Spud returned from the vet all neutered and vaccinated and I tried to forget that he was carrying feline leukemia.  The first couple of weeks back I was the veritable eagle’s eye looking for symptoms of the ailment, but as time wore on the worry faded while languishing in that tiny dark compartment in the back of my mind.
    Spud continued to grow and fluff out with an extravagant fur coat and mane fit for a lion.  I learned to diligently scratch and massage that mane and if he was recently fed, nothing at all could be better in his world.  In his carpeted perch, he could require scratching for time eternal, glancing with a “What are you doing?” look if I ceased for one reason or another.
    He had a favorite game I learned to detest. As I would come in or leave the apartment, front or back door, Spud would bolt out and up the stairs and by the time I realized it, his big furry ass would be at eye level in his ascension.  I tried a bunch of different entry and exit techniques to avoid the  “Old Anus Eye” some of which were successful, but eventually I would be tired or foggy and up the stairs he went.  What drove me crazy was the was nothing up either stairwell for him really to check out.  He was perfectly happy for me to climb the stairs while he pretended to be sniffing a neighbor’s welcome mat assiduously, then have me pick him up and carry him back down the stairs to our apartment.
    One day I figured he wanted to get out so much I took him outside and deposited him in the middle of the back yard.  He definitely did not want that, as it turned out.  Spud froze where I set him down and started some of the most piteous yowling I had ever heard.  I had to return Spud back into the apartment to get him to quiet down.  So apparently it was those sexy door mats my upstairs neighbors displayed front and back.  The neighbors really seemed pretty normal other than that.
    As Spud’s first (estimated) birthday approached, I noticed he seemed not to be breathing normally, not quite panting but small rapid breaths and his energy was less than usual.  During the next work week I watched his symptoms grow more pronounced, worrying more and more that he was coming to the end of the line.  I brought home some of his favorite food, raw wild king salmon, and it was as much as he could handle to snag a small piece of it out of his dish and chew and swallow.  I fully expected to come home one of those days and find Spud dead.  I was really getting emotionally twisted.
    My first day off I hand fed my boy some small bits of raw salmon loaded him into his carrier and it was off to the veterinarian for blood tests to hopefully prove that it wasn’t the leukemia exerting itself.  Spud knew something was very, very wrong.  He freaked out in the carrier (which he had never done before), chewing at the grates and pissing all over.  The carrier was on the seat next to me in the front and I was doing about 45 mph on a busy main thoroughfare.  I bet you think a ringing cell phone is distracting while driving.  Not even close.
    After arriving at the Animal Hospital and turning my ailing best Buddy over to an attendant for blood tests, I sat down in the lobby waiting room and descended down several levels of hell.  I was extremely worried and had the misfortune of having to listen to several overweight and over made up middle age women extol all the virtues and levels of cuteness of the different species of domesticated rats each possessed and had sitting in their respective laps.  One which was a Chihuahua rat, another a Shih-Tzu rat, and the third a toy poodle rat.  The discussion lasted about an hour, at which time I was rescued and ushered into talk to the vet.
    The results were the worst as I had expected, but had been in denial the last couple of days.  Spud’s lymph glands were so swollen that they actually caused the shortness of breath by crowding his lungs so the couldn’t expand fully.  It was a death sentence and as I knew what I had to decide, the vet rattled on about treatment with Interferon, but the prognosis was the same.  I had to decide the quality of mercy to give to my best non-human friend.
    The decision was made to end the Spud’s suffering and  the doctor asked if I wanted to remain throughout the procedure.  This was an even worse decision than the last.  I had to stay-this was my best Buddy-and I didn’t want him to be alone in his last moments. So while trying to give him the best neck scratch Spud had patiently taught me to do over the last year, I experienced the worst several emotional moments of my life, but I was there for him.  It was the best of a bad deal all the way around.