiple times), but he doesn’t seem to make a lot of strange assumptions about “quality of life”. When our Punkin kitty got hit by a car a few years back (more on this), her injuries were serious enough that I was afraid the vet would push for euthanasia–even though she very obviously wanted to live. He never even mentioned it as an option. She needed multiple surgeries, including a transfer to a specialist to get her jaw pieced back together. Guess what? She still has some complications, but she’s a happy cat.

I would also love to see better developments (and applications) in pain treatment for cats. One of the things that really bothered me about both Punkin’s situation and when her Uncle Mirrors broke his hip? Neither of them was sent home with pain relief after major orthopedic surgery. (I’ve had less extensive knee surgery twice, and was appalled, given the kind of pain I had after that even *with* treatment.) Punkin cried for weeks, in obvious pain, and it just about broke my heart that I couldn’t do anything about it except try to comfort her. That’s just not right.

I can only hope and pray to God that Dennis lives that long.

Amanda: given the horror story posted by Emily…have you had any discussion with your staff about your wishes regarding Fey if/when she becomes too ill to work/whatever? It would be a good idea to put your wishes in writing…..sooner rather than later. Fey is a senior citizen…..13 by now, right? Of course, that in and of itself doesn’t mean a thing in terms of her health and capability to work/just be there in general….

I’ve heard of cats living into their twenties. I knew someone who had a cat (Siamese….generally known as a breed for longevity) live til at least 27. He very well could have been thirty!