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Oscar's trip to Vulture Rock Monday, January 13 2025
At 8:00am, Gretchen called the Hurley vet, which now has a super corporate sounding voicemail system, complete with verbiage about how a recording might be made and used "for training purposes." This led me to ask why nobody making such systems hasn't tried to humanize them more, or at least make them sound less like they're following one specific template. The reason Gretchen was calling was to arrange for Oscar the Cat's euthanasia. She didn't get through the first time, though on a subsequent call she did and an appointment was made for 3:00pm.
It's never pleasant living with a creature for any amount of time when you know something horrifying that they do not: that they will soon be dead. So I tried to be as nice as possible to Oscar all day, dutifully cleaning up his random piss puddles without getting mad and even giving him is 3:00pm afternoon meal at 1:30pm.
I spent most of the time until Oscar's appointment in front of my computer, tinkering with the FRAM logging code on my ESP8266 Remote. I also switched the search engine on my main computer back from Bing to Google after seeing the following ad overlaying my search results:

The ad that made me switch back from Bing to Google.
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In a post I later made on Reddit, I said the following:
This overlay appeared on my Bing search results this morning. Note the arrogance of only providing "Add it now" and "Later" buttons. I might not have switched back to Google had I been able to make this go away forever, and it would've given Microsoft valuable information on the kind of shopper I am.
I'm not an online privacy absolutist; if Google models my behavior well enough to target advertising at me that I find useful, that's a win for both of us. (I'm not sure how they'd do this given that I use ad blockers and rarely see any internet advertising.) Obviously Microsoft's model of my behavior made a very bad prediction if it thought I wanted to install an extension having to do with gift cards, one of the most scammer-adjacent technologies this side of Bitcoin kiosks.
When I went down to the living room at some point, I realized I don't have many contemporary photos of Oscar, so I snapped a couple of him looking old and beat up, with one of his eyes partially closed due to mysterious swelling. When Charlotte saw me grab my big Nikon camera, she got excited that this meant we were going for a walk. So I decided to kill some time doing that. I led her and Neville up the Farm Road, past the abandoned go cart track and then homeward on snowy trails through the scrubby forests west of the Farm Road. There was a prominent track from a fat-wheeled bike back there that was probably left by our neighbor Tommy.
Back at the house, I warmed up the Forester so it would be comfortable for Oscar on the ride to his demise. I also put a cat carrier in the way back in case it was needed. But I was going to try doing the whole thing without forcing him into it, since he fucking hated it in there in the past. I put him on the passenger's seat beside me, but the moment we started rolling, he started complaining, climbing up on the dashboard, changing the radio station, and occasionally slipping and falling. At some point he released a fart smell so foul that I rolled the windows down a little. Eventually he nestled onto the floor mat in front of the passenger seat and stopped complaining.
At the vet's office, I drove around to the side door as I'd been instructed, and they opened it up for me. Inside was a room specially outfitted for euthanasia. It included a basket of dog toys, a jar of peanut butter, and some heart-string-tugging photos and art on the wall. I put Oscar in my lap, and he seemed content to stay there. (He wanted to jump down at one point, but when I prevented this, he seemed okay with just perching on my lap while I stroked him. He always took a long time to nestle in and become a comfortable experience for the lap he wanted to sit in, and this was no different. As all this was happening, a few tears came to my eyes. Both Gretchen and I had been very irritated by Oscar in this final year of so of life, but he always meant well and it was definitely sad to be making the decision to end his life.
My first contacts with a member of the vet staff had her seeming a bit skeptical that Oscar really needed to be euthanized. She wanted to know what was wrong with him, asking if it was just that he was "old." I told her that he was very old, but also that he had started pissing and pooping all over the house and sleeping in the places he only goes when he is distressed or uncomfortable. His appetite is still good, I conceded.
