One of our cats is dying. Cancer. It won't be long now. Just a matter of days. It has absolutely crushed me. I'm 64 years old and find myself tearing up all day long. I'm frustrated..and heart broken. I had a feeling a few months back that 2023 was not going to be a good year. I tend to focus on the negative anyway, but I was really down. We noticed something was off with him earlier in the year and took him to the vet and the exam didn't reveal anything. Then at the start of March we noticed he wasn't eating with his usual gusto and took him back and that's when they said it was cancer. They gave us a couple of treatment options, including an intense chemo option, but we elected not to to that. We have been giving him chemo pills and fluids. His appetite has gotten less and less each day. We still see a spark of life in him. He loves to go outside so we've been letting him wander around. But I sit and watch him and just start crying.
We got him by accident. My daughter was a student at Gettysburg College, an environmental sciences major, and one day when she was out on the battlefield doing whatever environmental science majors do, when this scruffy cat walked up to them (she was with two others). They weren't near any houses so it was either a runaway or a dump job (and I hope God damns and and every one who abandons their pet). They took it back to the Science house and put up flyers to see if they could find the owner. They took it to the vet, got it checked out and cleaned up (and neutered), but there was no response. The cat lived in their "science house" and gradually it became our daughter's. She announced that she was bringing him home for Thanksgiving. Now we had never had a cat, so this was a challenge. And we DO have a dog, so that added to it. During the time he was home he stayed in her room (a nice sized room) and did the same over Christmas break. (Oh..since they found him on the battlefield they looked up the names of civil war generals who fought at gettysburg and gave him the regal name Leopoldo Von Gilsa, which was shortened to Gil (or Gilbert, when we were being silly). She graduated in May and announced she was taking a job that had housing that wouldn't permit a pet. So Gil became "ours". It also became clear that he couldn't stay in the bedroom the whole time, so we took a deep breath and let him have the run of the house. To our amazement, he and Sadie got along quite well. There was only one dust up the entire time we had him, over a piece of Salmon, but never again. Sadie is a very gentle soul and is not food aggressive, so it wasn't unusual to see Gil move up to the side of Sadie's food bowl and start to eat her food.
With Gil around I started to learn about cat behavior. I loved finding him in different places in the house. In boxes, on shelves, on the radiator covers, tv stands, tables. When my daughter had him at the Science House she would post pictures of him with the caption "He is EVERYWHERE" and i soon learned why. It was always something new. He became an indoor cat with us, although he desperately wanted to go outside. We would only let him out on rare occasions and never on his own, one of us was always with him. We had to be careful about the front and back doors too because he would look for opportunities to escape to the great outdoors and we couldn't have that. He loved chicken, and i can picture him sitting next Sadie patiently waiting for my wife to finish chopping it up for them. Sometimes when Sadie was standing he would rub up against her. It was always fun to watch.
Other than the medical issue I will mention shortly, he had to deal with only two indignities in his life. The first was the "lion cut" we would get him twice a year. His fur grew fast so we had to cut it, and the groomer would give him a "lion" shape with a big poofy tail. I loved watching him swish that tail. The other was that he had to share the house with other cats when we started to get into fostering. Our first foster attempt was a "failure", in that we kept the cats. So now he had two other felines he had to share with. It wasn't an issue, although I never saw the affection with them that I saw her give Sadie. Also, we keep the fosters in our back room, which he used to like to go to look out the back window. He would go back there occasionally, but 90% of the fosters absolutely adored him and would crowd around him and he didn't have the patience for that.
We did have a major medical scare with him 3 years ago. He wasn't able to urinate and it required a surgery. It worked, and he was fine, and I have zero regrets doing it (I'd do it again without a second thought). It did force a change in his diet in that he now had to have special urinary track food. Gil was always highly food motivated so that sucked for him. That said, he never missed a chance to poach some of Sadie's food, or the other cats' food, or the kitten food for the fosters. He was quite a devil.
It is one of the weaknesses of my internal make up that I am super emotional about my pets. I always have been. When there is an issue, I shut down. I stop eating. I had a doctor appointment in December and I weighted 192 pounds. We found out about the cancer in early March. I had another doc appointment in mid-March and i was down to 185. The doc asked what was going on and i made up some crap about year end being very stressful. I'm down to 178 now. I'm a mess. Nothing matters. My friend keeps wanting me to get involved in a couple of things and I can't be bothered with any of it. I'm a mess. A complete mess.
I couldn't have asked for a better first cat. I am going to miss him so much. I am going to miss finding him in all those places. I am going to miss watching him move next to Sadie. I'm going to miss his fast waddle when it was dinner time and he hustled to the side room where we fed him. I'm going to miss him coming in when i'm working at home and laying on top of my laptop while I work. I am going to miss the pain (yes, the pain) of his claw when he would scratch my leg looking for attention. I'm going to miss him sweeping things off the table he happened to be sitting on when he wanted attention.
I know it's a two way street. I hope I'm not being too arrogant to state that he hit the lottery when he walked up to my daughter that day. From a life with an unknown future, he was taken in, cleaned up, brought into a safe home, fed, and loved. He was never alone, as there was always another animal or two or three around when we went out. His medical issue was addressed and taken care of (plus he needed a tooth pulled, which we took care of). He was loved. So much. He always will be loved. He'll always be in our hearts and memories. We will never forget him. And I am heart broken.
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