Goodbye to the cat of my heart
Sep. 23rd, 2012 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindeI have just returned from the open-on-Sundays vet, from whence Ranger has departed these fields (futons?) we know.
He had been declining gently over the last few months; walking was clearly more of a chore, and especially after the weather turned it was harder for him to get comfortable when curling up, but he'd been otherwise behaving according to his usual habits and I thought we still had some time before us.
Middle of last week, I had a scare where he was mrowing in that very-unhappy-cat way, and was about to take him to the vet when I realized that he would probably be much more comfortable without the half-extruded poop strung on a hair coming out his butt. Upon coping with this situation, he seemed much happier, and I figured "crisis averted" and thought little more of it. But then, I was gone Friday and Saturday as is my custom; and upon getting home last night I found that he was really doing nothing but sleeping, and when he got up he'd move about ten feet and then sit down for about ten minutes before moving another ten feet. I also--and this was of much greater concern, remembering Mage's Solid Silver Cat incident--took note that there was no poop in the box and that, as far as I could tell, he had not been digging into his dish at all. I offered him cheese; he took a piece to be polite and ignored the rest. So, I planned to take him to the vet in the morning, before things got really bad.
After a brief detour in which Google Maps pulled an iOS 6-style map fail on me, we got up there, and bless them, they managed to squeeze us into their extremely packed docket. They took his history and looked him over, and long story short, the prognosis was that things were just starting to fail. Their best guess was that he wasn't in pain at the moment, just kind of out of it and drained, but that it was likely to spiral to Very Bad very soon, and it was very unlikely that any measures would even buy him time that was worth living. So, I made the call at quarter to noon, and I held him as they gave him sweet nepenthe. (I recommend the Riverdale Veterinary Group highly. They were incredibly kind and thoughtful.)
If you look at it traditionally, Ranger is my 4th cat (well, tied for fourth with Mage, obvs). But if you look at it another way, he is my first and my only cat. All the cats we had growing up were bonded to Mom, if anyone; and Mr. Mage was, of course, everybody's pal. Ranger was mine and I was his in our little co-dependent bubble, and at 17.5 years is my longest-running relationship, and I feel empty and broken inside. No cat could ever be like him, my Spinach Cat, my Mr. MOW, my precious boy, and I can't yet imagine what any other cat could be to me.
He had been declining gently over the last few months; walking was clearly more of a chore, and especially after the weather turned it was harder for him to get comfortable when curling up, but he'd been otherwise behaving according to his usual habits and I thought we still had some time before us.
Middle of last week, I had a scare where he was mrowing in that very-unhappy-cat way, and was about to take him to the vet when I realized that he would probably be much more comfortable without the half-extruded poop strung on a hair coming out his butt. Upon coping with this situation, he seemed much happier, and I figured "crisis averted" and thought little more of it. But then, I was gone Friday and Saturday as is my custom; and upon getting home last night I found that he was really doing nothing but sleeping, and when he got up he'd move about ten feet and then sit down for about ten minutes before moving another ten feet. I also--and this was of much greater concern, remembering Mage's Solid Silver Cat incident--took note that there was no poop in the box and that, as far as I could tell, he had not been digging into his dish at all. I offered him cheese; he took a piece to be polite and ignored the rest. So, I planned to take him to the vet in the morning, before things got really bad.
After a brief detour in which Google Maps pulled an iOS 6-style map fail on me, we got up there, and bless them, they managed to squeeze us into their extremely packed docket. They took his history and looked him over, and long story short, the prognosis was that things were just starting to fail. Their best guess was that he wasn't in pain at the moment, just kind of out of it and drained, but that it was likely to spiral to Very Bad very soon, and it was very unlikely that any measures would even buy him time that was worth living. So, I made the call at quarter to noon, and I held him as they gave him sweet nepenthe. (I recommend the Riverdale Veterinary Group highly. They were incredibly kind and thoughtful.)
If you look at it traditionally, Ranger is my 4th cat (well, tied for fourth with Mage, obvs). But if you look at it another way, he is my first and my only cat. All the cats we had growing up were bonded to Mom, if anyone; and Mr. Mage was, of course, everybody's pal. Ranger was mine and I was his in our little co-dependent bubble, and at 17.5 years is my longest-running relationship, and I feel empty and broken inside. No cat could ever be like him, my Spinach Cat, my Mr. MOW, my precious boy, and I can't yet imagine what any other cat could be to me.
