Craig Duncan: Being there at the end — the best worst thing you can ever do

Three weeks ago, I woke to the sound of troubled breathing.

By the time the sun rose she was dead in our arms.

It was early in the morning July 8 when my partner and I rushed our cat Ziva to the Baldivis Vet only to learn she had developed a heart disease with a stage three heart murmur and fluid was filling her lungs.

We didn’t know anything different just hours before, then we were saying our final goodbyes to our family member of 15 years.

When the vet tells you it’s time you are given the choice to stay with your pet until the end or to say your final farewells and leave the room for their last breaths.

If you choose to leave your pet’s final moments are spent being cared for by vets and vet nurses with nothing but kindness and compassion.

But to your pet, they are strangers.

I cannot imagine how Ziva would have felt if she was to meet her end without us there.

The smells, sights and sounds of a vet were scary enough for her when she was in perfect health. Now, tired, sore and struggling to breathe, she needed us then more than ever.

As someone with multiple pets, when those final moments are approaching there is nowhere I would rather be than at their side — no matter how hard it feels in the moment.

For Ziva this year, our dogs Hazel and Ronin in the years before, as hard as it was to say goodbye, I am grateful to have spent those final moments with them.

Rather than being surrounded by strangers, Ziva’s last moments were in my partner’s arms as we told her how much we loved her and what it meant to us to have her as our companion for all those years.

While nothing will ever make the loss of a pet any easier for us being with them at the end makes it easier for them.

Choosing to be there for her, after so many years of her being there for me, was the best worst thing I could do.

Craig Duncan is a reporter at the South Western Times.