A go home and hug your cat type night at work
So last night had already tugged on my emotions a little when a very cute, very sweet love muffin of a kitten was taken back to the shelter to be euthanized because he was an FIP suspect and they don't approve of "mercy adoptions"(basically a sick animal is adopted until if get real bad then it get put down) when there are so many healthy animals in need of adoption. I was the one that got him out of the cage hugged him and cried a little then put him in his carrier for his green mile....
It was about 8:25pm, we had been closed for an hour and the hospital was clean and we were literally gathering our stuff to go when a man appeared outside our door asking for pain med for his cat that may have broken it's leg... He wasn't a client, we'd never seen the animal before, it was unvaccinated, and the owner didn't want to take it to emergency because it cost too much and if we weren't going to help him he was just going to leave with the cat and let it suffer over night. I ran to the only doctor that was left I knew he would be happy. I told him the situation and he told me to put the cat in a room. The cat looked bad, really really bad.... down on three limbs, dehydrated, neurological, it's temp (norm 100.5-102.5) was 93.5. The cat went to laying on it's side and panting/crying, really really bad. I haul tush out to the doctor and I hadn't even gotten a name. The owner had said that the cat could have been lying in the basement, where they found him, crying all day. The cat had thrown a clot, imagine a heart attack or a stroke or an aneurysm so big that it blocked off major blood flow to a leg or an arm, now imagine you have that horrible pain in three limbs and you are alive and can't do anything about it all day, in a basement. Torture. the cat was so bad off the sedative didn't work and we couldn't' find a vein to give the solution. The cat loved his owner, when he left the room to settle up the bill the cat kept looking for him in a flailing motion that was just heart breaking. The owner explained had talked about the cat like a house plant he had forgotten to water. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to shake him and scream at him.
Now the story doesn't end here boys and girls. Has another cat. He's bringing it in today, thankfully. As we were waiting for for his cat to become sedate he told me how the other one has stopped eating, lost most of it's weight, drinking water a lot, nothing but skin and bones(most likely kidney failure) and with an hand on his crying cat I looked him dead in the eyes and I told him that he needs to bring in the other cat PERIOD. Look I understand that he has kids, and that you got the cats before the kids as some sort of novelty, I understand that money is short for everyone. Slowly killing one of your cats and not showing any remorse for the torture your other cat has been in possibly up to the last 24 hours just fucking kills me.
It's not a matter of Ooops I forgot to water the plant and now it's dieing.
It was about 8:25pm, we had been closed for an hour and the hospital was clean and we were literally gathering our stuff to go when a man appeared outside our door asking for pain med for his cat that may have broken it's leg... He wasn't a client, we'd never seen the animal before, it was unvaccinated, and the owner didn't want to take it to emergency because it cost too much and if we weren't going to help him he was just going to leave with the cat and let it suffer over night. I ran to the only doctor that was left I knew he would be happy. I told him the situation and he told me to put the cat in a room. The cat looked bad, really really bad.... down on three limbs, dehydrated, neurological, it's temp (norm 100.5-102.5) was 93.5. The cat went to laying on it's side and panting/crying, really really bad. I haul tush out to the doctor and I hadn't even gotten a name. The owner had said that the cat could have been lying in the basement, where they found him, crying all day. The cat had thrown a clot, imagine a heart attack or a stroke or an aneurysm so big that it blocked off major blood flow to a leg or an arm, now imagine you have that horrible pain in three limbs and you are alive and can't do anything about it all day, in a basement. Torture. the cat was so bad off the sedative didn't work and we couldn't' find a vein to give the solution. The cat loved his owner, when he left the room to settle up the bill the cat kept looking for him in a flailing motion that was just heart breaking. The owner explained had talked about the cat like a house plant he had forgotten to water. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to shake him and scream at him.
Now the story doesn't end here boys and girls. Has another cat. He's bringing it in today, thankfully. As we were waiting for for his cat to become sedate he told me how the other one has stopped eating, lost most of it's weight, drinking water a lot, nothing but skin and bones(most likely kidney failure) and with an hand on his crying cat I looked him dead in the eyes and I told him that he needs to bring in the other cat PERIOD. Look I understand that he has kids, and that you got the cats before the kids as some sort of novelty, I understand that money is short for everyone. Slowly killing one of your cats and not showing any remorse for the torture your other cat has been in possibly up to the last 24 hours just fucking kills me.
It's not a matter of Ooops I forgot to water the plant and now it's dieing.