So things on the whole are going really well over here. I’ve been very busy with studying, also playing a bit of cello. I was too busy to go to yoga, let alone post stuff about food. But I have some stuff to post soon, even if it isn’t all about food. And now that I finally have the time everyone in my family is ill. We are all combining a terrible cold with some, well, puking. I don’t know why I just shared that, I only hope you are not not suffering from this flu yourselves.
This is not the saddest part of things happening, unfortunately. While I was making new friends and getting terribly good grades (I am proud!) and finding happiness in work, the cat started making this wheezing noise. We thought she was unable to cough up a hairball. Four days ago in the evening she stopped wheezing and looked really weird when she was breathing, laboured and gasping. The following morning she was still doing that so we took her to the vet. The courageous little animal was actually quite well-behaved, there wasn’t even any scratching or rolling over to hiss. But the vet couldn’t pinpoint what it was so she had to take a x-ray.
They then saw that her breast-bone was broken and that her lungs were surrounded by fluid. Even now it is unclear if this was because of an infection that had been there for years, separate from the broken thorax, or if it was because the thorax had punctured a lung and then fluid started collecting. A bacterial infection was almost certainly happening, either aggravated by her being kicked, or suddenly inexplicably worsening. The break could have been there for years and so could the infection. The only thing we know for sure is that the symptoms started two weeks ago and that she must have been kicked really hard in the face/chest at some point in her short life to cause the break, either recently or quite some time ago. It was a lot to take in and she had to go to a fancy cat-hospital to see if something could be done. She spent the night with us being very still on the couch, in the morning I petted her a bit to soothe her, but she didn’t even protest when I lifted her to put her in the basket and she looked completely out of breath. Also her tongue was hanging out of her mouth with some slime, we thought she might die on the spot. She didn’t but we did decide that euthanasia was the best after hearing how she would have to spend 3 weeks in hell with a big tube in her chest (she’d already protested against the small tube) to see if she was one of the 5 percent of kitties who live after being reanimated. Well, I have a do-not-resuscitate at the doctor’s because I myself don’t want to face better odds, let alone have my completely non-understanding cat face even bleaker ones while suffering. We made sure the other cat got to spend some time with the body and she is now very distraught, following me everywhere, and seems completely lost. She keeps smelling stuff that has Fatty’s scent on it. It’s not as quite as bad as the face of evil was after her brother died, but similar.
I am still somewhat troubled by the fact that my cat gets really expensive health care that we can barely afford. And that there’s places on this earth where people don’t get half of the care my cat gets and babies go unvaccinated or don’t even have food. But I also figure that this should not mean that the cats that we’ve taken responsibility for should just go without and have their necks wrung when they seem to be getting as much as a sneezy cold. Within reason, they should get the care and the death I would hope other people would give me if I was not longer able to make that decision for myself. There’s a document I made up with my family to agree to that for myself and I urge everyone to make one of those! Anyway, I will miss the fluffy bundle of joy that used to waddle up to me and open her mouth as wide as possible and go “me-ieaw” in two distinct high pitched tones as though she was a demented frog. And I wish we could have given her more than the two extra years she got because we took her in. I am sure she was happy, she seemed incredibly content and sought out contact with us often. It has been a joy to watch that fat, eye-infected ratty monstrosity of a kitty (she really was more of a personality than a looker), turn into a healthy, only slightly tubby marvel of beauty with a well-taken-care-of coat! <3
