Callice
Everything that's born must die someday.
This account is probably somewhat incoherent, for obvious reasons. As you probably know if you're still reading along at this point, Callice was rehospitalized earlier this week. Her bloodwork showed normal liver and kidney function, which ruled out hepatic lipidosis, but she had still failed to improve and was having to be force-fed. On Thursday morning, the vet called me for an update and told me that he would like to give her another transfusion to goose her into getting on the road to recovery, but that if she didn't respond to the transfusion by today, she was unlikely to recover, in which case I would have a hard choice in front of me. I told him to go ahead and administer it and that I would be in to see her later that day.
I got there around 3 o'clock. She was very tired and unhappy because they had wrapped her leg to keep her from pulling the IV out, but she seemed happy to see me and changed positions to be near me. We petted and talked for a while; she wanted to go home, and I told her that we couldn't go home yet but that I'd be back on Saturday to bring her home when she was better. At this point, I pretty much suspected how this particular story was going to end, but I was still clinging to the shred of hope that she might rally. The vet stopped by and we talked for a few minutes, and he repeated that if she wasn't able to start on the road to recovery by then, we had done all we could and it wouldn't be fair to expect her to keep going.
There was no Saturday for Callice. She died on Thursday night, about 4 hours after I left. She was about five and a half years old. In one of those hideous ironies that plagues one, it would have been J's and my 10th anniversary if we had stayed together.
In a horrible way, I'm kind of glad that she died in hospital; I didn't want to have to make a decision about euthanizing her, and it's a relief that the onus of that choice was taken from me. It's never easy; even with Lotus, who was already very old and on borrowed time anyway, and who was suffering from the final stages of cancer, it wasn't easy.
I don't really know what else to say. She was my cat, and the first cat I had who was really my cat; Lotus and I liked each other, and she trusted me to see to her needs if necessary, but the sun rose and set on the lolmom. But Callice was really my cat. She was a happy, purry kitty for most of her life, and she was the most mellow and amiable cat who had ever lived with us. She was happy enough to show Mom where her empty dish was, but when I came home--even when I was at MCLS and only home two days out of seven--and said, "Hello, darling! Mommy's here!" she purred and thrashed frantically.
I'm doing reasonably okay under the circumstances. It's weird to be able to leave the screen door slightly open when I hop out for the mail and not have to worry about her getting out, and it seems odd not to see her food and water dishes on the kitchen floor where we kept them. I'll always wonder if there was something else I could have done, or if I could have arrested the anemia that killed her if I'd caught it in time. But there will be other cats; there's just not another Callice.
That's all.
(Coda: I'm still on the library computers. The computer is still in the shop because, apparently, the hard drive has breathed its last (THAT'S ODD, IT WAS JUST FINE WHEN I TOOK IT IN) and we basically had to buy a new computer. The tech thinks he can get most of our old files off the old hard drive and onto the new, so hopefully we'll have that back within the week or so. I'm not holding my breath at this point. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about so that's why it's at the end of the post.)
This account is probably somewhat incoherent, for obvious reasons. As you probably know if you're still reading along at this point, Callice was rehospitalized earlier this week. Her bloodwork showed normal liver and kidney function, which ruled out hepatic lipidosis, but she had still failed to improve and was having to be force-fed. On Thursday morning, the vet called me for an update and told me that he would like to give her another transfusion to goose her into getting on the road to recovery, but that if she didn't respond to the transfusion by today, she was unlikely to recover, in which case I would have a hard choice in front of me. I told him to go ahead and administer it and that I would be in to see her later that day.
I got there around 3 o'clock. She was very tired and unhappy because they had wrapped her leg to keep her from pulling the IV out, but she seemed happy to see me and changed positions to be near me. We petted and talked for a while; she wanted to go home, and I told her that we couldn't go home yet but that I'd be back on Saturday to bring her home when she was better. At this point, I pretty much suspected how this particular story was going to end, but I was still clinging to the shred of hope that she might rally. The vet stopped by and we talked for a few minutes, and he repeated that if she wasn't able to start on the road to recovery by then, we had done all we could and it wouldn't be fair to expect her to keep going.
There was no Saturday for Callice. She died on Thursday night, about 4 hours after I left. She was about five and a half years old. In one of those hideous ironies that plagues one, it would have been J's and my 10th anniversary if we had stayed together.
In a horrible way, I'm kind of glad that she died in hospital; I didn't want to have to make a decision about euthanizing her, and it's a relief that the onus of that choice was taken from me. It's never easy; even with Lotus, who was already very old and on borrowed time anyway, and who was suffering from the final stages of cancer, it wasn't easy.
I don't really know what else to say. She was my cat, and the first cat I had who was really my cat; Lotus and I liked each other, and she trusted me to see to her needs if necessary, but the sun rose and set on the lolmom. But Callice was really my cat. She was a happy, purry kitty for most of her life, and she was the most mellow and amiable cat who had ever lived with us. She was happy enough to show Mom where her empty dish was, but when I came home--even when I was at MCLS and only home two days out of seven--and said, "Hello, darling! Mommy's here!" she purred and thrashed frantically.
I'm doing reasonably okay under the circumstances. It's weird to be able to leave the screen door slightly open when I hop out for the mail and not have to worry about her getting out, and it seems odd not to see her food and water dishes on the kitchen floor where we kept them. I'll always wonder if there was something else I could have done, or if I could have arrested the anemia that killed her if I'd caught it in time. But there will be other cats; there's just not another Callice.
That's all.
(Coda: I'm still on the library computers. The computer is still in the shop because, apparently, the hard drive has breathed its last (THAT'S ODD, IT WAS JUST FINE WHEN I TOOK IT IN) and we basically had to buy a new computer. The tech thinks he can get most of our old files off the old hard drive and onto the new, so hopefully we'll have that back within the week or so. I'm not holding my breath at this point. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about so that's why it's at the end of the post.)