Evidently what I said was good enough, because they then performed the euthanasia without bothering with an exam or even a weight measurement. It went extremely slowly, for some reason, taking more than an hour as I kept waiting for them to do the next thing. First they knocked him out with a sedative, which only took a minute or so to work its magic after they put an injection into his bony ass. When it kicked in, I felt him relax into my lap in a way he never had before. After that, he lay there with his eyes and mouth wide open, looking dead but still breathing. Next the techs came in to install a venous port on his arm. Then, maybe twenty minutes later, the vet came in and injected the chemicals (probably potassium chloride) that stopped his heart. It was nice that they'd set up this special euthanasia room, but the walls of the facility are thin and the whole time I sat there, I could hear people laughing and chit-chatting about issues like diarrhea in the next room over. I could've tolerated a little of that, but hearing that while waiting unknown amounts of time during a euthansia procedure is less than ideal.
When it was over and the vet declared Oscar dead, she wrapped him up in a blanket and told me I could hang out with him there as long as I needed to. But she was assuming that they'd be cremating him, which apparently most people do. That's a waste of resources on multiple levels; I prefer to return a dead animal as quickly to the food chain as possible. Also, I was very much ready to get started on doing that. (I didn't want to spend any more time in that room.) I carried him back to the Forester and placed him on the floor behind the driver's seat. On the drive home, I stopped at the Stewart's to buy a sixpack of Hazy Little Thing. (I would've also bought a box of tea bags, but evidently the Stewart's customer base has no demand for that product.)
Back at the house, I fetched Charlotte and had her walk with me as I carried Oscar to his final destination. As we walked, I encouraged Charlotte to sniff the blanket so she'd know it was Oscar. Maybe it was puzzling to her that I was carrying him into the forest, but perhaps she also sort of understood. We walked through the scrubby woodlands west of the Farm Road to that one tall boulder where one can put a dead body without fear of dogs getting to it. It's been the ultimate resting place for Charles the Cat and that dead fawn Neville dragged into the living room this summer. Today I decided to call it "Vulture Rock," not because I've ever seen vultures on it, but because something quickly gets rid of any corpses placed on it, and I assume vultures play a role. The top of Vulture Rock is a little beyond reach, so I actually had to throw Oscar up there, where he nestled somewhat comfortably on the snow behind some rocks I'd stacked up there back in 2020 when I put Charles there.
Back again at the house, I cooked up a pot of rice and made a simple stir fry using broccoli, onions, and tempeh. (I would've also used mushrooms, but I didn't know they were there.) It wasn't a great stir fry, but it was good enough for Gretchen to get seconds. (As for me, my appetite was somewhat suppressed by a recreational 150mg dose of pseudoephedrine I'd taken this morning.) After Jeopardy!, we watched the first episode of the second season of the Korean hit show Squid Game. It had a lot of exposition before getting to the good stuff, but eventually it became the brutal cringefest we remember from the first season (and we haven't even gotten to the games yet). Gretchen kept raving about how good it was, though I wasn't quite sure I was really enjoying it.
a retrospective of Oscar the Cat

With me and Ramona shortly after we got him back from a neighbor's barn, which he'd fled to the first night we got him and lived in for about a month. This was July 23, 2014.
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In the laboratory with Stripey the Cat (who never liked Oscar), August 3, 2014.
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With the Lester while he was still a kitten in the laboratory doorway, August 3, 2014. (At the time we thought Lester was a girl and called him "Celeste.")
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A painting, February 17, 2015.
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On the cat tree, February 26, 2015.
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On the freshly-painted laboratory floor, April 6, 2017.
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With Lester (then "Celeste") on the laboratory ottoman, March 13, 2018.
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With Lester (then "Celeste") on the laboratory ottoman, March 13, 2018.
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A loose monochrome painting, March 14, 2018.
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On the structure of Gretchen's screened-in porch, June 9, 2018.
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With Diane in the driveway, June 30, 2019.
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In the front yard, August 10, 2019.
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With Lester (then "Celeste") on the laboratory ottoman, April 17, 2020.
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In the driveway, May 9, 2020.
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Hairballs made from Oscar's fluff, March 2022.
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In the front yard, August 24, 2022.
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With Ramona the Dog on the laboratory bean bag, late August, 2023.
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Oscar today, an hour or so before his euthanasia appointment.
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With Neville in the background in the living room today.
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