Cav's Place

The vet did give her back to us Thursday morning, and she did seem much better, but clearly not well and it was only downhill from there, so maybe it’d have been better to do nothing Wednesday afternoon, maybe just staying with her for what was probably the last hour or two instead of rushing her back there. As it was, she struggled until this afternoon, though she had clearly given up at least since Friday night. And she probably cursed me in her final moments, for giving her that gel and some water and wanting to force her to take some more food, since when I went to take the food from the fridge I banged my head hard against the freezer door even though it was closed, and was in the kitchen, holding some ice on that spot, when she died.

I keep remembering that my parents got her in 2004, but her documents list May of 2005 as her birth, and dad said today that he remembers taking her to the vet in June and being told that she was about a month old, which was why that date was listed. But I recall him telling me, years ago, that when he took her there he was told that she was about four months old, and the date when the certificate was released is listed as January of 2006, which is actually eight months away from May. On the other hand, he also said that he first took her to a vet that someone recommended, quite far away, while the certificate is from a clinic that’s not far from here, and all the vaccinations and checks during her first few years seem to have been done there, other names appearing as of 2009. So it seems quite clear that I’m wrong about 2004, but it’s possible that he first took her to that other vet just to have her checked out and only registered her, at this other clinic, some months later. Either way, she was 17.
Back to what I guess was 2005, I was living with Andra and I’m quite sure that my parents were still separated, but on the way to working out the arrangement they later made, which also included remarrying, so when dad found her in his car’s engine, he gave her to my mother. And yes, I did just say that he found her in the car’s engine. He heard some meows while driving, kept looking, couldn’t figure out what was going on, eventually stopped to have a look and found a tiny kitten in the engine. And he was apparently not allowed to stop where he did, and a traffic cop was in the area, so he came over to ask what was going on, but just turned around, quite bewildered, when dad pulled her out and told him that his car apparently runs on kittens.

Skipping to March of 2006, when I was thrown back here, I wasn’t depressed only about losing Andra, but also about losing Bubu. In fact, while Andra had returned and I had therefore also seen her again just before getting thrown out of there, she had left five and a half months earlier, while I had spent all that time with her cats, and caring for Bubu, so while it was obviously incomparably lesser, that loss was much more sudden, and I clearly didn’t want to “replace” him, especially after dad had sent me an e-mail at some point saying that they also had a cat, as if they’re all the same, interchangeable, after I had told him that if I’ll have to leave I’ll also miss the cats, or at least Bubu. However, instead of being wary of the new person, possibly even aggressive, Micky came to me as soon as I walked through the door, so my first impression was just that she was trying to replace Bubu, and that kept being reinforced by the fact that she kept trying to be around me whenever I had to come out of my room back then, and I rejected her completely as a result. So you can say that I couldn’t stand her during those early years, when I was so messed up and she was also very young and active, and I usually kept her away from me as well as I could.
However, things started gradually improving as time passed, since I became somewhat more functional and she got older and less active, so I sort of got used to her, and in more recent years to having her around in the kitchen, when I ate at night. And after my mother moved with her mother, I pretty much took on the role of caretaker. I still wouldn’t say that I was emotionally involved, probably not even to the extent that I was with Pufi or Bijou, not to mention Bubu, but I was relatively comfortable with her, we were mostly getting along, and I mostly took care of the food and litter box for her.

