Cinnabar was in his transport cage in the back of our truck and of all things while we were deliberating our options a yardman was running his leaf blower. I could not believe his last moments on earth were surrounded with such horrible noise and so we waited until he was finished. Cinnabar was under the influence of ketamine and not really alert to the noise, but I was. It was in such contrast to the peace and quiet of his life with us.  I crawled into his cage with him and sat beside him, and stroked him, telling him how much we loved him and we spent a long time like that. 

Then Dr. Adney came back with the sleep away and all the racket of before was gone and it was time. He injected the pink liquid into a vein in his forearm. The life forces left my dear sweet son, and it was all over so quickly.

We covered him in the blanket and drove home in teary silence.  I was thinking about where to bury him. Our graveyard is getting full. It will not hold 9 more cougars; we are going to have to choose another spot. And I thought about his brothers, Arjan and Sharu and how they needed to know about Cinni.

We stopped at a garden shop on the way home and the lady asked what was in the cage.   I picked out some pansies and some beautiful bright mums for his grave and the garden shop owner hugged me and told me her animals were her children and she understood, and then she added another pot of mums to our collection. Finally, we talked about where to bury Cinni and agreed we would lay him in his woods.

Bart dug his grave in their exercise yard, and we lay Cinni next the enclosure wall for his brothers to see.  Arjan spent a long time sitting next to Cinni and looked at him. Sharu would not come near for the longest time. Then he walked over to Cinni and spoke to him and then turned to Arjan and spoke to him.  We had to clean the cages of cow bones and feed the living cats their dinner. We were too tired to bury him that day, and I was not ready to see him go.

After the day's chores were done, I took a blanket over to Cinni and lay down beside him and hugged him and stoked his fur for a long time. He looked so old, and his belly was so big. With all the weight he lost, he still weighed over 200 pounds. I covered him with a blanket for the night.                                                   Continued next page