Incoming Unimaginable Loss

 It has now been almost a month since we returned home from Canada -- which honestly is quite hard to believe, for me at least. It feels like I was just there yesterday. 

In the time since we've returned home, we've gone from simply "fall" into the "holiday season" and with it, everything that entails. Daisy uploaded all of the photos from our trips, and with them I was able to create this year's Christmas cards -- very late for me to do it in November -- and I ordered them. They were delivered remarkably fast this year, well over a week before their original ETA. They cost me $171, and that was with a 50% off coupon. With them, I also got a few more sheets of stamps from USPS -- this year's selections are Jimmy Carter and Betty White being added to the collection of stamps to choose from for mailing out the cards. These cards will, as always, begin mailing out on Black Friday. 

We have been informed that Thanksgiving this year will just be the four of us -- me, Daisy, and her parents -- as nobody else is coming into town for the holiday. This means we can just plan for a small normal Thanksgiving dinner for all of us, with just the basics necessary. To me that includes (vegan) turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and Daisy's famous vegan gravy, Mama's rolls, corn, green beans, and some sort of dessert. We have gotten approximately none of these ingredients yet, but will slowly acquire them over the next couple of weeks.

A lot has also happened since we've returned home, not all of it good. 

About a week after we got back, Pete began getting sick. Like, really sick. He could barely move, he was leaking diarrhea out of him, and he was quite wobbly and looked, well, like he was dying. We rushed him to a late-night vet appointment on a Sunday night and had bloodwork done, which told us that he had:

1. a kidney infection

2. a urinary tract infection

3. a stomach bug

4. cat hepatitis, caused by the other three things.

The late night vet, different than our normal vet, offered to hospitalize him and keep him on IV fluids. We said no to that; we have his fluid bags at home already and we could administer the fluids ourselves. Also, who hospitalizes an 18.5 year old cat? Like, if you're at that point, it's generally time to throw in the towel.

The very kind vet lady did not think it was the end for Pete yet, even though we had our doubts. She prescribed him several different meds that we were to begin giving him immediately, and because he was leaking poop out of him, we set up the cage in our bedroom again for him -- the same cage we'd had Mable in after her hip surgery. We lined it with puppy pads and towels, and this became Pete's home for the next five days or so.

I felt so bad for the old man. He was clearly struggling, and we did not know if he was going to pull through. He smelled so strongly of his kidney disease and was so weak that he could not make it to the litter pan in the cage half the time, just shitting where he laid -- which facilitated the need to bathe him at least once or twice a day (at least enough to get the poop off him). 

We administered the fluids to him while in the cage -- twice a day at first to help rehydrate him and to try to wash the sickness out of him. The antibiotic for the stomach bug was the same one he'd been on this past spring -- when we thought we'd lose him then -- and its side effect was...you guessed it... diarrhea. He had another medication to stop the diarrhea, another one for nausea, and of course he had his normal daily pills as well for his thyroid and pain/anxiety. 

Over the course of several days, he slowly began to improve. Daisy went and got a pack of pet diapers for him from Target, and we let him out to stretch his legs and try to be a little active once he started to feel a bit better, but we always put him back in the cage at night to rest. We did, of course, take the diapers off when he was in the cage.

Finally, when we knew he was no longer leaking and his health had greatly improved, we let him back out of the cage and put it away. The medicines were doing their job, and in about a week, he was back to being mostly the same old Pete we'd always known. He was eating and drinking normally, using the pan normally (still mostly diarrhea, but likely only due to the antibiotics at that juncture), and he was able to rejoin the rest of the household as per the usual.

But, we noticed something strange -- Emmy and Mable, who generally adore sleeping and cuddling up to Pete, now completely avoided him. Not in a "hiss and run away" fashion but more of a we no longer have any interest in this creature fashion. Charlie took their place by Pete's side -- he adores the old man and Pete really loves him. The two of them began cuddling together on a regular basis multiple times a day, and they groomed each other, used each other as pillows, and generally just snuggled in together. 

And so it seemed the house and our old man were back to normal. Pete was slower and a little more wobbly than he had been, but otherwise our normal old boy.

About a week after he was better, we made a follow up appointment with our normal vet so that he could get Pete's numbers checked out in comparison to the ones when he was really sick.

The results were...not promising, as you may have already guessed.

Pete's kidney disease is progressing more and more by the month. Not much we do is slowing it down. Our vet tracked his numbers from this summer to September to now and it is showing what was previously a slow deterioration has now become a much more rapid one. Basically, he could take a turn for the worse and be done at pretty much any day now. The subcutaneous fluids we give him are helping a little, and his thyroid levels are good, but there's no longer a way to slow this down any more than what we've done. Our vet estimated, at best, a couple of months more before he's gone, and it could be as soon as a week or two.

Daisy and I aren't exactly shocked by this; we'd already almost lost Pete twice this year already. And to be fair, he seems mostly happy and content, he gets around the house just fine (going up and down the stairs, eating and drinking normally, sleeping with us at night, etc) but we know the writing is on the wall. Our vet even told us he'd be hard pressed to disagree with us were we to say "I don't want him to suffer anymore or watch him deteriorate further, let's just end this now" and encouraged us to begin those hard thoughts and talks on end of life actions, because it's coming.

"If he gets sick again," Daisy asked the vet, "at this juncture should we even bring him in again for further bloodwork, or should we just..."

"That's not something I can really answer for you," our vet said. "I have a feeling that when it's time, you'll know, and he'll tell you."

