birth & death

So, life and death happens simultaneously.  Joy, relief and grief.

Last night, February 15th, I became a great aunt.  I've always been an absent to passable aunt.  Last night, our niece and nephew's first child, Wrenley Jane, was born.  And I became great (aunt).  I don't know if I will be able to live up to the title, but I will try.  Mama and baby seem happy and healthy.  thanks to the internets & facebook, I have gotten to see lots of photos.  I love this little bundled swaddled in girly pink flowery print and a big pink bow on her little head.  I'm so happy for our young niece and nephew who are so excited to be new parents.  And I'm thrilled for my sister and our niece's mom to be grandmothers!




In other sad news....
This morning, on February 16, our feline buddy, Stinksy, finally passed on to the green meadows in the sky.  He was a strong little guy.  His mother was a little slut and his dad was the neighborhood tomcat.

In 2005, we had lost my soul cat, Tiki Tee, the week before Mardi Gras.



It was a pretty quick illness. He had kidney failure, and he passed away less than a week of getting sick.  After he died, his brother, Chester, just meowed all day.  Tiki was the alpha male, and Chester was like the big goofball omega male.  We thought he was slightly slow, and he just didn't know how to cat properly without his little smarter brother.



So, when our friend told us she needed to bring her kittens to the SPCA, we went up to her apartment to wrangle a companion for Chester.  They were fast little fuckers, and none of them wanted to go home with us.  We originally tried to catch the female nun cat, but she was spry and slippery.  At one point, they basically ran across the floor to hide under the bed, and Stinksy was the one that got caught.  So, we loaded him in the too big carrier and hauled him down the street to our house.  He instantly took to Chester to be his surrogate mom.  Chester wasn't having it.  He looked at us like, this is who you bring home when I tell you I'm lonely?

We had trouble naming the little kitty at first.  He was so cute, but really a little terror.  He didn't know common sense things.  Like, don't play with our eyeballs during REM sleep.  We had to sleep with the sheets over our heads.  And we were so allergic to him.  We seriously contemplated trying to give him away.  But, we didn't want him to end up at the shelter in the fireplace.  We knew that the bigger he got, the less appealing he was.  After all, he was just a bicolor tabby domestic shorthair.  So we kept him and just bought a lot of tissue.  We couldn't think of a name for him.  Damien, Beelzebub, Satan, Jaws... none of them stuck.  For some reason, TFP one day called him Stinksy, and it just stuck.  Although, we really called him Stinky most of the time.  He never really stunk.

He rode out Katrina on the 10th floor of the Marriott hotel on Canal Street.  He was still pretty young.  The staff made us all go to the ballroom, so we had to leave the cats in the room.  Stinksy pretty much just hid behind Chester the whole time.  Later that year, we moved to San Diego.  I got in a car accident a day or two before we were supposed to leave.  So I had to stay back and deal with insurance.  So, TFP travelled cross country with Chester and Stinksy in a 2 door Toyota Echo.  Also, Stinksy had a cone.  We had gotten him neutered, and the vet had dug into his stomach looking for one of the testicles that wasn't where it was supposed to be.  It wasn't anywhere.  And then she stitched him up weird and sent him home sans cone.  So, he chewed the stitches out.  So, he had to get stapled and then restitched later, and coned.

Several months after we moved, Chester got renal failure too and passed away under our dining room table.  Then it was Stinksy's turn to meow at us all day.  So, we found a grey kitty on craigslist.

The Fuzz.  She had medium length hair and toe tufts and ear tufts, and she was the cutest, if somewhat standoffish little cat.  And Stinksy looked at us, like, this is who you get to keep me company?  But, he grew to love her, and he showed her the ropes.

After 6 years in San Diego, we moved to Fort Lauderdale.  This time, it was all four of us in a Honda Element.  It was quite the adventure for them.  They loved all the dingy seedy pet friendly hotel rooms we stayed at.  So many scents and crannies to explore.  They always were unhappy the next morning when we packed them up and put them back in the car.  One particularly scary Economy Inn in Texas was their favorite.  It had two beds, and they spent a lot of time jumping from bed to bed, over and over.

