SlickTony
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- May 25, 2002
- Posts
- 6,344
Zoey, the tuxedo cat featured in my avatar, is gone. She had been kind of off her feed for a while, but we had acquired a new cat (an Abyssinian blend or part Ocicat named we've named Ziba) and we'd put her on a lite food diet, and we thought she was just dealing with that. She had needed to lose the weight; her doctor had even recommended it. However, she went from 16 lbs. to 12 in just a few weeks, and we realized that she was really sick.
Last week we took her to the clinic where she was diagnosed with a liver problem. I had not known this, but when cats quit eating, their livers start to malfunction after three days. Our house is not lit very well, and when I saw her under the brilliant fluorescent lights of the clinic, I was shocked at how jaundiced she was. Jaundice in a cat shows up inside the ears, in front of the ears, and the nose leather if the cat has a pink nose. She was as yellow as a tennis ball. However, they gave her a bunch of intravenous fluids and liver pills and stuff and on Thursday, they discharged her and gave me some more medicine to give her. Her ears and nose had turned pink again. That evening I fed her some of the prescription food they'd sent home with her and she ate it.
Friday morning I gave her a liver pill and then some breakfast. That afternoon I came home from work early and prepared some lunch for her. When I got upstairs she was lying on her side where I'd left her that mornng. I had a bad feeling about that and sure enough, she was room temperature and rigor mortis had set in.
My son and I wrapped her body in a towel and took her back to the clinic. The vet was as surprised as we were, and offered to do a necropsy. The bill had already come up to such an amount I had to make a payment plan, but she said she wanted to know, herself, and it would be on the house.
In addition to the liver malfunctioning, she also had dilated cardiomyopathy. I guess that just dealt her system a double whammy.
I am still having a hard time realizing that Zoey is gone. She had never been sick a day in her life until now. She was only 5 years old. She was such an intelligent, playful cat; always doing weird cat things, like getting up on the kitchen counter while the dishwasher was running, watching the effluent flow through the drain, and then grabbing the splash guard out of the garbage disposal and leaving it somewhere. She liked us all, but she liked my son best. She kept getting up on the balcony (we have a loft bedroom) which gave him fits, because one time she slipped and fell and hung by her claws from the decorative fishnet I have draped over it, and he had to catch her.
When we first got her, my son and my husband rescued her from some kids in the apartment complex we lived in, who were treating her like a plaything. She was no bigger than a deli bagel. We brought her in and gave her a bit of leftover snapper meuniere, shredded fine so as not to upset her delicate kitten stomach. She scarfed it down and looked around for more. Then she found the rest of the filet I'd put down in Zandra's dish for her, and ate that too. The filet was almost as big as she was. Living in the parking lot and in the woods, her white parts were so dingy gray that my husband actually talked about bathing her. However, after a week of dedicated grooming, her bib, stomach, and stockings were dazzlingly white. She loved sitting in red chairs; I think she knew how good she looked in them.
She loved to play. Our home was her toybox. One time we gave her a red pipe cleaner and she thought it was such a nifty toy she took it everywhere. We would find it all over the house. Other people got to keep tomatoes in bowls on their dining room tables. Not us. I tried that once and found them with punctures all over the floor of the dining area. Once I dropped a blueberry on the kitchen floor and she putted it all over the place until it rolled under the stove and then she wanted me to drop another one.
This is the first time we've ever lost a cat so young, I keep thinking of all the signs I must have missed, and what I could have done differently. I'm guessing her urn will probably come back to the clinic for me to pick up some time this week or early next week.
Last week we took her to the clinic where she was diagnosed with a liver problem. I had not known this, but when cats quit eating, their livers start to malfunction after three days. Our house is not lit very well, and when I saw her under the brilliant fluorescent lights of the clinic, I was shocked at how jaundiced she was. Jaundice in a cat shows up inside the ears, in front of the ears, and the nose leather if the cat has a pink nose. She was as yellow as a tennis ball. However, they gave her a bunch of intravenous fluids and liver pills and stuff and on Thursday, they discharged her and gave me some more medicine to give her. Her ears and nose had turned pink again. That evening I fed her some of the prescription food they'd sent home with her and she ate it.
Friday morning I gave her a liver pill and then some breakfast. That afternoon I came home from work early and prepared some lunch for her. When I got upstairs she was lying on her side where I'd left her that mornng. I had a bad feeling about that and sure enough, she was room temperature and rigor mortis had set in.
My son and I wrapped her body in a towel and took her back to the clinic. The vet was as surprised as we were, and offered to do a necropsy. The bill had already come up to such an amount I had to make a payment plan, but she said she wanted to know, herself, and it would be on the house.
In addition to the liver malfunctioning, she also had dilated cardiomyopathy. I guess that just dealt her system a double whammy.
I am still having a hard time realizing that Zoey is gone. She had never been sick a day in her life until now. She was only 5 years old. She was such an intelligent, playful cat; always doing weird cat things, like getting up on the kitchen counter while the dishwasher was running, watching the effluent flow through the drain, and then grabbing the splash guard out of the garbage disposal and leaving it somewhere. She liked us all, but she liked my son best. She kept getting up on the balcony (we have a loft bedroom) which gave him fits, because one time she slipped and fell and hung by her claws from the decorative fishnet I have draped over it, and he had to catch her.
When we first got her, my son and my husband rescued her from some kids in the apartment complex we lived in, who were treating her like a plaything. She was no bigger than a deli bagel. We brought her in and gave her a bit of leftover snapper meuniere, shredded fine so as not to upset her delicate kitten stomach. She scarfed it down and looked around for more. Then she found the rest of the filet I'd put down in Zandra's dish for her, and ate that too. The filet was almost as big as she was. Living in the parking lot and in the woods, her white parts were so dingy gray that my husband actually talked about bathing her. However, after a week of dedicated grooming, her bib, stomach, and stockings were dazzlingly white. She loved sitting in red chairs; I think she knew how good she looked in them.
She loved to play. Our home was her toybox. One time we gave her a red pipe cleaner and she thought it was such a nifty toy she took it everywhere. We would find it all over the house. Other people got to keep tomatoes in bowls on their dining room tables. Not us. I tried that once and found them with punctures all over the floor of the dining area. Once I dropped a blueberry on the kitchen floor and she putted it all over the place until it rolled under the stove and then she wanted me to drop another one.
This is the first time we've ever lost a cat so young, I keep thinking of all the signs I must have missed, and what I could have done differently. I'm guessing her urn will probably come back to the clinic for me to pick up some time this week or early next week.
