Phantom
Dear Friends,
It has been a rough New Year so far. Our beloved rescue feral cat, Phantom, alerted us that he was in distress on Monday by meowing loudly at us. He is normally a very shy and quiet cat, so we knew that something was wrong right away and we could see that he was in respiratory distress, so we took him immediately to the Vet. They ran $400 worth of tests on him and they still couldn't figure out what was wrong with him.
So they sent us home with some medicine to help him with his breathing, as the blood work got sent off to the lab. But because of the New Year's day holiday, we did not get the results until midday today(Fr2Jan09), and the results were still inconclusive, but clearly he was a very sick kitty, as the vet said.
We were getting ready to take him into the vets again today (F2J9) to have them give him some IV fluids to help stabilize him, then draw fresh blood and run some more blood tests. But as we were getting him packed up in his carrier, he started having convulsions. I saw my cat Ninja die this way and we didn't think that we would get him to the vet in time.
Some how he made it, but he was in rough shape. They got him stabilized, but it seemed that serious neurological damage had already occurred. The Vet didn't think that we were going to be able to get him to the emergency clinic in Portsmouth without him dying on the way. So we spent an agonizing afternoon discussing our options and eventually decided that it was best for him to go to his final rest, even though we were not ready to let him go.
Obviously cats don't live forever, but until this week we thought that we were going to be able to enjoy his company for another 5 or 8 years, as we guessed his age was around 10 years, but we really didn't know how old he was for certain. This was all very sudden and traumatic and we didn't have time to really prepare ourselves. He had come so far in learning to accept human company and even enjoy it, as long as it was on his terms. He was the most affectionate and loudest purring cat I have ever had and we already miss him terribly.
The only consolation in all this is knowing that the last eight years, since I have brought him literally in from the cold in January of 2000, is that he almost certainly he had a better life than he would have had, if he had continued to live outside. I hope that the New Year holds better things in store for all of us, rather than this sort of thing. It has been a terrible start so far. Blah! Hak42 apologizes that she hasn't passed this news on to you herself, since she is much more active on LJ than I am, but I agreed to write this message for her, as she is still too upset about everything. I hope to have happier news to share with all of you the next time I post.
-Tam_Elbrun
It has been a rough New Year so far. Our beloved rescue feral cat, Phantom, alerted us that he was in distress on Monday by meowing loudly at us. He is normally a very shy and quiet cat, so we knew that something was wrong right away and we could see that he was in respiratory distress, so we took him immediately to the Vet. They ran $400 worth of tests on him and they still couldn't figure out what was wrong with him.
So they sent us home with some medicine to help him with his breathing, as the blood work got sent off to the lab. But because of the New Year's day holiday, we did not get the results until midday today(Fr2Jan09), and the results were still inconclusive, but clearly he was a very sick kitty, as the vet said.
We were getting ready to take him into the vets again today (F2J9) to have them give him some IV fluids to help stabilize him, then draw fresh blood and run some more blood tests. But as we were getting him packed up in his carrier, he started having convulsions. I saw my cat Ninja die this way and we didn't think that we would get him to the vet in time.
Some how he made it, but he was in rough shape. They got him stabilized, but it seemed that serious neurological damage had already occurred. The Vet didn't think that we were going to be able to get him to the emergency clinic in Portsmouth without him dying on the way. So we spent an agonizing afternoon discussing our options and eventually decided that it was best for him to go to his final rest, even though we were not ready to let him go.
Obviously cats don't live forever, but until this week we thought that we were going to be able to enjoy his company for another 5 or 8 years, as we guessed his age was around 10 years, but we really didn't know how old he was for certain. This was all very sudden and traumatic and we didn't have time to really prepare ourselves. He had come so far in learning to accept human company and even enjoy it, as long as it was on his terms. He was the most affectionate and loudest purring cat I have ever had and we already miss him terribly.
The only consolation in all this is knowing that the last eight years, since I have brought him literally in from the cold in January of 2000, is that he almost certainly he had a better life than he would have had, if he had continued to live outside. I hope that the New Year holds better things in store for all of us, rather than this sort of thing. It has been a terrible start so far. Blah! Hak42 apologizes that she hasn't passed this news on to you herself, since she is much more active on LJ than I am, but I agreed to write this message for her, as she is still too upset about everything. I hope to have happier news to share with all of you the next time I post.
-Tam_Elbrun