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Sibilance7
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Sibilance7

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9 Nov 2008
I posted here a bit over a year ago when I lost my cat Othello (the one in my avatar) to an unidentifiable illness. We have another cat, Desdemona, and I wanted to post an encouraging story for anyone who is dealing with a missing pet.

When I got home from work last Wednesday, I couldn’t find Desdemona – I was searching all over the house and in the basement and she wasn’t anywhere. My husband, Ben, started helping me, and he thought to look at the living room screen because I'd had the window open the night before and he thought she may have put a hole in it and escaped. There was no hole there, but I also had the bedroom window open, so he checked that one. There was NO screen in it at all! We’d had the air conditioner in that window and we had forgotten to put the screen back in. Somehow I didn't even notice this when I had opened it. Ben had closed the window when he came to bed Tuesday night, so sometime before that, Desdemona must have jumped out! He stuck his head out the window and looked around and saw her right away. She was huddled up in a corner behind a bush next to the porch for the other half of our duplex. We went out and picked her up and brought her back in, and she was terrified! As soon as she got in she went and ate (she was probably starved after being outside with nothing to eat for 14 hours!), used her litterbox, and started giving herself a bath. I feel so stupid for not noticing that there was no screen in the window, but I am so grateful to God that nothing happened to her! She could have been hit by a car or could have gotten into a fight with another animal, but she stayed close to the house and was perfectly safe. One of my recurring nightmares is that Desdemona will get outside somehow and that she won’t let us pick her up to bring her in. It was so awful to experience in reality, but she was such a good girl because she let us pick her up and bring her in with only minimal clawing.

I am sending good thoughts for similar miracles to everyone here who has lost their pet recently. When I thought I had lost her, I felt like my life was over. We've become so close since Othello's death, and I just couldn't bear to lose her, especially so soon after losing Othello.
22 Aug 2007
I also heard that some dog treats sold at Walmart were recalled. Source here: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/21/ap4042221.html. Should this be a separate sticky?
21 Aug 2007
Well, we finally got the results from Othello's necropsy yesterday, but they didn't shed any light on what was making him sick. The vet's office is mailing us a copy of the report so I'll be able to look it over more thoroughly, but what she told me on the phone is the following:

-his lung was collapsed and he had a large amount of fluid in the pleural cavity
-he had lesions on his kidney that were consistent with previous hypoxic damage, and his kidneys were inflamed
-his liver was fatty and enlarged

As far as the kidneys, the "previous hypoxic damage" means that he experienced lack of oxygen to his kidneys at some point, and from what she said it seemed to be in the past. She said it could have happened at birth or when he was under anesthesia when he got neutered. This seemed to be unrelated to whatever was causing him problems in his last two days from what I could tell. She didn't say what might have caused his kidneys to be inflamed and I seem to have forgotten to ask because I have no notes written next to that on my little sheet of paper.

His liver was probably fatty and enlarged because he wasn't eating for a period of time. She said he probably had been eating less over a period of a month. When cats don't eat, apparently fat stores from other parts of their bodies go to their livers. He weighed 12 pounds when we weighed him around Christmas, and he weighed 9 when they did the necropsy, so he lost 3 pounds from not eating.

There is apparently nothing to suggest a reason why he would have collected so much fluid in his pleural cavity, or why he had a collapsed lung. I read online that a collapsed lung can be caused when fluid is drawn out with a needle, which is exactly what they did when we first brought him to the vet ER, so I don't know if it was collapsed previously and is related to the fluid, or is merely the result of the medical procedure performed on him.

I'm upset and confused because they weren't able to identify the cause of his sudden illness. They didn't say it was kidney failure, but kidney failure might explain the problems he had with his kidney (oh, they also mentioned that the central area of his kidney had an elevated level of different types of white blood cells, but they didn't seem to know why), and it can cause pleural effusion. I don't know why they didn't think it was kidney failure. I still have a lot of questions, and I'll probably call them back once I get the full report. They did say that it definitely wasn't heart disease or cancer, but they can't rule out the possibility that it was something infectious like FIP. Fortunately, we already had Desdemona tested for the coronavirus associated with FIP and she came back negative.

