Dead Ghosts

 Our fish, Ghost, died last week. 

This is sad, to be sure, but neither of us were super broken-up about it. As one of my friends told me, it's difficult to become emotionally attached to a fish -- even a betta fish who was as smart and as amusing as Ghost was. 

We could also tell it was coming for some time. For the past three weeks or so, he'd been a lot more lethargic than usual -- sleeping lazily on or inside his little fish house, or at the bottom of the tank, not wanting to move around a whole lot. In the mornings, when I'd wake him up to be fed by turning on his light, he'd swim up to greet me, maybe eat a piece or two of his food, and then slowly let himself sink back to the bottom of the tank.

By last week he wasn't even doing that. I'd turn on the light, tap on the glass where he was stationed at the bottom of the tank, and he'd barely move. Occasionally he'd switch positions from one side of the tank to the other, or from inside his fish house to on top of it, but it was very clear that he was -- as they say -- straight up not having a good time, bro. 

Daisy did some research on how to bring him back, including adding some special medicines to the water and using some aquarium salt -- and said research also said to stop feeding him so he could recover (seems counterintuitive to me, but whatever). It was all too late, however. The last two days he was alive, he sat on the bottom of the tank in the corner, unmoving. I would check on him multiple times a day/night, and he just looked so sad -- struggling to breathe, not wanting to expend the effort and energy to move. 

Eventually his breathing stopped, and he was gone. 

Daisy looked up how to dispose of the...well, corpse, I guess, though it feels weird giving that description to a fish. I always thought fish got flushed down the toilet as a traditional burial-at-sea -- the fish I'd had in the past (read: very few of them over my entire life) all got the toilet treatment. Apparently you're not supposed to do that anymore. I assume, as I did, that Daisy found the thought of trying to bury a fish smaller than my pinky finger preposterous, so she quietly disposed of him in the trash while I slept, several hours after I'd told her he'd died. This was Thursday; trash day is Wednesday, which means there was a fish corpse somewhere in a trash bag at the bottom of our trash can in the garage for a week.

Yeah, it's slightly morbid when you think about it that way, isn't it?

We have not yet gotten a new fish. Daisy does not know whether she wants to get one before we go to Canada this summer, or whether she wants to wait. We have hundreds of dollars' worth of fish equipment, everything from the tank and its machinery to aquarium salt, gravel, fish food, fish medicine, aquatic plants, water pumps, lighting and decor. Seems like a waste not to keep it in mostly continuous use, right?

It's Daisy's call overall. I told her if she wants to get another fish before we leave for vacation, we can. If not, that's fine too. Believe me, I have a ton of stuff to do before we leave on that trip that getting a new fish is very low on my priority list -- there are so many more pressing things to be done.

To those ends, The Great Cleansing of 2024 is moving a lot more slowly than I would like. Part of that is because the last few weeks have been crazily hectic and it seems like we really haven't gotten an actual "weekend" because of everything we've had to do. Two weeks ago was Easter, of course, and Daisy's sister, our brother-in-law, and their four boys were in town. We also had to deal with Pete being sick (more on this below) and Sadie's follow up blood-draw last Saturday, and work has been a nightmare for both of us. 

So let's start from the beginning.

I've written here previously that Pete, our oldest cat -- my first son, the one who has been with me the longest and who I would say was the first real pet who was fully mine -- has anxiety issues. Like, really bad anxiety issues. He was on gabapentin for them about six or seven years ago, and after a while he didn't need the gaba anymore, so we weaned him off them. When we adopted Hank, and later Empress, the new cats in the house -- even though he loved them both (and still very much loves them) caused a spike in his anxiety and he began marking walls, the couch, Daisy's shoes, etc. We got him checked out and the vets said he didn't have any urinary issues, so it was likely the stress and anxiety of having the new cat(s) in the house even though he loved and got along with them. We got him back on the gabapentin at that time, and he seemed to -- eventually -- calm down quite a bit.

And then Maggie died. 

Maggie, his cuddle companion on the couch, the sweetest and most vocal girl who he grew up with and lived with for almost his entire life. The girl who kept his attitude in check, the girl who would snuggle with him and keep him warm and who was always a constant fixture of the household was suddenly gone, he didn't know why, and she didn't come back.

