Goodbye Henrietta in Trichotomy

Today was appropriately gloomy. Cold, damp, and drizzling all day.

Henrietta declined even further the last few days; I wished we could have brought her to the vet last weekend. But as it stood, she spent Saturday to today constantly bruxing, and every day she ate less. She was on baby food to begin with, and then she would only eat whipped cream, and then diet shakes. By last night, if we shoved the shake to her face, she would take a few sips, gag, and then try to run away. We couldn’t even give her the pain medication.

She was also obsessively grooming her face and arms, and every day brought more pink skin and thin fur, and we couldn’t stop her. The only time she stops was when she was asleep. So we try to leave her to sleep as much as possible. We interact with her a handful of times a day: when La Professeure wakes up (6am, and she would dose her), before we go to work (8am), when we get back (8pm-ish, we dose her again), before La Professeure goes to bed (10pm), and before I go to bed (2am-ish, and I try to dose her again, which technically is over-dosing). Every time she would come out to our arms, and we’d try to feed her something, and then she’d have had enough and goes back to her cube.

But with each day, she was done with feeding sooner than the last, she would be more picky than the last, and you could tell she had more and more pain swallowing, to the point of gagging every few sips.

It was hard to see her go, but even harder to see her suffer.

We went to the vet’s office in the afternoon, so got to spend some time with her in the morning (both La Professeure and I took half a day off). We moved her to the small cage, which caused a change in environment, which caused her to come out to explore. So we got some quality time on her last day. La Professure even got her to roam on the floor and see some of her old toys while I was out getting lunch.

The vet was very kind and compassionate. We imagine he’s done this procedure thousands of times, he was very patient. He gave us room and time to spend our last moments together, then he took us into his examination room, where he gives her a large dose of sedative, causing her to fall asleep on La Professeure’s arms. That took a few minutes, and was the last thing Henrietta felt. Then he put her on a little bed and gave her a drug that stops her heart. We said our goodbyes, and pulled a shroud over her little body. She looked so peaceful.

La Professeure and I shed our tears, and will be in a funk for the next couple of days, I’m sure, but as I said in the last entry, Henrietta lived a good life, and left the world a better place than she found it, so we really cannot complain. The end came quickly, and there was very little dragging on. There could be no better way this whole affair could conclude.

Still, from now on, there will always be a Henrietta-shaped hole in our hearts.