Kirby Gotcha Daze
No, this essay isn’t an elegy for my dead dog. It has a happy ending! Kirby continues to walk this earth.
Early July. I am at the vet clinic, hanging out in my favorite exam room. An odd thing to have a favorite of, yes, but I’ve spent a lot of time in this building the past two years. It is weirdly spacious for an exam room. The metal exam table and cuck bench for the humans are ten feet apart. It feels like the room was tacked onto the end of the building as an afterthought.
Kirby is pacing around on the floor, as usual, bumping into everything like a slow-moving pinball. What is unusual is that Kirby isn’t barking. Making no noise, actually. This is not normal. Kirby is always making some kind of noise: barking, grunting, snorting, snoring, whistling through his nose, crying, and other gerunds I’m not able to think of at present. But the only sounds in the room are Kirby’s long nails clicking on the vinyl tile floor. I make a mental note to schedule a nail trim the next time Kirby’s in for fluids. Then wonder if there will even be a next time.
Fletch, our vet, also notes how unusual Kirby’s silence is. “You can tell he’s not feeling well.”
Kirby hasn’t felt well plenty of times before, but unlike his other, typical health crises, the onset of this current episode was not sudden. Over a couple of weeks, Kirby gradually stopped eating his normal food and treats, stopped taking meds in pill pockets, and was only eating a little bit of chicken and rice. His energy was low, even after getting fluids, and he wasn’t escaping through the yard’s fence to go on walkabout down the sidewalk. He pretty much only wanted to sleep. With a 16-year-old, medically fragile dachshund, this felt different than those other times.
“It feels like his star is dimming,” I say to Fletch, “and I don’t know that it’ll brighten again.”
Fletch nods. After a moment, he says, “We probably should start thinking about what comes next soon. Not today... but soon.”
What comes next. This is the first time he and I have ever veered towards this euphemistic subject. Memories of Fozzie and Molly’s final days, normally locked away in a dusty steamer trunk in the corner of my brain, begin to leak out a gap between trunk and lid. I close the lid firmly shut.
Kirby wanders back over to me, and I scoop him up. I flip him over onto his back, so I’m holding him like an infant. I started doing this two years ago, back when he still had eyes, but ulcers were eating away at them. He was in so much pain and couldn’t get comfortable and we figured out that holding him like this was the only way he would relax.
I look down at this old man baby in my arms. His tiny red rocket slides out like a tube of lipstick. He may be dying, but Kirby’s body still awkwardly demonstrates his love for his dad.
I tell Fletch my hope is that Kirby can make it to his Gotcha Day, which, at this point, is still two weeks away. This seems sorta-maybe realistic. I hope Fletch doesn’t tell me I’m being overly optimistic.
Instead, Fletch says, “Got-Ya-Day?” Sounding it out like a foreign language. “I’ve never heard of that before. What is it?”
I am charmed that, of all people, a veterinarian has never heard this phrase before. Though to be fair, I hadn’t heard it until I met Jess and our then-trio six years ago. I also don’t know plenty of other shit, shit most normal — typical, I mentally correct myself, hearing my therapist in my head — people know. So who am I to throw rocks?
“Gotcha Day,” I say again. “The day Jess brought Kirby home from the rescue. Since we don’t know his birthday, we celebrate his Gotcha Day instead.”
“I love it,” Fletch says. “I’m going to start using that.”
“I’ll allow it,” I say, like I’m the person who originated the phrase or something.
———
To everyone’s great surprise, Kirby doesn’t die. He is hospitalized for three days of continuous IV fluids and a brand-new drug designed to fight acute pancreatitis. He comes home, and though things continue to be dicey for a minute, after a few days, Kirby mostly returns to his old self again. He begins eating his regular food, though instead of microwaving his food for 15 seconds like normal, sane people, now the only way we can get him to eat is by heating it using a ghetto sous vide technique that takes 12 minutes. Annoying, yes, but he scarfs his food down, so it is worth it.
Then, somehow, it is the 26th of July: Kirby has made it to his Gotcha Day.
On that day, 16 years before, Jess stopped on a whim at an adoption event in Houston and was assailed by a ten-pound sausage dog — a tiny chestnut blur running circles around her and trying to jump into her lap, and who gave her no choice but to take him home with her. I never met this Kirby; I wouldn’t appear on the scene for another ten years. I only know him from photos. When we were first formally introduced, Kirby was already in double digits; he was a little less scrawny and a lot whiter in the face. (If I’m being honest, he was also kind of annoying, though we eventually became pals.) But he was cute as hell and possessed this incredible crackhead-like energy.
Kirby is 16½ now. He has a bad back, stage 3 chronic kidney disease, pancreatitis barely kept in check, Cushing’s disease, a liver that’s seen better days, and no eyes. He’s survived a fungal infection, uveitis, an IVDD surgery and numerous flare-ups, a double enucleation, plus this most recent staving off of death-by-old-age. Realistically, we know his time left in this dimension is dwindling — maybe weeks, maybe a couple of months. Another Gotcha Day anniversary is unlikely.
But he made it to this Gotcha Day. His star has brightened. He’s here with us now, and he’s content — and that’s enough.
Just a little guy, slow-pinballing his way around this strange universe.
Thank you for writing this. Against all odds, we made it only 6 weeks shy from Gotcha Day 17. He loved you so very much. 💙