And his anxiety went through the roof. 

He'd spend hours pacing the house, howling, backing up on things (and occasionally actually peeing), chewing on plastic, attacking Sadie -- who to her credit had done nothing wrong, she just wanted to drink water or go to the pan -- etc. He would howl at my door and scratch to come in and out over and over, to the point where he would never let me sleep because of the in and out. This scratching and howling to get in and out of my office, by the way, wasn't just when I was in there -- oh no, it continued even when I was downstairs or sleeping in the bedroom. The only thing that stopped this behavior was eventually putting up a baby gate in front of my office door right up against the jamb, so that he couldn't scratch on the door. That seemed to give him the message.

We talked to the vet about it when he went in for his checkup shortly after Maggie died (by shortly I mean, about two weeks or so -- give or take). They said we could give him the gabapentin as needed, up to 2-3 pills a day, and that we could also supplement it with melatonin. Yeah, like the same melatonin pills humans take to get good sleep -- it's apparently supposed to work as an anti-anxiety for cats, and he could take up to 9mg a day (or something like that) as necessary. 

I'm going to pause here for a moment and state for the record that you can get melatonin very cheaply off the shelf almost anywhere, in a number of different doses. The stuff I already had in the house was 0.3mg per pill, I believe. When I've taken melatonin in the past for sleep concerns, those very-low-dosage pills have one of two effects on me --

1. nothing at all happens whatsoever

2. they knock me out and I sleep for twelve hours straight

And I never know which one is going to happen. 

Due to the unreliability factor there, I haven't taken a melatonin in years. 

We gave Pete a few of those pills along with his gabapentin. They didn't seem to really have any effect. Daisy then ordered a bottle of 1mg melatonin pills off Amazon (for, and I'm not kidding, like five bucks). Those, when administered to him twice a day, along with his gabapentin, seemed to finally begin calming him down somewhat. 

For a short while.

It wasn't long before even this wouldn't even quell his restlessness and anxiety, even with a morning dose and an evening dose of both medications. He'd still pace, he'd still howl, he'd still back up on furniture and walls, and there seemed to be zero rhyme or reason to any of it. He was well-fed, he would get hours of love, attention, treats and cuddle time every day, yet his overwhelming anxiety was still there. Eventually, he began violently attacking Sadie for no reason -- the little old lady wasn't doing anything but existing -- to the point where she would pee herself on the floor or on the couch or wherever it was he was attacking her. 

That was the last straw for me.

The vet, when we were in to have him looked at for his checkup, said that another option would be Prozac. As in, not cat Prozac, human Prozac -- pills cut in half and given to him once a day. She wanted to hold off on that as a last resort of sorts, because for cats with kidney issues (such as Pete, who is in the downhill decline of kidney failure already) it can really be hard on them in some cases.

But we were at the end of our rope, honestly -- nothing else was working and honestly we may as well have not been giving him anything at all -- gabapentin, melatonin, or both -- because it no longer seemed like either of those medications were doing anything to help him, and he needed to stop going after Sadie. So we had the vet call in the Prozac.

Prozac pills are tiny and blue, and we cut each of them in half with a pill cutter. From the first dose we noticed an almost instant and immediate effect -- it was like a hard reset for Pete. He immediately became very chill and calm, and just slept on the couch a lot. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Two or three days in, we began to get concerned. He was chill, yes. But he'd become what I can only describe as "sedated" a good 90% of the time. Yes, he would get up and move around, eat, etc for that other 10% of the time, but the rest of the time he just melted into the furniture as if he was trying to become one with it. 

And then, in the middle of the night last Monday night, he peed himself in his sleep, on the couch, while I was working. He did not seem to even notice he'd done it, or if he did, he didn't seem to care. Both were concerning. I gently and lovingly washed off the back half of his body in the kitchen sink, held him and loved on him, and let him know it wasn't his fault. I had some sobering flashbacks to Maggie, who had done the same thing about a year or two before she died of the same kidney issues that will, eventually, take Pete down as well. 

