Murf and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

After 3 weeks of wondering why he wasn't eating and trying every possible way without going to a veterinarian school to have him sliced open by professionals who may or may not find the answer, our cat, Lil' A, died Friday afternoon.

It started with a hairball on March 2nd. When a few days passed when he didn't eat, we noticed that his food was slightly different than what he was use to. When I brought home the correct kind, he ate it with gusto but the next day, he was back to not eating. Then we tried hairball paste in case there were more hairballs. After a few days of no change but in which he was still vomiting liquid matter, we made a vet appointment.

The same day of that vet appointment, Big A noticed that he was yellow - the whites of his eyes, his skin, the inside of his mouth. The vet diagnosed him as having fatty liver syndrome which happens when especially larger cats stop eating. All the extra fat they have is being processed by the body due to not eating and it congregates in and around the liver and the liver ends up not being able to process everything and starts to shut down. To reverse that, we had to force feed him from a syringe a high protein canned cat food that's only available through the vet.

A week later, we took him back in for his follow up visit and the vet was not happy to see that Lil' A was still not really interested in food. We decided to give it one more week before we made any larger life decisions. That life decision ended up coming 3 days later when overnight, Lil' A continued to vomit what little food he was fed and the rest was stomach bile and again in the morning as I was getting ready for work. Most disturbing was that he was no longer purring and seemed to prefer to be by himself. Those two things were definitely out of character. Big A made the appointment for the next day - this past Friday.

On Friday, I had the afternoon off which I spent part of with Lil' A - I took him outside so he could eat grass and chase leaves blowing down the driveway. Then he sat on one of the bricks and just watched everything. When we went back in, he climbed up onto my lap and accidentally urinated on my leg as he did so. This was the first time he had ever done that. I'm not sure if he knew he did that or not as he proceeded to lay down on my lap. I wasn't about to move him. I can change pants later.

After a few minutes of pets, he got up and headed to a nearby chair. He laid down in the middle and tucked his front legs under him as he has done in the past. Other than the lack of purring, he looked like his old self again. How could we end his life now?

As the time approached to put him in the carrier and leave was one of the worst times of my life. As Big A put him into it, I just wept at how he didn't know what was going on. This would be the last time he left the house. I wanted to think that him being like his old self (minus the purring) was a turnaround...but deep down I knew better. I was just being selfish and wanting him with us longer.

The vet came in to chat with us a bit and like the usual visit, Lil' A got comfy on the examining table and while a bit on edge at where he was at, seemed to enjoy just being around people talking. The vet agreed with our decision and started the procedure. I was in the lobby when Big A had to deal with the death of his previous cat so this was a first time for me. While I could pet him and talk to him and make the little noises I made that made him know it was me from whatever room he was at without much problem, I couldn't bring myself to look at his face as the sedative took affect and then the last shot. I'm glad that Big A was there to hold his head through it all. Even the vet who has probably seen a lot of these in his 10 years of being at this clinic was sad.

We brought him home and dug a hole for him. We gave Hooch a chance to sniff him in hopes that by doing so, he would understand where that little antagonistic a-hole went and while the previous cat was also an antagonistic a-hole to the poor 80 lb dog, he missed her and I'm sure he will miss him as well (although why he never barked and set those cats straight so they would quit picking on him, I will never know).

On Saturday as I was catching up on washing bedding, I dropped a few clean, soft, fuzzy blankets on the bed to be folded later and I thought "I can leave these here for later now that there is no cat who will discover these clean, soft, fuzzy blankets and make it his new home for days on end." It was a very bittersweet moment.


I miss him more than those three words can express.