IN LOVING MEMORY
1999-2010
Yeah, I probably shouldn't be talking to the internet about this, but my cat died yesterday. I'm staying home today to find a way to cope with it.
Kitty was behaving fine the day before, and this morning, excited for his daily morning meal of canned food. It was only when I came home when I noticed something was wrong. My cat was sitting on the floor in the upstairs bathroom, and didn't seem to want to move around much. He meowed in unusual ways (either a call for my attention or a reaction to pain), did not respond to our typical communication cues, and his tail did not move (did not curl and uncurl the way it usually does). There was still some food on his nose from this morning. I had a gut feeling that something was very wrong, and checked the entire house for signs of something he may have eaten. (Nothing. He doesn't eat plants, and we didn't leave out any human food.) I had a gut feeling then that he wasn't going to be okay. I wondered if I should have called my mom.
The cat then moved on his own out of the bathroom and into my mom's bedroom. He walked very slowly, with his head and tail down, crouched, in a somewhat disoriented walk. He jumped onto the bed, and because he seemed to be breathing heavily, I called my mother. He jumped off the bed again and rested on the floor, his tail curled around itself in a way he usually doesn't. Because of the way he was moving I checked all of his limbs to see that they were okay. He put his head down on his arms (something he doesn't usually do) and seemed very exhausted.
I carried him in my arms very carefully downstairs so that he could be closer to food and water if he needed them. For the next few hours or so he sat either on the couch or in front of it, looking very ill. He responded slightly to only one communication cue, which was when I made to pet the side of his cheek (he usually lifts his head or leans into my hand because he understands my petting routine so well). I think his pupils were also unusually dilated for the light. (My other cat Charlie was in the living room, where there's a lot of light. Her pupils were a little smaller.) He also made very little effort to look at me.
Yeah, Charlie seemed to understand what was going on, probably better than I did at the time. A few times she came up to Kitty and would lick him on the head. (Licking is a way cats relieve stress and calm themselves. Cats will lick when they're stressed, and to comfort another cat. Kitty did not lick himself at all for the entire time he looked sick.)
He sat there on the couch for the next few hours, until my mom came home. We discussed the state of the cat a little, figured he had a stomachache from something he probably ate (my mom assured me that Charlie once behaved like this before and turned out fine) and that he'll feel better by tommorrow.
We went to the gym for at least an hour, and when he came back, he was still on the couch. He seemed to look a little better, because he lifted his tail closer to as he usually did, and then had to vomit. (Not like the usual furball. He coughed up a thin, reddish liquid which my mom thought looked like carrots. We checked around for signs of anything he could have eaten. Still, nothing.
My cat then moved into the kitchen (probably to get away from human contact), in a very slow, exhausted, disoriented walk in which he slipped on his feet, and slumped on the floor, looking very sick again. I decided it would be better that he laid on something soft, so I tried to carry him back to the couch.
My cat got out of my arms and went down the hall before I could get there, so I picked him up, and the same happened. He was breathing very healthy (I think he was panting, or gasping!), and then vomited. He fell on his side and gasped heavily, crying, and then he was moving very slowly, and then not at all. I was lying with the side of my head on the floor, looking him directly in the face, at that last moment.
About fifty percent of cats are born with a defect in the heart that causes an unexpected heart failure after at least five years of life. It's really difficult to diagnose because cats usually don't show symptoms until at least 3 months before death, and usually, once the cat starts showing symptoms, it's too late to do anything. It can't be prevented, or helped. Cats are also really good at hiding the symptoms from their humans (being intelligent creatures without the same dependency on others that dogs have), until they're too sick to be able to do so.
~*~
I don't know if you have ever watched a dying mammal up close before (including humans), but when you see them, you just know that they're dying. You just know that they won't make it out alive. It's like instinct. I was crying before he died.
So my mom and I probably sat in the hall next to his body for at least an hour. We put his body in a box, and decided we would call a pet funeral service the day after. Then we sat next to the box for at least another hour, talking a little, crying on and off. Charlie came around once or twice, rubbing her cheeks on the box (Cats mark territory by rubbing their cheeks on them, and Charlie does this with every single box she comes across), and looking very confused. I don't think the impact hit her until this morning, when she was meowing.
Now, all I can think about is poor Kitty. I was probably the human he was most close to. He sat on my bed the most, he would always sit in my lap when I was at the computer, and he would sit next to me when I played the piano. I would pick up his paws and pretend to make him play it. Whenever we watched a movie, he would sit in one of our laps or on the couch above our heads.
Oh yeah, he also used to have a hair fixation. Like, he would stand on the couch above you and lick your hair. He was really a sweet cat, with simple pleasures in life. He was really attached to us, and was scared of thunderstorms. He'd play with random scraps of plastic and paper that were lying on the floor. He was really timid, so the first time he sat in people's laps was always a big deal, because it was an expression of trust. When I came home, he would be lying on the couch, on someone's bed, and always seemed happy to see me. When he slept, he would curl up in a perfect little circle.
It's the first time I have ever lost anyone that was close to me.
