My Cat Just Died

Threads like this restore my faith in SportsJournalists.com. I've grown very fond of the cat that was my wife's before we married, even though she's a bit of a pill some of the time. (Former neighbors of Carla's had abandoned Mama Kitty twice before she took her in, so she's lived life on the hard streets and metes out some Starman justice with her claws every now and then.) One of the things that makes me realize Carla and I have something special is that Kitty is the first cat I've ever been around that I'm not allergic to. She even crawls up on my chest now when I laying in front of the TV.

 

Didn't want to start a new thread, so I did a search of Rainbow Bridge and found this, figured I'd post on it ...

Just had to put my cat, Smoke, down. About five years ago, my mom was doing cat rescue, trying to catch a specific cat, and accidentally trapped this little critter. She found out he was FIV positive, and she knew full well that taking an FIV positive cat to a shelter was a death sentence. She had three cats and didn't want to hold on to this one, so she asked me if I'd consider taking him in. So I met him, and damn if the little guy didn't just curl right up in my lap and start purring. I guess I couldn't say no to that.

He was far from perfect. He was missing one of his fangs. He shed like a mofo and puked a lot. He developed an overactive thyroid and was on daily medicine for that. Through it all, he hung in there pretty well and he was a great, loving pet. About a month ago, we realized he had developed a kidney infection. Tried treating it with antibiotics but it didn't really crack it. Then early last week he developed a respiratory infection. That's a 1-2 whammy for a dude with a weakened immune system. No matter what antibiotics we tried, he couldn't crack the respiratory infection. He was struggling to breathe. Tried to make a comeback on Saturday but it didn't last. He wouldn't eat anything today and wasn't drinking his water. The hard part wasn't putting him down. That was the right thing to do. He was an older cat, probably 11-12 years old, and the vet assured me that even if we had tried hospitalization and IV fluids, there was no guarantee he would shake it for good.

The hard part was sitting around all day, watching him struggle to walk because he was so dehydrated. He could barely meow. I petted him as they put the needle in, and I think I might have smiled a bit when he went because I knew he was at peace. I am now too, because I know he's not suffering any more. His last day was a tough one. Hopefully he's chasing birds in kitty heaven now.

If anything, putting this into words was therapeutic. I had a pretty good feeling this was coming all weekend. I'm just glad it's over now.

 

So sorry to hear it, Cosmo. You did right by him, in life and in death.

 

Sorry Cosmo. I know how if feels. I lost one of my best buddies recently. His kidneys just started shutting down, and that was pretty much it. And I did the same thing. I brought him in, petted him in the room, and he just fell asleep on my lap (and left one final wet stain on my pants. He couldn't resist).

 

Our family cat ended up living with me for the last several years of her life. She got the kidney thing and I spent more than I'm willing to admit doing the fluid injections, etc. Eventually I could see that her quality of life was gone & had to her put down. This was in June of 1999; she had been in our family since 1981. Thirteen years later, I still have not gotten another pet. Partly I enjoy the lack of responsibility, but also I just don't want to go through that again. Weeks after she was gone I would routinely think I needed to feed her, hear noises & think it was her, etc.

 

I'm sorry you had to go through this, Cosmo.

I am glad you are both at peace.

 

Putting down our dog several years back was quite traumatic. Feel for you, Cosmo.

 

It's tough no matter how and when it happens.

My mom (referenced above) would never have put a pet to sleep - she was just dead-set against that type of thing.

Over the years, we lost 3 dogs to cars (this was back in the 60s/70s when letting your dogs run in suburban neighborhoods was considered OK) and a couple others to illnesses.

Friendly, who I mentioned above, died in a kennel the same day as Elvis (well, Elvis wasn't in a kennel), when our whole family was on vacation 1,000 miles from home. No cell phones in those days, so when we returned home 10 days later and went to the kennel to pick him up, we were met at the front desk with empty hands.

Turns out he had developed some kind of intestinal blockage a day or two after we left, they had a vet look at him and the conclusion was there really wasn't any hope. So he had been put down and his body cremated. (They had a letter from the vet, who was a friend of my parents, so there was no question that it didn't go down exactly as they said it did.)

My mother was seething, but Friendly was old, very old. He was 14-15 and he had been struggling the last couple of years. He was hobbling around and having trouble getting into and out of the house, and having stomach problems as well.

Sometimes at night, he would whimper quietly -- just a couple times, but still audible. His vision and hearing were getting hazy. One way or another, he didn't have much time left.

I was 18 at the time, Friendly had been my dog since I was 5, but it was getting very sad watching him struggle. I knew my mother would probably never have given the OK to put him down, so in a way I was silently grateful it played out that way. Eventually my dad would have been the voice of cold reason, but it would have been a big bone of contention for weeks before and after.

I was saddened over Friendly's death, but I knew it had happened for the best. We had a little doggie graveyard in the backyard where we buried a couple of the other dogs when they died, and Mom was ticked we had nothing to bury for Friendly.

She was saying, "let's put a stone back there for him," and I said, "We don't need a stone. Any time we look around this house or around this yard, we'll remember him. Whether there's a stone back there or not doesn't change that."

My sister, who was 3 when Friendly died, still lives in that house. A couple years from now, it'll be 50 years since we built that house and a shaggy stray dachshund-golden retriever mutt started hanging around the yard and ended up staying 13 more years.

My sister has a whole wall in the family room of pictures of our family growing up. One of the pictures on the wall is a pastel drawing my mom made of him in 1967. Sometimes my nieces (age 2 and 6) will say, "who's the orange doggie?" and I tell them, "That's Friendly."

So yeah, he's still around. Stone or not.

 

Hang in there, Cosmo.

 

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Last night was tough, but this morning has been better. I'm just trying to erase the memory of yesterday's painful last hours and remember the good times when he was healthier. That's helping.

Also, to echo Quite Man's comments, I'm probably out of the pet business for a while. I go out of town far too much for three- and four-day stretches to want to get another one right now. I would have never had this cat had it not been for my mom. I'll live vicariously through my friends' pets.