Getting to this last part of her life, I only became aware of some concerning symptoms some time after they appeared. I was noticing that there was much more pee in the litter box and eventually realized that she was the cause, and that she seemed to be drinking more, but only realized the extent of it after she stopped staying with me in the kitchen while I made dinner. At first I took it as an oddity, but wasn’t too concerned, thinking that she might have decided to stay with dad for some reason, that situation changing after I learned that one of her old oddities got to a new level. I mean, she always licked water from the bathtub or kitchen window, so it didn’t immediately raise a red flag that she had started rushing to the bathroom even when I went there, before I could close the door, and looking quite desperately for traces of water in the bathtub, and eventually learning that dad had started leaving the water running for her while he was there at first made me think that he had trained her in another bad, or at least strange, behavior. But when I put all the elements together after she actually started spending the nights in the bathroom, clearly hoping to have the water turned on, despite having water in four places, it started to become clear that something was wrong. And the fact that dad kept feeding her salty things, having gotten her used first to some cheese, for a long time, and more recently also to salty snacks, made the situation even more concerning. Still, I tried to push away my concerns for a while longer after mentioning them to dad and having him say that if she pees so much it just means that her kidneys are working well, and also that he asked the vet and was told that if she likes those things and they don’t make her ill, he can keep giving them to her.
Then again, trying to press sooner probably wouldn’t have made any difference, seeing as dad refused to take her to get checked out even when it was clear that something was very wrong and I did talk to him about it, and had kept finding excuses to avoid having her tests done for years, even though I now learned that the vet had been trying to press the matter for at least half a year, obviously because he didn’t want to know that something was wrong with her, sticking to his “don’t think about something bad and it won’t happen” mindset.
I mean, it was clear to me that something was really wrong two weeks ago, and I actually found myself thinking that I just hoped that she’ll make it until the weekend, when my mother was coming, so she’ll see her one more time. But at the same time I was looking for an easy option as well, thinking that perhaps she just had problems with her teeth. Either way, on June 22 I finally tried to press dad about it, after I asked him how she was and he said that she was weak, so he was finally forced to admit that something was wrong. However, after I said that the easiest option would be a tooth ache, he said that something like that wouldn’t be an emergency, he’ll just feed her the sauce from her food, blowing me off when I asked whether he’d be fine to be left with a tooth ache and saying that emergencies would be problems with her liver or other organs, which would need tests done, and that was another thing that he was obviously not going to do. So I first just tried to feed her some treats that day, and while the fact that she kept struggling to drink water kept worrying me, and at one point she quite clearly seemed to be in pain, that evening she ate really well, and also kept begging for attention, suddenly seeming herself again. But after another day or so, things went downhill again, and by the time my mother got here she was obviously doing badly, so even though my mother stayed until Monday and went with dad, to make sure that he took her to the vet, it was probably too late.

Since I didn’t even manage to finish the paragraph above this one before midnight, I posted what I had and then edited it soon after, in order to complete that paragraph and add this one, which I edited a little more before going to bed. And I’ll also mention here that it seems that I even forgot to change the date of that scheduled post that I keep scheduling for 11:59 PM on Sunday, to appear in case something would happen to me, so the fact that it was visible for several minutes, until I edited this one that first time and noticed it, was just a mistake on my part and didn’t mean anything. As for the rest of this post, I only managed to add what follows Wednesday evening, in fact only getting as far as the moment when Micky died at that point, then editing it again a little before midnight, modifying even what I had initially written about Friday and then adding the rest.

Getting back to Micky, my parents came back without her from the vet, since she ended up being kept her there for two days, with an IV, the blood tests showing that she had lost three quarters of her kidney capacity. And the following day dad left a little before I did and said that he’ll go check on her when he’ll get back, around 5 PM, so I said that I also wanted to go and the idea was that he’ll call and we’ll meet there if I’ll also be back in time. However, he called just when I was picking something up, so I quickly said that I was at the Post Office and hung up, and then rejected the next call, which came seconds later, after which he didn’t try again. So I went there on my own, not even meeting him there, since he ended up not coming at all, and talked to the vets about the diet and the supplements that Micky will need to be on after she’ll be released. She looked much better, pretty much seeming to be herself once again, but when I asked for an honest outlook I was warned that the improvement may just be thanks to the IV and her kidneys won’t get better, so it’s a matter of using the diet and the treatment to help her hold on with what little she has left, which might be as much as a year, but at the same time she might relapse within a day and not last the week… Which ended up being what happened…

