It had been very quiet for both of us without Binda. With Kindi no longer wanting to walk, I took my mother's advice and left 'little treats' around the place and on the floor for her to find. She spent a good deal of her energy in between meal times, either sleeping or blindly and restlessly scavenging for food on the floor. I could only imagine how Kindi must have felt about Binda's absence. I thought she might live another few months.
Then one day while sitting at the study desk, I saw a circle of light the size of a dinner plate appear on my right hand side. I was told, take her to the vet right now! I quickly attempted to check up on some symptoms online and my computer began to jam and shut down. Fearing that something was going to stop me getting Kindi to Parap Vet, I picked her up and took her straight there. It was only a few minutes off closing time.
Once there the vet gave me the medication she needed. I had diagnosed her correctly with having worms. A few days later Kindi's stomach began to swell and she kept looking at me through her dull half-blind eyes, as if I was going to make it all better for her soon. Another trip to the vet provided us with some fluid tablets. But on this occasion, they didn't seem to be working. Kindi spent the day sitting beside me on the quilt with her swollen stomach. She then began to make little sounds like she would do when she had to go outside to pee, but she wasn't making a move to get up. I just can't watch her in pain like this.
It was late in the afternoon when I called Kindi out to the empty kitchen. I poured a little soy custard into her favourite food bowl and she gobbled it down. She couldn't seem to get enough food into her. The French vet had told me that this was because her leaky gut wasn't allowing her to absorb the nutrients. I knew I had to get her to the vet again before closing time, in case she became worse during the night. As I closed the blinds on the double glass door that looked out to the mangroves and the sunset, I felt as if I was turning out the light on her life.
As Kindi and I sat in the waiting room at the vet, an aboriginal man who had followed us in off the street, sat down beside us. He said that he was a shaman and that Kindi would live. He showed me a stone from 'his country' that he carried around in his pocket. I said, "If you're a shaman, then you better pray now because she is dying." Kindi lay at my feet. He then said that his totem was the rainbow serpent and he began to place his hands upon her side saying that he would heal her. The fact that he was there reminded me of the man who had suddenly come in off the street to say, "Good luck, mate. Good luck," to Binda, before he had been led away into surgery for his operation.
By the time the young French vet came out to the three of us, Kindi had pissed all over the floor while still sitting down. She was very particular how she did her business, and this was something she would never have done under normal circumstances. The vet looked grave. She said to me, "You once told me to tell you when. I am telling you, it is time now."
There was an emotional urgency in her voice that could not be ignored. So I gently led poor old Kindi into the surgery with her feet dragging a little bit to where the nurse had placed a towel on the floor. The experience was quickly becoming surreal and we needed help. Neither Kindi nor I had been given a chance to recover from the shock of losing Binda. But I dared not think, in case I lost my composure. This time the help came from the human hands of the vet and nurse. I knew Kindi would have wanted it that way since she had always been a gregarious girl.