He seemed okay otherwise and slept on the couch (once I replaced the blanket he'd peed on, of course) and slept with me upstairs that day. But we noticed something else in the following 24 hours -- he did not go to the pan, and I saw him drink very little water.  When we took him to the pan, physically, to see if he would go, he wouldn't. 

Daisy called the vet and we got him in the next afternoon -- and of course we immediately stopped the Prozac. Prozac can cause incontinence issues in some cats, but in most cats -- if there's a side effect at all -- it's urinary retention and elimination issues. Basically it keeps them from being able to pee and it constipates them. It doesn't happen to all cats of course, but still, major cause for concern. The vets, as soon as they heard what was going on, insisted we immediately bring him in so they could check for a urinary blockage. 

He did not have a blockage. He did have urine in his bladder, and he did have poop inside him, but per their examination neither were a cause for concern. He has, however, lost three pounds in as many months, and they are concerned about that as it either means his kidney disease is rapidly progressing or that he may be diabetic, like Sadie is. 

Or, as I mused, he's old. Pete turns 17 this month, and I don't know of any cats who didn't slowly or quickly lose a lot of weight and body mass as they age. Sadie was 15 or so pounds at her largest, six or seven years ago, and she is now half that. At Pete's heaviest, I think he was 21 pounds -- he's now 12. 

They took some blood for tests (saying that he was "spicy" while they were getting said blood) and sent us home, telling us we'd get the results when they had them. 

Since returning home, the "hard reset" has mostly stuck with Pete. He has not been anxious, hasn't been particularly on edge, and has been...normal again. He used the pan that night and has been using it since, drinking and eating normally from what I've seen, and for all intents and purposes has been the cat he always was before the anxiety issues. So I really don't know what it was -- if his body just needed the shock to the system or what. Once the Prozac completely worked its way out of his system (apparently, it can take a few days) he returned to being his normal old self.

This next year or two is going to be really rough on us cat-wise. I don't expect Pete to live more than another year or so, and Sadie is of course in the same boat as well. Both of them have lived long, full lives, but it's very clear that both are on extremely borrowed time. Pete may look and act spry, but 17 years is a long time for a cat to live, even a healthy one. Sadie is old, frail, and on multiple medications, and is the same age. I truthfully don't know how long either of the golden oldies have left.

Daisy will be sad, but mostly relieved when Sadie dies (I am only slightly bitter about this), but when Pete goes, she will be absolutely inconsolable. 

We'll then be left with the two rugrats.

Sadie had her latest blood draw last Saturday morning to check her levels. She seems more active and more lovey, generally, than she was several months ago. It is clear she misses Maggie, and with Pete being an asshole towards her as of late, she's gravitated much more towards us for love and comfort.  She also loves it when Empress cuddles with her...most of the time.

Her new bloodwork came out fine. She is normal and stable and responding well to her medications. Docs said she doesn't need to get rechecked for six months.

The children are also doing well. Empress is very slowly beginning to grow her long coat back in -- I don't expect her to have it fully grown in until around her first birthday this fall (or even sometime after that, but it's coming back in. Hank is Hank -- our short-legged potato child who loves that little girl so very much.

Empress went on her first car ride last weekend. Daisy wants to get her accustomed to travel so that we can get her on flea/tick medication and she can become our "adventure cat." Meaning, take her on walks, travel with her, she goes where we go, etc. She wanted to do that with Hank, but he is far too timid around anyone but us. He is also fearful of the outside and does not like sounds and noise. Empress seems to have no fear whatsoever of anyone or anything, and she demonstrated this by literally falling asleep in my arms during our car ride:

We took her to Goodwill, where I dropped off two more bags of things, and then to see the parents. She was very chill throughout and just liked being held, appreciating the adventure.

She's such a sweet little cat. So very comfortable and such a loving blessing to the household. I am though, very clearly, her person. She likes Daisy fine, but she adores me. She wants to be around me all the time, she wants to lay next to me, she licks my feet/toes/fingers/hands nearly incessantly if I let her, and when I hold her (as you can see above) she instantly relaxes. I don't know that she'll ever be a teddy bear cat like Pete is, and I honestly doubt it, but it is very clear the love the little girl has for me. Daisy picked the right cat and I love her so much. She is going to be gorgeous once she grows up, too.