Returning to the chronological order, dad brought her back Wednesday morning, a little after 10 AM, and since I woke up at that point I saw that she seemed really well, wandering around, looking for food, and after I weighed her and gave her the daily dose of the dry food that she was supposed to eat, she quickly ate most of it. Then dad left, taking Liza to my mother, and leaving me alone with Micky until the next day, which was quite an unpleasant surprise, since I thought that he was going to come back before leaving for work in the evening. And I was also really sleepy, so after a little while I got back to sleep, but I did keep checking on Micky, since my kidneys had started working more properly again, the typical side effects of a run as long as the Dream Trek starting to wear off, so I was waking up to pee almost every hour… And didn’t like what I was seeing, since she didn’t eat the little food that she had left in the morning and as time passed seemed to be getting lethargic again. But I did expect her to get worse before she got better, thinking that the effects of the IV were going to wear off well before those of the diet and supplements will really kick in, so I didn’t see it as a real reason for concern until, a little past 2:30 PM, I found her under the living room couch, seeming to want to hide and leaving when I placed her food there. But she still didn’t look bad, and leaving when I’d try to give her food that she didn’t want to eat at that point was her normal behavior, so I got back to bed once again.
I woke up again a few minutes after 4 PM, when dad called, and when I got up and went out of my room, Micky meowed after me and I found her drooling and having difficulty breathing. So, while I first went to the toilet, I soon gave up, beeped mother from the landline, told her when she called back that Micky looked bad and I’ll take her to the vet, and then did just that, grabbing her and carrying her there in my arms, not even thinking to take the blanket that she sat on when she was in the kitchen.
At first the vet said that maybe she had eaten something, chewed on a plant or a bug that caused that reaction, because it seemed unlikely that she’d relapse that badly that quickly, so he gave her a shot and said that he’ll keep her under observation for two hours. So I used that time to go to Park Lake, first to my provider’s store in order to charge with 1 EUR and activate the credit, to be able to call if needed, and then checking that Carrefour and getting two expiring yogurts. Then, since it was still early when I got back, I waited for a while and left again just after 6:30 PM, taking that blanket, since I expected to take her back.
Well, when I got there the vet said that she wasn’t doing well, had a hard time breathing, which was why she was drooling. He had put her on oxygen, but it looked bad… And she looked bad, far worse than she had when I had taken her there. Frankly, when I saw her it became quite clear that she wasn’t going to make it. But I wanted information, so I asked whether it was pulmonary edema and the vet said that maybe it was, but it didn’t quite sound like it, so what he could tell me was that something was wrong with her lungs and she also had problems with her heart, which I really didn’t know about, and the problems work against each other, so they can’t give her the typical treatment for the lung problems because it’d completely destroy her kidneys and vice versa, and the heart problems add yet another complication. He couldn’t understand how did it happen so quickly, still thinking that she might have eaten something to trigger it and saying that many cats with kidney problems get to that point, but that happens because of the IV, usually within six hours of starting it, not of being taken off it. Either way, he strongly advised against taking her back, saying that she probably won’t make it to the next day in that case, but you just needed to take one look at her to know that, so I said that I was quite prepared for it, but if it’s really bad, I’d want my mother to see her one more time as well, and he told me that in that case I should tell her to come in the morning, after they’ll open, at 9 AM, and we’ll see how things stand at that point.
So I tried to beep mother after getting back, but got a busy signal, so I then tried dad and told him what I had been told, and then my mother also called and I talked to her as well. Then I showered… And forgot to take the towel, so I had to go to my room naked and grab it. And I weighed myself again after that shower, seeing 47.1 kg, so exactly two less than in the morning, when I had weighed myself with and without Micky, to calculate her weight, showing just how much accumulated fluid I had finally passed out. Admittedly, I also hadn’t eaten anything that day, only doing so after that. And, after going back to the kitchen at 1 AM, I spent an hour washing the glass baking tray and another quarter of an hour slicing a bread for dad, and could only recover the hour, so I started eating dinner at 3:15 AM and finished at 3:55 AM.