Stinksy wanted to be an indoor/outdoor cat, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to allow this.  But, we did let him roam around out back when we were outside.  A little while after we moved to Florida, we got a puppy, Rudy, which of course, the cats hated.

And the puppy grew, and they hated him more.  But the puppy learned the command, "get Stinky" and he would chase him out of the bushes and back into the house.

In 2017, our dear little cat, The Fuzz, was dying from renal failure.  We were sent home with subcutaneous fluids, which we had to pump under her skin every day to keep her hydrated.  She hated it, but she wasn't a fighter, so she gave up easily and let us do it.  She was suffering slowly, so finally we had to euthanize her.  This was one of the most devastating days of my life.  I hope to never have to do it again.  But I know it was the right choice.  She was TFP's baby girl, and it hit him harder than I think he would have ever guessed.  He still grieves her today and has trouble looking at pictures of her.

Stinky was lonely after The Fuzz passed, but we knew it was not a good time to get another cat.  We were so busy at work, we were making moves to sell the restaurant, and we didn't know what our future held.  So, we were down to a one cat, one dog household.  Stinksy and Rudy didn't love each other, but they seemed to form an understanding.  Unless human food was involved.

Last summer, Stinksy stopped eating, and in a matter of days, he started showing signs of renal failure & he was alarmingly skinny.  So we took him to the vet.  They were worried about renal failure, but it looked like it was brought on by an infected tooth.  So, he was given antibiotics and B12, and we were sent home with subcutaneous fluids once again.  Stinksy wasn't nearly as cooperative as The Fuzz, so finally I had to get a zip bag that looks like a travel toiletry bag with zippers for the front paws & a velcro wrap for the neck.

Even with the bag on him, he sometimes found a way to slither across the table.  But we gave him the fluids, and after a few weeks, he was back to his old self.

And then, the infection came back right before we moved to New Orleans.  And the rest... you can read on previous blog posts...

stinksy's story

stinksy's story continued

Anyway, the last couple of weeks, we had him on Fentanyl.  They have patches that you can get at the pharmacy.  But, it's Fentanyl, so it's not like pharmacies have loads of it in stock.  So we had trouble getting it.  In between that, we gave him liquid buprenorphine.  We were drugging our cat with opioids.  No other vet had ever suggested opioids to us.  Of course, Stinksy had a rapidly growing tumor taking over his mouth.  So, I guess that is much different than renal failure.

Anyway, he ate 2 big cans of cat food a day or two before we applied the first Fentanyl patch to him.  And that was the last he ate.  I was still gave him cat food with a moat of chicken or beef stock around it for about 10 days after he stopped eating.  But, I don't even think he really drank the stock at that point.  Each patch was good for 5 days.  You could definitely tell the difference between the first and the fifth day.  We gave him 3 patches in a row, then we had to go five days with buprenorphine before we were able to get him another patch.  He died sometime in the night, or rather, early this morning.  So, he went like 22 or 23 days with virtually no food.  He only stopped drinking water 2 days ago.  He couldn't drink with his tongue, so he would stand on the kitchen sink divider and let the water from the tap drip into his mouth.  But he stopped drinking because I think it was difficult for him to stand there, and it was getting more difficult for him to lean his head just so, so the water would drip into his mouth.

these photos are maybe 3 weeks apart.

I know this is a graphic photo, but I want to help others who find themselves with a cat with oral squamous cell carcinoma.  I don't think there's enough information out there for people like me.