Seeing him normal and being cuddly loving old Pete has me skeptical to believe that this cat's end is coming soon, but I know the numbers and I know we're in a losing battle. Sadie was fine until she began having seizures, and then three days later she was gone. 

"I think [the vet] is right," I told Daisy. "When it's time...we'll know."

If he dies peacefully in his sleep in the house we can take him to the humane society for their end-of-life program, called Rainbow Bridge -- where we can have him cremated and the ashes returned to us in a tasteful little urn. Daisy wants to keep the ashes of Pete instead of having them scattered in a park like the girls. 

If we know it's time there are also services we can call to come deliver a painless euthanasia here in the house, and then they take him to be processed/cremated. These groups can generally do same-day or next-day services.

It will likely be one of the two; I don't want to put him in a carrier and lug him to the doctor again if it can be avoided -- it greatly stresses him and he now gets carsick or shits himself or both. Daisy doesn't want to put him through that either. 

We have now reached the acceptance stage of Pete's decline, I believe; we both know it's going to happen soon and that it is only a matter of time. Neither of us are happy about it and Daisy is, in fact, quite emotional about it, but we both get it. We have known this time has been coming for a while and I don't think we could be more mentally prepared for it than we are already. That doesn't mean we want it to happen, of course. We just can't stop it. There's no magic drug, no expensive cure, nothing to prevent it. 

I just want Pete to be happy and comfortable, and I think for the most part, he is. I'm sure the old man has aches and pains and nausea, and I'm sure his kidneys failing doesn't feel good, but I don't want him to be confused or scared. I just want him to enjoy his last few weeks or months of life while he can. I want him to be able to get up and go drink water or eat food and treats when he wants to, or eat an entire Churu for me when I give him his pills. I want him to be able to come upstairs and cuddle with us while we sleep -- even now he still asks me to teddy bear him when I go to bed for the day. That is Pete, same old Pete, regardless of how his health is failing him. If one of these days he doesn't come up to bed with me/us because he has passed peacefully on the couch, then so be it. If he gets really sick again or starts having seizures and tells us that yes, it's time, then so be it. Until either of these scenarios happens, we're going to keep him as happy, comfortable, and as well-fed as possible before the inevitable end. 

Yes, it's sad. Losing Pete is almost unimaginable to me simply because he has always been there for me since 2007. I knew there would be a time where he was no longer with us, but I never knew what that would look like or feel like. It appears I'm going to experience that soon. For Daisy it is worse -- she has a "soul connection" with Pete and he is as much her son as a human boy would be. She will likely take it far harder than I or even she will expect to when he does eventually pass. 

I will be impressed if he lives through Thanksgiving. I will be surprised if he lives to my birthday and Christmas. It is almost a certainty he will be dead before the end of the year. 

Anyway.

In less depressing news, Hank's eye is finally recovering. We took him in to the cat ophthalmologist again this week, and in his latest examination he was healed enough to start him on steroid drops that will end the ulcerations on his eye and heal his eyeball back to normal. We started the drops that day and have seen a remarkable improvement since -- the ulcers are shrinking and his eye is beginning to clear up again. We have an appointment for follow up on December 4, by which point we are hoping that he is almost completely healed. 

Hank himself no longer seems to mind the drops. He used to fight us on them every day, and he will still sometimes run and hide when he knows we're trying to catch him to give them to him, but generally when I catch him he knows it'll all be over in a minute or so and just goes limp and doesn't fight me. I honestly think he knows and realizes that it makes him feel better afterwards, similar to how Pete tells us it's time for his pills. Hank is a very smart, sweet boy and I know he must be able to make that correlation somehow.

He'll need to be on the drops for the rest of his life, though. That's the sad part. If he goes off them, the ulcers will likely quickly return. The overall goal is to see how little of the drops we can use to have them still be effective for the long run -- i.e. if he will always need them twice a day, once a day, twice a week, once a week, etc. That's what's unknown at this juncture and why we are going to keep getting him checked up once a month or so for the foreseeable future.

Cats are expensive, man.

The other cats are fine; we finally, as of last night, have paid off Mable's hip surgery completely. She seems to be almost completely normal, and you'd never know she had a surgery to begin with. Charlie and Gary continue to grow, with Gary starting to come out of his awkward hair phase now and he's beginning to poof up like an actual Maine Coon (albeit somewhat slower than Emmy did). Charlie is fulfilling the predictions that he will be a very big boi™ and is probably eleven or twelve pounds at this juncture and only getting larger. He's got a belly on him, but pound for pound that cat is thickly muscled. He is Daisy's "soul cat in-training" as he is such a little lover and absolutely adores her. He loves me, but he adores Daisy, and gets bed cuddle time with her every morning -- and couch cuddle time with her every night. He reminds me so much of Pete when he was younger and also so much of Maggie with how he loves. 

Empress, on the other hand, celebrated her 2nd birthday this past week:

She is as much of a beautiful diva as ever and put up zero fuss whatsoever when I put the hat on her. She is softening as she ages; when she used to be extremely antisocial and aloof, she will now come out and spend time with people when they come to visit, like our friends or Daisy's parents. She apparently loved getting attention from our catsitter, too. Daisy and I can pick her up and cuddle her at almost any time now, and while she doesn't necessarily like it, she tolerates it because she knows it's love. She also spends more time than ever being my shadow, my new Sadie, when I work at night -- sleeping at my feet and coming over to me for love or wanting me to play fetch with her. She is a wonderful little girl. If Mable were not so territorial of the upstairs and of Daisy, I have no doubt Emmy would be sleeping at my side every day like she used to when she was younger. Mable will run her off, though, claiming the upstairs of the house as her domain.