With dad going back to mother after work and bringing her here again in the morning, the plan was to go to the vet together, and I thought that we were going to go as soon as they’ll open, which made me wonder what was going on when I woke up to pee and saw that it was just before 9:30 AM. But I first went to the toilet, then spent some time rinsing what seemed to be a fair amount of blood out of my mouth and trying to get a better look at what seemed to be a blackened wisdom tooth which I hadn’t noticed before. Then, since dad was still sleeping but my mother was here and in fact said that she hadn’t slept at all, I finally asked whether they had talked to the vet and she said that she thought that we’ll just go there directly. So we did, just the two of us, even if she wasn’t feeling well at all, on top of the lack of sleep.
We met some neighbors as we were about to leave the building and my mother started talking to them, so I first ended up standing around awkwardly and then went ahead, crossed the road and sat on a bench, waiting for her to finish, which at least didn’t take too long, so we got there just after 10 AM… And found that Micky wasn’t just still alive, but actually seemed much better! The vet did repeat to my mother what he had told me about her problems working against each other and preventing the use of the typical treatments, but said that they had solved her breathing problems by making her pass out as much fluid as they could and that, while she was going to drink a lot, the two shots that he’ll give her should prevent them from returning for at least 12 hours… Which didn’t sound too reassuring to me, since that just meant that they could return that night, after they’ll close. But there wasn’t much more that we could do, so I held her while he gave her those shots, being surprised that she didn’t even complain, even though he wasn’t, even telling me right away that she was so obedient and won’t cause any problems with the shots, and then we took her back.
Dad was awake when we got back… Or, at least, he had woken up, even though he was still too sleepy for “awake” to really be an appropriate term. So we all just looked at her for a while… And the fact that things were not fine quickly became obvious. She had seemed quite fine at the vet, but she had been in a cage and then held in my arms, so it was only after she got here and finally took a short break from drinking water that we saw that she even had trouble standing. She also didn’t want to touch the new dry food and just licked the juice from the wet one, otherwise just returning to the water time and time again… And lying down every few steps, looking like her hind legs were giving out, and meowing plaintively. She did, however, seem to want food, but her old one, since later she started waiting by the fridge, continuing to meow plaintively, trying to get in the fridge and look in the box where her food was whenever the door was opened and checking the food when it was brought to her or moved, but she barely touched that food that we had to give her, and in fact usually jumped away from it as if burned.

By the time I woke up on Friday, dad had placed dry food for her in three rooms and new wet food in two, giving her both kinds of wet food, so also opening the can purchased from the vet, which they had said that she had eaten while there. She wasn’t touching any of it, however, so I wanted to try to mix that food with some of her old one, just to have her eat something, and first gave her a little bit of one kind of her old food, to make her see that it was her old food, and she did eat that. But she once again refused to have anything to do with it as soon as I mixed it with some of the new food, so then dad gave her some of the other kind of her old food as well, without mixing, and she did eat some of it again. She didn’t finish it, however, and didn’t touch it again after that.
I don’t know the details about the rest of that day, since I was out, only coming back after dad had left, but when I got back she kept trying to walk out the door, though she lied down again after I finally managed to get in without allowing her to get out. And I saw every kind of food, both old and new, laid out for her, and when I talked to dad on the phone he said that he had indeed given her everything, but it didn’t seem to help, and indeed all of it looked like it was going bad, considering the heat. And, while she eventually drank a little water after I changed it, placed it in front of her and sat there with her for quite a few minutes, the rest of the time she was sort of just staring even at the water, barely moving from one spot to another, her legs shaking when she was getting up, and looking like she didn’t care to do anything anymore, giving the clear impression that she had given up. And later I saw her place her head on or even a little in the bowls of water, still without actually drinking, and her mouth really reeked, likely showing that she wasn’t eliminating toxins from her body. So, after placing some more wet food of both of the new kinds in front of her and seeing that it didn’t do any good, I didn’t just put that gel straight in her mouth, but did the same with some food, giving it to her piece by piece, like pills. I could only give her five or so pieces until she became too desperate to escape and I had to let her go, so even though I did this three times that night, it was still only a very small quantity… And she hated me for it, and I ended up with a few bites as a result, even though she was so weak. But at least that little bit of food had ended up in her stomach, to get her through the night.

Not that Friday night had left any real room for hope, but yesterday it was absolutely clear that it was all over. She was barely crawling from one spot to another, sometimes placing her head on water bowls but not drinking, and spent nearly the entire evening next to the water on the hallway, in front of my room. So I still gave her that gel twice, as we had been told, soaked a bit of absorbent cotton in water and poured it into her mouth that way, and wiped her face, but I didn’t risk forcing any more food down her throat, since she seemed too fragile and I feared that something would break if she’d try to fight me that hard. And at night, after dad went to bed, she barely managed to get herself to the door to his room, and when I went to brush my teeth, before going to bed, she seemed to want to crawl towards me, but barely managed to move a little before giving up.

