Letting go...

Her ears began drooping a few weeks ago; no one knows why...

It's been a long while since I posted. Life happened. For those of you who are new, fair warning: this will be about cats and death: bail out while you can.

Since I left 64 a while ago, life has right turned north and south, the last time in December to LA to help my son and daughter-in-law with their foster-to-adopt baby. I took a week to drive down from Canada because I was tired of driving 14 hour days to get somewhere fast. I visited friends on the way down and got to the infamous 405 at 5 in the afternoon. Angelenos will know what that means, but basically it took 90 minutes to make a 30-minute drive to my new home. Five minutes after I arrived, the kids got the call and 20 minutes later we were the proud foster family of a 9-month-old girl. OMG.

What prompted me to blog again was that I've hit a Letting Go section of life that I was ill prepared for - that most of us are ill prepared for, I think. Maybe it's losing the baby; as a foster it's always a possibility and did happen once, but we got her back. However, this is about cats.

Letting go is not just moving half a continent away from friends and family and the familiar, it's long-time friends who die unexpectedly or face a diagnosis of death. It's losing Mom and realizing how precious it was you had those last visits to reconcile and get in that last, great, loving hug.  I had no hesitation when they called me and told me Mom was fighting the breathing mask, wanting it taken off. I said she knows what she wants, don't waste any more time, go and take it off now! She'd been ailing since a bad bout of pneumonia 8 years before and the savor of life had been getting thinner for her. No one knew or expected her to die within five minutes, but I am so glad I was home, near my phone and able to support her decision.

Now I'm making the decision for my loving kitty. It's a different decision with a creature who can't beg for her mask to be removed.

Pretty Kitty

I had no intention of adopting a cat in 2002. I'd been mulling the option of a companion for my 7-year-old companion Cowboy because I was working long hours as the assistant editor of a daily and thought he would appreciate company. I just happened to go to the pet store on rescue adoption day. A woman and her two daughters were making much of a ginger tabby kitten while a prim, black tabby kitten sat alone in a giant cage that a St. Bernard could have jumped around in. Milk-tipped feet placed daintily together, long, black-striped tail wrapped neatly around her, head up, ears alert, she stared at me with the biggest eyes I'd ever seen. Before I knew it, Cowboy had a companion.

She can't bug me here

The next decade I would torture her with two major relocations: one to Canada and one to LA. I would leave her for long periods. I would allow her outside, knowing she would never stray far from the front door. I couldn't train her to a leash because of her agoraphobia, but she was always my dainty, pretty kitty, nearly silent, shy with visitors until they'd been around for a while, loving to me. That Cowboy was not happy with a companion was plain: he bullied her, pinning her tiny body to the floor by her neck, leaping higher than she could to get away, stealing her food.

Fat cat

Then she outgrew him and returned tit for tat. I yelled at her when she leapt on top of him when he was sound asleep, provoking a mad squabble of flying fur and loud meows. When I realized the resulting hullabaloo was his only exercise, I left them alone.

Two years ago, when she was 9 and Cowboy 17, I stopped attributing her weight loss to the lite cat food I'd been buying for adult, indoor cats -- and became concerned. She wasn't eating the special food. She wasn't eating much of anything. She was starving. Canadian vets took blood & still didn't know what was wrong. Gave me pills to give her. She seemed to get better, but then stopped eating again. I took her to a different vet, who took more blood and an ultrasound. Suggested it was cancer. I asked her to make sure, thinking they would just take a sample or something. She came back with a negative on cancer, a feeding tube and a diagnosis of lymphoplasmacytic cholangiohepititis. I fed her 6 times a day through a tube that plugged regularly with a syringe that stuck regularly, coating my bathroom, her and me in high protein cat food, and gave her 6 medicines several times daily.

Skinny is not better

The tube plugged permanently and we embarked on a year of Getting Kitty to Eat. A year of steroids and a running account at the local Global Pet Food store trying dozens of brands. She seemed to get better, then not. More vets, less weight. Started feeding her high protein food by spoon. She was docile, compliant, gulping it down as best she could with no appetite. Took her to the vet and she'd gained 3 ounces. Dared to be hopeful while the vet took her away for blood tests. 

Then the vet said there had been an "incident." Miss Kitty had been her usual compliant self, then began meowing loudly and breathing heavily, opening her mouth to gulp in air. Her panting was at a furious pace. Had this ever happened before?

No. And I vowed it wouldn't happen again.

Enough. Like Mom, Miss Kitty was tired of the tests, the chemicals, the handling, feeling lousy. She had been as good as she could be, and what she needed was to enjoy the time she had left. So we set a time a week away and I took her home. I've been giving her all the food I wouldn't let her eat when she was healthy: cheese, milk, yogurt, meatballs, tuna, tamales - if she'll eat it, she gets some. She never eats much and keeps most of it down, although the shrimp from Bubba Gump's came back up, but it was battered and in cream sauce. But whatever she wanted, she got.

She was in ketosis, a state where your body is starving and uses its fat reserves for energy. Except Miss Kitty doesn't have any fat reserves. My Dad had Alzheimer's and when he forgot how to eat, he was allowed to quietly starve. The quality of life is highly questionable on forced feeding. We'd tried appetite stimulant pills. She spent a day being agonizingly hungry with no appetite to eat anything. My quiet, tiny-mew kitty was in-my-face meowing constantly, all day and into the night. I stopped the pills.
 
We passed a quiet-for-her and tearful-for-me week that way. I considered how to let go: a drip at the vet's, a place where she's already suffered through an extreme anxiety attack, or home, eating whatever she fancies and fading away.

Letting go -- when we don't want to, but trying to do it in the best way for the sufferer, not us - is part of life now. I hope, pray and trust that someone will do the same for us when it's our turn to let go.