Ranger--May You Rest in Peace

Today was Ranger's last day with us.  He has been so sick since the beginning of the year.  I spent so much time trying to nurse him back to health--treating his wound and giving him antibiotics for four months.  Because bone infections are so hard to cure, we always knew there was a chance that he wouldn't make it despite all the effort we were making to keep him alive.  But we really did think that he was out of the woods.  A couple of days ago we were heartbroken to find that Ranger had an eye infection that had caused a really bad skin infection as well--just like when we started out on this adventure.  I tried to give Chris time to get used to the fact that it might be time to put him down.  So I gave him an extra day to spend with Ranger before we decided to go to the vet.  Both Chris and I had held out some hope that maybe we could just treat the eye and skin infections and maybe it wasn't anything to do with his abscess after all.  But the vet's first recommendation was to euthanize--didn't even try to convince us to try to treat the infections--unless we really felt strongly that we wanted to.  We had already resigned ourselves to the fact that today might be his last day but it is still hard to make that final decision.

He had given us a scare a few weeks ago when he ran away from home.  I carelessly had left his cage open in a hurry to get to work after feeding him.  When we discovered that he was gone at the end of the day, we were frantic to find him.  We looked all over our backyard, the neighbors backyard and around the neighborhood a bit.  Chris especially was beside himself with worry and grief.  He was sure that Ranger was already dead or soon would be--that a cat or dog had already gotten to him.  As I tried to calm him down, we sat on the porch and talked awhile.  I am so glad that God kept us outside and in the right place for us to see Ranger in the yard across the street.  He had a cat stalking him but it was the most beautiful sight to see that he was okay and we had a chance of catching him and getting him back in his own cage.  I'm hoping that Ranger enjoyed that day of adventure--but equally glad that we found him and that we could spend the last two weeks with him.

And we just celebrated his fifth birthday this weekend.  We always get carrot cake to celebrate his birthday.  I ate the last piece tonight.  Made me sad to think that this was the last birthday cake that we would have for him.

So there is a big hole in our hearts right now.  We will miss him very much but I am so glad that he isn't in pain anymore as I know he was.