I'm 18 Years Old And I Just Lost My First Pet, I grew up with him........... Options

[Melissa ♥...]

Hello, everyone. My name is Melissa and I just recently joined these forums FINALLY. Like the title says, I am 18 years old and I just lost one of my two cats on February 5th, 2010. That was a month ago from yesterday......His name was Tiger and he was a Maine Coon. He was the most beautiful cat in the world, in my opinion. Black and brown furred tabby with white paws, face, neck, and belly, green eyes, and a pink nose. He was soooo colorful. And he was the smartest cat my family had ever had.......SO intelligent. I grew up with him, so he was like my brother, my child, and my best friend all in one. He meant SO much to my family and I. I will quickly tell a little bit about his life and how he died..............

When we first saw Tiger, he was a stray cat who would hang around our street looking for food. My mom says that we first saw him in 1997. We adopted him, or really, HE adopted US, because he needed a home really badly and we let him stay with us. He was between 1-2 years old at that point. So then years went by and he lived with us happily. He protected us from big dogs when they would come around our house. SERIOUSLY. One night when I was like 7 or 8, we came home from somewhere and Tiger was outside and these 2 big dogs came around our house and Tiger ended up scratching them in the nose and they ran away! He never liked dogs.............And he knew how to fight them! He was a lot like a dog. He would follow us around our neighborhood when we would walk places. And he BARELY EVER used the litter box. He would always go outside to do his business. Another really cool thing about him was that he had a verrryy strange way of meowing. Instead of the normal, standard "meow", Tiger meowed like "g-nahh" and "rahhh" and he would make like a squeak-sound when we would pick him up and hold him like a baby. So he was a VERY unique and interesting cat. He lived a very happy and mostly healthy life with a very loving family. He lived to be about 13, we think.

So.........it was about January 26th, 2010, when we started to realize that something was wrong with Tiger. He wasn't eating or drinking water. He was sleeping a lot more than usual. He seemed to be having pain coming from somewhere in his abdomen. Then I looked up the symptoms for a dying cat, and these were some of the symptoms. So we decided to wait and see what other symptoms he developed. Over the next week, he started having some trouble breathing. He also started drooling. We just thought that these were symptoms that he was dying. We didn't think that he had anything REALLY wrong with him, other than being old. So then we waited and waited and then we FINALLY took him to the vet on Thursday, February 4th, 2010. The veterinarian said that Tiger had heart disease. She actually said that he had Feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), which is believed to be an autosomal dominant inherited trait in Maine Coon cats. His heart wall was enlarged, he had a heart murmur, his pulse was too low, he had fluid in his lungs, and he had a partially collapsed lung. All of this, and we had NO IDEA. So they kept Tiger overnight that night in an oxygen cage and on medication, and a cat cardiologist came in the next morning to check on his status. Then, we got a call at about 11:15 a.m. saying that Tiger's medications weren't working and now his kidneys were starting to fail. We decided that Tiger was not going to make it through this and we wanted to end his suffering. So, we had him euthanized. I was there to comfort him, along with my mom and my best friend, Kelly. I got to see his last moments and I got to see him go home to Heaven. I was so grateful to have gotten to see him go. He died between 1:35 p.m. and 1:40 p.m. on Friday, February 5th, 2010. I will never forget that.

After Tiger's death, I was a mess. I didn't think I could possibly go on without him in my life. I went through every single one of the stages of grief. But now, a month later, I am finally starting to accept the fact that he is really gone forever. I am starting to think about the happy memories I had with him in my life, rather than the sad and depressing thoughts of the last days and weeks of his life. I am SOOOOOOO grateful to have had him in my life. We were the luckiest family in the world to have had him come into our lives. He truly changed our lives, and we will never, ever forget him. Now, I am trying to focus on our other cat, Cupcake, and making the last few years of his life great.

The pictures in my signature are of Tiger. See how beautiful he was? I can post more pictures if anyone would like. I appreciate anyone who has read all of this.

[Countrygirl]

Dear Melissa,
No one can tell you how long your greif will last...just that it does get better. I am going through the same thing.. When our furbaby's touch our lives so deeply so does the grief. Just hang in there and try to put in you mind a very happy memory of your furbaby. I also printed pictures of my BooBear so I sould see it first thing I woke up and last thing before I went to sleep. The first days it seemed to make it harder but as time passes I love seeing his face, even if it is only in a picture. It does get better....I will keep you and Tiger in my prayers.....Tina