She did say that this most likely wasn't preventable or curable, so I feel a little better - this means we did the right thing in putting him to sleep. However, I don't know how they can make any statements like that when they don't even know what happened. However, the fact that they don't know what happened makes me feel better about not taking him in earlier if it is true that there was nothing we could do to save him. If they couldn't even determine what was wrong with him through a necropsy, I'm sure they wouldn't have been able to figure out what was wrong while he was still alive. His last month alive would have just been full of repeated trips to the vet and lots of poking, prodding, and sticking. He would have been miserable until he died, and I'm honestly not sure he would have lasted as long as he did under the stress of all the trips in the car, etc.

It's still difficult for me to take, though. He was so full of life. How could he have been that sick? And sometimes you just want a reason, someone to blame. Even if it's yourself.
10 Aug 2007
It's been almost a month (late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning of next week will be the month mark) since my wonderful boy Othello had to be euthanised. We're still waiting on the results of the necropsy and I'm going mad with wondering if I did the right thing. I had been getting better. I still cried sometimes, but overall I felt like I could face life. Then we brought a new cat home on Wednesday night, and I've been falling apart ever since. A friend of my mother's brought this cat home from the shelter where she worked because they were going to euthanise him because he's older and they can't adopt him out because everyone just wants kittens. We felt bad and we thought Othello's remaining sister, Desdemona, needed a companion. She's never been without Othello and she's seemed so lonely since he's been gone. She cries at us all the time. We wanted to wait until Othello's necropsy came back, but this friend of my mother's couldn't keep the new cat anymore, so we had to take him Wednesday night. I thought our house felt empty because my rambunctious boy was gone, but now that there's another cat, it just feels so wrong. It feels like there's an intruder, and Desdemona is so nervous. I tried to pick her up and she hissed at me. Her being nervous is killing me, and the new cat being here is making me ache with grief over missing Othello. I don't want a new cat. I want Othello back. I can't accept that he's never coming back. I was waiting for a call from the vet about Desdemona (we had to get some testing done to make sure all was ok for the new cat) and I kept imagining that I was waiting on the call about Othello to tell us that he was okay and he would be able to finally come home. I'm crying at work as I type this. I feel just as grief stricken as the day he died, and it hasn't been this bad after that first week. I don't know what to do. I truly feel like life isn't worth living without him and I just want this new cat gone. I know I made a commitment when I said I'd take him, so I'm just going to have to learn to love him, but it's so hard. I keep hoping someone will come to visit us and say they love him and want to take him home so I can just get rid of him. He's a nice cat and I've been treating him well, but when I think about going home and seeing him I get sick and I feel panicked at the thought of never seeing Othello again. If anyone has any advice for getting over this, I would appreciate it. Also, any advice for introducing cats is appreciated. We have a Feliway diffuser and we've been keeping them in separate rooms with plans to switch them when they're both feeling more comfortable, but Desdemona is so stressed that it's breaking my heart.
30 Jul 2007
Hello Everyone. I'm new here and I'm recovering from losing my cat Othello, who was only 4 years old. On Monday, July 16, I noticed that I hadn’t seen Othello out and about. I got nervous, thinking he might have slipped out a door behind someone or got stuck in a closet, so I searched for him. I found him under the bed, looking sluggish and not well. I didn’t know if he was sick or just tired, so I let him be. Later that night, after my husband Ben got home from work around midnight, Othello came out and sat with me on the loveseat, wanting to get pet. He didn’t stay very long, but I pet him and he purred and enjoyed it. I was happy; I thought he must be feeling okay. On Tuesday when I got home from work, he wasn’t out and about again, so I checked under the bed and saw him there. I was beginning to think something might be really wrong, so I got some cat treats out of the closet for him. He always loved his treats and would scarf them down without even tasting them, it seemed. I gave him one and he ate it slowly, so I placed another in front of him. He sniffed at it and licked it a little, but didn’t eat it. I called Ben and my mother and told them I was worried about him. Ben said to call a vet and get some advice and if he wasn’t feeling better he would take him in the next morning because he had the day off. The emergency animal hospital said to keep an eye on him and watch to see if began panting because that would be a bad sign. I checked on him periodically, but he never appeared to be panting. Around 1 a.m., I was ironing my clothes for the next day at work when I looked over at the water dish and saw Othello sitting there. At first I felt relief because I thought he must be feeling better to want to drink his water. Then I noticed that his breathing was very labored. I could see each breath making his abdomen shudder. I told Ben to look at him and we agreed that it wasn’t normal. We got out the cat carrier and decided to take him to the 24-hour animal hospital. When I picked him up to put him in the cat carrier, he didn’t fight me at all, which was very unusual for him. He usually cried, scratched at us, and contorted his little body all around to avoid being put in the carrier. He felt limp in my arms. I began to get very worried. Ben and I drove him to the animal hospital and prayed on the way that his illness would be minor and that we would be able to get him all fixed up.

