I know that I said I was on a hiatus, but I felt like I needed to make an exception for this.
About 2 months ago, we noticed that Baby was not grooming herself as well. We figure that at the age of 14, she likely could not reach places as well as she once could and contributed it to age and arthritis. We gave her a bath, cut out a couple mats of fur, gave her a good brushing, and started supplementing her diet with wet food and fish oil to help her coat.
Things were getting better for a while. Her coat was looking great, and she was now eating wet food (which she had never been given before) once a day to help put a little weight on her. She was also eating dry food, which I have in an auto feeder, whenever she wanted.
About a month ago, she stopped eating the dry food completely. We thought (since she has a tendency to be a bit of a princess) that she was getting spoiled on wet food, and knew if she held out that she would get some. We of course gave in, because no matter how fussy she was being, she it a small cat and needs to eat. She now was eating only wet food.
We slowly started noticing that she would get super excited every time Brian and I went into the kitchen to pour a glass of water, and would even jump up on the coffee table and try to steal water from our glasses, even though she had plenty of her own water. Once again, we thought she had been spoiled on the good water and only wanted the nice filtered stuff.
About two weeks ago, we started noticing just how much water she was drinking. She was drinking a TON of water. EVERY SINGLE TIME we got water, she wanted it. And this is on top of drinking the water that was already out for her.
About a week ago, she stopped eating food all together. She would eat little pieces of chicken or tuna here and there, but refused all forms of cat food.
This is when we took her into the vet. No food is definitely a sign that something is wrong. I started getting very emotional the night before, because part of me knew that I was going to find out something I did not want to know the next day.
Unfortunately, my suspicion was right. on Saturday, we found out that Baby is suffering from CRF (chronic renal failure). It basically means that her kidneys are not functioning well and the condition will eventually kill her. The vet remained fairly optimistic and said that while it is in fact terminal, some cats live another couple years with the appropriate treatments. We continued to hang on to these lofty hopes, and came home with all of the things that he vet suggested.
For the last 3 days, we have been injecting her with fluids twice a day. This seemed really daunting at first and I had no idea how I was ever going to be able to stick a needle in my cat and fill her up with fluids. However, it has now become less of a big deal, and believe it or not, she is pretty tolerant of it. The idea is that even though she is drinking a ton of water, her kidneys are not processing it, and she has become very dehydrated. The goal of the aggressive fluid treatment is to get her hydrated and feeling better.
They also sent us home with a liquid phosphate binder to help bind up the toxins in her body so they may be excreted, and some pepcid to help her tummy feel better enough to eat again. These have been a little more difficult as she is not eating well and it is difficult to mix in food. Giving her these has been pretty hit and miss. Some times, it's super easy, an others it is impossible.
The first day after she was diagnosed, she looked miserable. She jumped up on my bed on the warm fresh laundry and slept for nearly 24 hours. I was miserable too. I think I cried that whole first day.
The next day (yesterday) she really started to rally. She started walking around, jumping on things, folowing me around, and even ate some tuna fish. We started feeling pretty confident that even though this was terminal, maybe she would be one of those cats that could last another couple years.
Today, while her behavior is still pretty promising, her apetite is totally gone. She has eaten nothing but the juice from a can of tuna. They are giving her a perscription that I will pick up tomorrow for an appetite stimulant. We have made the decision that if we give her the stimulant and her appetite increases, and her behavior still seems good, we will continue to try the treatments. At that point, her quality of life would be pretty good.
If she does not start eating in the next couple of days, the next step would be hospitalization for super aggressive treatment. We have decided that we are not willing to take it this far. It's not that we are not willing to pay for 3-4 days of hospitalization, but it is that we are not willing to put her through that kind of torture. Cats don't have the cognitive ability to know that we are doing it to help them. As far as she is concerned, it would be the worst thing that has ever happened to her, and even if it did work, it is really only prolonging the inevitable.
Am I ready to let her go? No way. However, I don't want to put her through that kind of torture simply because I can't get over my selfish inability to let her go.
So we've decided that if her apetite comes back with the stimulant and we can get her eating on her own, then it will be a sign that she isn't ready to leave just yet. However, we realize that with how incredibly advanced her condition is, there is probably only a 20% chance that this will happen, and we are trying to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we may need to make the choice to put her down as early as this weekend.
It has been a very hard and emotional few days for me. I started my new palcement, and also started school again. I am working 2 jobs AND I am a full time student, which means I'm pulling 12-14 hour work days on some days. Brian has been coming over at 7am every morning to help me with her fluids, and again when I get home at night. I want from thinking she was going to die on Sat &Sun to thinking there was hope on Monday, and to a realization this is highly unlikely today. It feels like I'm on a roller coaster this week. It is so hard not to let this affect me as I'm trying to train at my new job.
This is going to be a very difficult process for me. She is my Baby. We adopted her when I was 13 year old, which is half of my life. She was so skiddish and scared when we got her and over time she started to bond with me, and began to trust me. Since then, she has gone with me everywhere I go, and she has always very much been MY baby.
11 years later when I started dating Brian shedecided that she was going to open up to him as much as she has opened up to me. She started wanting to cuddle in his lap and even gave him little affectionate nips on the chin which up until then, she had only ever done to me. While he hasn't had as much time on this earth with her as I have, he to has bonded very closely to her, and is taking this very hard.
I've been thinking more and more about the euthanaisia process in the past couple of days. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that it is my responsibility to decide when to let her go. Furthermore, I am having a hard time understanding how people can sit in the room with their pets and be with them as they die. I guess I understand that some people need this for closure, but I can't even fathom the idea of watching my baby die.
Anyway, that's where I'm at with things now. I know that this has been an entirely depressing blog post, but I feel like I needed to do it to get all my thoughts and emotions out into a different space other than where they have been lurking and festering in my head.
This next week is going to be a very difficult week, and we are trying to prepare ourselves for the most likely outcome in the next few days.