I googled "how long can a cat survive without food".  And all the websites said two weeks tops.  Stinksy was a fighter.  He just had to defy the google search results.  And he had always been clean.  We knew it was almost over when he started sleeping most of the time in his litter box.  He had stopped peeing, but still, he would wake up with litter caked all over him.  Last night, he was just laying on a cat scratcher.  We brought him into the bedroom with us, on the cat scratcher.  Sometime in the night, he dragged himself off the scratcher into the hallway, and he just died right there, stretched out.  Of course, he didn't have any pee or poo left in him, so it was just him, dry and rigid.  Even in death he tried to be as clean as he could be.  We imagine that he found The Fuzz and is leading the way for her.  Because she had probably gotten lost in the otherworld, not knowing how to get to heaven and having no help.  Tiki Tee wouldn't have helped her because he was a little bitch to other cats, and he definitely would have been very jealous of The Fuzz.  But now, all four of our beloved cats are together.

Now we just have Rudy.

We haven't had a cat-less household since Summer of 1995.  😿😿😿😿😿😿😿 This afternoon, when Rudy and I walked into the house, I thought how strange that I didn't have to go searching for Stinksy to see if he was still alive.  I already knew the answer.  I started writing this blog post to put off cleaning out the litter box and putting it away.  For now.


There couldn't be joy without grief,  life without death.  xoxoxoxo

Feline Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

So, I'm not writing this post to make anyone sad.  It's more to explain what is happening to our cat, so that other people who might have the same experience can compare this to what they are going through.  I feel like feline renal failure is highly covered on the internets, but I can't find as much info on oral cancer.  

So, this is our cat, Stinksy.  

He is getting on 14 years.  He never really stank before, so he had kind of a facetious name.  This summer, he pretty much stopped eating and lost a lot of weight in a week.  Our other cats had passed away from renal failure, so we pretty much figured that was what was happening with Stinksy.  We took him to the vet, and they did blood tests and looked at his mouth.  He had an infected tooth, which was causing him to lose his appetite, thus he was having trouble with his kidneys because he wasn't eating.  So, he was shot up with antibiotics and B12, and we were given subcutaneous fluids (Sub-Q for short) to give to him every day.  We would need to take him in to check his progress in a week or so.

So, for those of you unfamiliar with sub q fluids, it's like sugar water.  It's an IV type bag, and you pierce the needle under the skin and pump the fluids in by hand.  This will hydrate the cat.  We had to give our other cat, The Fuzz, sub q fluids before.  She hated it, but she wasn't a fighter, so once we got the needle under her skin she didn't really struggle anymore.  Stinksy, on the other hand, would try to escape before we even stuck him, and then he would try to break away before we got enough fluids in him.  So it was a 2 person job with Stinksy.  We tried the towel burrito, but he would always squeeze his front paw out and then try to escape.  Eventually, I had to buy a kitty straight jacket.  

It has zippers in the front for the legs and a zipper on the back.  Once he was in the straight jacket he calmed down, but after about 5 minutes he would start to squirm.  As soon as we unzipped the back a little he could escape, and if the needle wasn't out of him yet, he didn't care.  So, anyway, he did get better.  The infection cleared up, he was eating again, and we didn't have to give him the fluids every day.    

So, about 5 months later, he got bad breath and his cheek was swollen.  

You can't really tell from the photo, but it was definitely swollen.  We were moving from Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans, so I waited until we got to New Orleans to take him to the vet.  The vet gave him antibiotics again, and he also prescribed him Onsior, which is an anti inflammatory.  So, the infection cleared up, again, and his breath got better.  But his cheek was still swollen.  I took Stinksy back for a follow up visit.  The vet was concerned that Stinksy's cheek hadn't shrunk back to normal, and he discovered a hole in Stinksy's mouth.  So it was more than just an infected tooth.  He suspected cancer.  The one thing thing that made all this more tricky, was that Stinksy has cardiomyopathy (enlarged heart wall) which results in a heart murmur.  Whenever using anesthesia on a cat with a heart murmur, it's a little tricky because slowing down their pulse could cause blood clots.  So, the vet referred Stinksy to a vet who was a dental specialist.

So, we saw the dental specialist.  She explained that they alter the procedure for putting under pets with a heart murmur, so that it's not so risky. She put him under and took X rays & then did a biopsy.  So, he was pretty bad off.  His bone was deteriorating, and he had tooth resorption.  So, we waited around for them to finish digging around in his mouth, then he woke up.  