At the animal hospital, they took him back right away and came back out before I even finished filling out his paperwork. They told us that Othello had fluid in his lungs and that they had drawn out a cup of the fluid, which made him much more comfortable, but that there was still a lot more left. They said that the only things that could cause this were all chronic illnesses with no cure that would require an overnight hospital stay for testing and further removal of the liquid, and that he would most likely require continued care for the rest of his life if even it turned out to be a manageable disease. The immediate cost for the overnight stay and testing would be almost $1000. Because Ben and I are in graduate school, we couldn’t afford this. I began crying while the vet was telling us that he might have a chronic illness. I couldn’t understand how this could happen; Othello was only 4 years old and always had such a thick, shiny coat of fur and always ate so heartily. He appeared to be the picture of health. I called my mother and told her what was going on, explaining that it looked like we were going to have to put him to sleep. I was sobbing so hard that she could barely understand me. When the vet came back, we had her explain everything again and then told her that with our income, the only option would be to put him to sleep. She said we were making the right decision for him, regardless of cost, because his quality of life would never be good with a chronic illness like he most likely had. We went back into a room and said goodbye to him.

Saying goodbye to Othello was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had to say goodbye to my dog, Gypsy, who we had to put to sleep due to cancer when I was nine, but the grief I felt at the prospect of saying goodbye to Othello was much more intense because I had a better grasp of what was going on than I did when I was nine. He seemed to be feeling much more comfortable because of the fluid they had drained from his chest, but he was nervous because he was in an unfamiliar place. The vet placed him on a table for us to say goodbye and we began to pet him and talk to him. He was too nervous to purr, but he seemed calmer. He wanted to jump off the table and explore, so we knew he was feeling better. We let him explore a little, then put him back on the table and took a few pictures with him. I am so grateful that Ben thought to take pictures because we don’t have a lot of pictures of him, and we don’t have any pictures of me holding him, other than these ones. I loved to hold him, even though he would squirm and usually jump out of my arms pretty quickly. I’m so glad we were able to capture a memory of me holding my little baby who I loved so much. When the vet came in, we asked for a few more minutes, and we told Othello that soon he wouldn’t be suffering anymore, and that he would be going to a better place, with a loving Father. We are looking forward to the day when we are reunited with him in heaven.

Since this happened two weeks ago I've been feeling horribly guilty about all the times I ignored Othello and about putting him to sleep. I keep wondering if maybe his illness wasn't that serious and if we should have just gone into debt in order to keep him with us. He was always so active and I miss all the signs of life he created around the house. I don't know how I'm ever going to get over this.
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