Cat Hospice
Well it's been about a month since Klyaksa crashed. My 20 year old kitteh is failing. She was in pretty deep trouble as I finished a film last month and when I came home she was sleeping on my bed, in front of the air-conditioner, in a gigantic pile of fur. She never slept on my bed in the summer, never slept in front of the AC and this shedding was alarming. She was not very responsive nor inclined to eat. She was burning up. There had been a cock-up with her thyroid medication and it may have led to this, at least the shedding and heat pouring off her. I immediately started dosing her with her meds +20% and I knew I was going to have to break out The Nuclear Option.
Maple smoked turkey.
Lucky for me she went for it. I had to hand feed her for a couple of days but she slowly bounced back, food-wise.
The really weird thing to me was that she abandoned all her "spots." You know, the kitty condo, the back of the couch, the towel-covered radiator by the window. No. She took up camp on a chair in the kitchen and had no interest in leaving.
She's been there ever since, with short stints on the condo or couch at my suggestion, and she's getting a lot of lap time from me.
A couple of weeks ago she scared me again, not eating. I made an appointment with the vet for Friday and like clockwork, on Thursday night she ate like a middle linebacker. Everything I put in front of her disappeared; cooked chicken, raw "beef grind" from Primal, sardine grind, and a complete raw beef formula too. Dr Zanotti is a really good vet; maybe a great one. When I first took her to him in March after they helped me with Jasper he spent probably 45 minutes with me and the Little One, going over her entire big-picture health trajectory. He told me she had chronic renal failure (thanks for nothing, Arlington Animal Clinic) as well as hyperthyroidism, which was being addressed. This time we talked about maybe getting creatinine levels and maybe checking thyroid levels again to see if we could figure out anything new. Then he found it. A mass in her abdomen. He did an ultrasound to confirm it didn't belong there, and that obviated any blood or urine tests.
Cancer in animals is often pretty rapidly-advancing stuff. I once had a dog once with some lumps under her skin. We took her to the vet who biopsied them and sent them to the local university for cytology. The report came back saying something like "This animal has certainly died from this disease since we got the biopsy sample but here's what it had," and old Cookie was still alive.
At any rate, she's on the kitchen table now, and her chair, and a box under the table now and then. I'm just glad she's near linoleum, as hitting the litter box has become something of a problem. She sleeps with her head in the corner of the windowsill, and I take her outside every day, which she loves to no end. Yesterday she barely ate any solid food but has been eating a raw egg throughout the day. Today I'm going to get some whipped cream in a can, because she loves that, she'll eat it, and what the fuck. It's not like I'm going to make her diabetic.
It seems to me like we're down to days now, and this dying process has been harder for me probably than for her. If she gets to the point where she won't eat for 3 or 4 days, or won't drink water, seems to be in pain or is otherwise on her way out, she knows I'll be there to help her out of this world and release her energy back into the universe.
But it ain't easy.
Maple smoked turkey.
Lucky for me she went for it. I had to hand feed her for a couple of days but she slowly bounced back, food-wise.
The really weird thing to me was that she abandoned all her "spots." You know, the kitty condo, the back of the couch, the towel-covered radiator by the window. No. She took up camp on a chair in the kitchen and had no interest in leaving.
She's been there ever since, with short stints on the condo or couch at my suggestion, and she's getting a lot of lap time from me.
A couple of weeks ago she scared me again, not eating. I made an appointment with the vet for Friday and like clockwork, on Thursday night she ate like a middle linebacker. Everything I put in front of her disappeared; cooked chicken, raw "beef grind" from Primal, sardine grind, and a complete raw beef formula too. Dr Zanotti is a really good vet; maybe a great one. When I first took her to him in March after they helped me with Jasper he spent probably 45 minutes with me and the Little One, going over her entire big-picture health trajectory. He told me she had chronic renal failure (thanks for nothing, Arlington Animal Clinic) as well as hyperthyroidism, which was being addressed. This time we talked about maybe getting creatinine levels and maybe checking thyroid levels again to see if we could figure out anything new. Then he found it. A mass in her abdomen. He did an ultrasound to confirm it didn't belong there, and that obviated any blood or urine tests.
Cancer in animals is often pretty rapidly-advancing stuff. I once had a dog once with some lumps under her skin. We took her to the vet who biopsied them and sent them to the local university for cytology. The report came back saying something like "This animal has certainly died from this disease since we got the biopsy sample but here's what it had," and old Cookie was still alive.
At any rate, she's on the kitchen table now, and her chair, and a box under the table now and then. I'm just glad she's near linoleum, as hitting the litter box has become something of a problem. She sleeps with her head in the corner of the windowsill, and I take her outside every day, which she loves to no end. Yesterday she barely ate any solid food but has been eating a raw egg throughout the day. Today I'm going to get some whipped cream in a can, because she loves that, she'll eat it, and what the fuck. It's not like I'm going to make her diabetic.
It seems to me like we're down to days now, and this dying process has been harder for me probably than for her. If she gets to the point where she won't eat for 3 or 4 days, or won't drink water, seems to be in pain or is otherwise on her way out, she knows I'll be there to help her out of this world and release her energy back into the universe.
But it ain't easy.
posted by Guynoir at 3:00 PM
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