Gone to His Eternal Sleep

I just had my cat put down at the vet's. His name was Jaidee, and he was the sweetest cat anyone could ever have. I had him almost fifteen years before he developed intestinal cancer, much like my Tao-Tao did a few years ago, and we knew he wouldn't be around long after his diagnosis. Prednisolone kept him going for a couple of months, and I was hoping he could hang on till my wife returned from Thailand in three days so she could see him one last time and say a proper goodbye.

But Jaidee suddenly seemed to have trouble passing stool yesterday and began looking very uncomfortable, so I took him to the vet today virtually certain it would be a one-way trip for him. I was right.

Perhaps it's better that my wife wasn't here to deal with that. But now I'm home alone and very, very sad. For as much as I've loved the cats who have blessed my life and would dearly love, even now, to adopt another, it doesn't seem financially feasible at my age and under my circumstances. Not if I want to be here long enough and financially able to provide another cat with the lasting love and every kind of care it might need for the rest of its precious life.

I want to share my pain with others. But the truth is, no one cares or can care as much as I do. Even if they've had and lost cats, their cats weren't my cat, and they weren't me. And, when you come right down to it, I wouldn't even want anyone to feel as bad as I do right now. Or I would and I wouldn't.

I won't keep on about this. Jaidee has gone to his eternal sleep, and I may not be terribly far behind. Not from "unnatural" causes but from pathologically natural ones.

All I can say is that I don't believe in a heavenly afterlife, but if there is one, I'd want the cats I've loved over the past thirty-five years to be part of it, and especially my sweet Jaidee. There'll never be another like him.

Do Cellphones Cause Cancer?

On the Larry King show last night, I watched panelists, including neurosurgeons and scientists, discuss the question of whether using cellphones causes head and brain cancer. The gist of the discussion was that the evidence is inconclusive but nevertheless troubling enough that it would be prudent to use cellphones more sparingly than many do now, or be sure to keep them as far away from the head as possible by using the speaker function, or use a headset, preferably a wired one, as much as possible. For it is the electromagnetic radiation emanating from the cellphone's antenna that poses the biggest threat of inducing malignant cellular changes in the brain (gliomas), ears (acoustic neuromas), or salivary glands. The closer the antenna is to the head, the more radiation the head receives, and, therefore, the bigger the threat.

It will be interesting to see what happens years from now after millions of people have used cellphones regularly for decades. Will we see a huge jump in the incidence of head cancer in these individuals? Will using cellphones turn out to be as dangerous, if not more so, than smoking cigarettes, and cellphones will come packaged with a warning from the Surgeon General similar to that found on cigarette packages today?

I, for one, intend to be more careful in my use of cellphones from now on.