He was waking up when we got him home.  He was very wobbly, yet at the same time he was trying to run around the house.  It was a little scary.  The vet had given us some opioid painkiller, so we gave it to him after an hour as prescribed and he calmed down and went to sleep.  

So, we were giving him an anti-inflammatory and the opioid as well.  He definitely ate more and slept more with those meds.  He still was spunky and jumping on tables and counters, but the only obvious problem his mouth.  One Sunday, we ran out of meds, and he wasn't eating again.  So, I got him Temptations treats, because I knew it was the one thing that he liked to eat.  So I gave them to him.  And he scarfed them down.  And then there was blood.  It was all in his mouth, and he shook his head and ran around freaked out, so the blood spattered everywhere.  I came to the realization that Stinksy could no longer ingest solid food.  So, I would have to grind the treats with chicken stock for him to eat them.

Yesterday, we took him back to the dental vet.  The biopsy had confirmed that he did indeed have oral cancer.  So, because it was so widespread and he is a small cat, treatment was not advised.  Not only would treatment probably cost as much as a car, but it would involve either chemotherapy, or surgery to take away a huge part of his jaw & his eye.  And Stinksy might still not survive more than a few more years at best.  He had lost about half a pound of weight in 2 weeks.  The tumor had not grown much, which was a little bit of a relief.  The vet gave us more of the liquid opioid, buprenorphine.  She thought about it some more, and she went to see if she could get us a fentynal patch.  This would last for 5 days and would give Stinksy continual relief.  She would have to shave some of his hair and put the patch on him.  Then after 5 days, we would have to take the patch off and flush it down the toilet.  So, we went to the CVS that the vet called.  The pharmacist who helped us looked at the prescription and said, "We don't have that in stock."  So we told her that the doctor had just called and verified that they had it.  So she asked around and found out that the patches had been put aside, so it was not listed in the inventory.  We waited while they filled the prescription.  Then we were called back up to the drop off desk, and we were told that the doctor's license was listed as expired in July.  So we went back to the vet and collected Stinksy and his buprenorphine and took him home.  

He has been pretty chill for the past 24 hours.  He has been sleeping either on his little green blankie that I put on the couch, on the bed, or upstairs in the carpeted bedroom floor.  The blood is leaking from his mouth more frequently.  He will have blood on his paws or legs, and his nose is crusted with blood and mucus.  But he still gets around fine, and he uses his litter box.  I've been buying different canned cat food and canned fish, and blending them with stock to see if Stinksy likes any one more than the others.  I want to put together a bucket list of foods he might like, because it really doesn't matter what he eats - as long as he is eating something.  So, we just have to watch him closely and decide when quality of life is not good enough for him to keep going.  The vet did suggest tube feeding - the vet would put a hole in Stinksy's trachea and we would push the food through with a syringe.  I think we both agree that we don't want to get to that point.  So, it's just a waiting game now.  

Stinksy probably doesn't have much more than a few weeks, or maybe a couple months.  It's such a difficult truth to deal with.  I've been openly talking about it for a while to prepare myself for the inevitable.  But, it's still hard to accept.  Choosing to end your pet's life is so much worse than having him pass away peacefully in his sleep.  Yet, at the same time, I feel like it's a pet parent's responsibility to do what is in the best interest of the pet - above the parent's wishes.  How do you decide when is the right time?  How do you know when a pet's suffering is greater than his will to live?  How do you willingly agree to let someone kill your pet.  Because you love him and you want his to not hurt.  

About a year and a half ago, we euthanized our other cat, The Fuzz.  It was one of the most heart wrenching experiences of my whole life.  I didn't want to ever experience it again.  Yet here we are, facing the prospect of euthanasia.  As difficult as it was to watch our other two cats - Tiki Tee and Chester - both pass away, euthanasia is worse on the soul.  But, I wouldn't trade this feeling for not having pets.  With great love comes great responsibility.