As for today, dad left around noon, having told me last night that he’ll be gone until 5 PM or even 6 PM, and to call him in case it’s over, “but maybe it won’t be”. And she was still alive when I woke up, at 2 PM, again lying in that spot on the hallway, so I jumped into action, giving her another gel, placing her in the litter box after I saw a little crap when she tried to crawl away and holding her so she won’t collapse in it while she peed a little as well, wondering how to give her some more water and ending up taking her to the bathtub and, after seeing that she wasn’t drinking on her own if I just turned on the water, holding her so a little water flowed on the lower part of her mouth, so it won’t get in her nose and drown her. Then I wiped her face as well as I could, also tried to wipe the parts of her body which had gotten wet a little, and placed some more of the food that she used to eat in front of her. But she was just pushing the plate away, seeming unable to do anything more, so even though she was obviously stressed and even more fragile than the day before, I meant to once again try to give her some of the new food directly.
Well, I didn’t even get a chance to try, because when I took her new food out of the fridge I somehow ended up bumping my head, hard, against the freezer door, even though it was closed. So I cut some ice out of the freezer, looked for something to put it in and went back and forth between the bathroom and the living room, to find a way to use the mirrors to see exactly where I should hold it, and I was in the kitchen, holding the ice on that spot, when I thought I heard a faint meow, soon followed by another, which I clearly heard. But I decided to stay there for a few more minutes, holding the ice on that spot, before checking on her once again… And when I did I found that she had died.
At least the last thing I did was caress her a little, after wiping her, instead of stressing her even more by trying to force some food down her throat… Though it’s tempting to say that I bumped my head in that manner because she cursed me out for stressing her as much as I already had, and what’s quite obvious is that she’d have lasted a little longer, maybe at least until dad got back, if I wouldn’t have done so. But suffering for perhaps a few more hours wouldn’t have done her any good… And dad didn’t want to see her again before she died either, admitting when he got back that he had left just so she’ll die without him here, and therefore that he had lied last night, when he wanted to give the impression that he didn’t want me to be alone at that moment, though he again tried to put himself in a good light by saying that he had been told that maybe she didn’t want to let go while he was here and he saw that she was suffering.
Either way, when her body jerked a little when I touched it, I first thought that I had perhaps been wrong, failing to see that she was, in fact, still breathing. But that must have just been one of the reactions that may happen just after death, because I checked her thoroughly and she was indeed dead. So, after trying to close her eyes and being unable to, I first went back to the kitchen, taking a little more time to think about what to do next, before beeping dad and letting him know when he called back.
He had said last night that in that case he’ll drop what he was doing and come back, but I wonder whether he was actually doing anything. But at least he probably wasn’t that close, because he said that he’ll be here in about an hour. Still, that didn’t give me that much time, since he was going to take her to my mother, to be buried there, and I wanted to wash her first, so I tried to do that as well as I could, and then grabbed the hairdryer and started drying her, before realizing that wiping her with some paper towels first might be a good idea. So I did that, then got back to using the hairdryer, initially still in the bathroom, before trying to smooth her fur a little and finally taking her to the kitchen and placing her on that blanket. And I had just resumed trying to dry her when dad got back, in fact some three quarters of an hour after we talked, so I turned off the hairdryer and covered her with the blanket before he actually walked in.
While dad was getting ready to take her away, I threw away the entire contents of the litter box, washed it a little and changed some of the water, and after he left I also washed the floor in the small bathroom, where the litter box is, Micky having obviously failed to get in it on her own towards the end, and on the hallway, albeit rushing and only using water. And then I threw the clothes I had been wearing into the laundry basket and showered… And ended up having to get back to my room naked and wet, because I again forgot to take my towel. But at least dad decided to wait until tomorrow before bringing Liza back, so he didn’t leave me alone with her tonight, when she hadn’t been eating or even drinking on her own since she was taken there and we don’t know how she’ll behave after being moved again, even if in order to be brought back here.