I'm afraid it may be time to take the Ancient Cat for his last visit to the vet. I just wish he'd give me a clear sign. Yesterday I was pleased to see he ate an entire small can of cat food, and ate it with gusto. Last night, I went in to bed and found a huge pool of vomit in his usual sleeping spot near the vertical blinds, and at 10:30 last night I was on my hands and knees with the carpet cleaner, trying not to cry with frustration and disgust. He refused breakfast, drank some water and is basking in his sunbeam again.
It's so hard to tell with cats. He's alert and sociable, this morning he jumped on the bed to get petted, etc., and he didn't even scream me awake at 4:30, he just quietly walked up beside me and started nudging me to get up and give him the food he refused to eat. But something must be wrong - I tried three different flavors of cat food and he refused them all.
It seems like every time I say this is the end, he revives and cleans his dish and acts perfectly fine, but last night really made me wonder for the eleventeenth time whether I might be out of my mind and should just do it already.
I realize that I have some sort of crazy double-triple-reverse-backflip guilt going here. I don't like the cat much - no, that's not true, I'm fond of the old man. He can be very sweet when he wants to be, and we've been together a very long time - he's been part of the household since 1996! But he is very high maintenance. I don't want to think of how much rejected cat food I've thrown away in the last 10 months, as I try every brand and flavor to find something he'll eat. He'll eat it until I think we've found a winner and buy that brand/flavor again, when it suddenly falls out of favor. I'm pretty sure I could pay for my desperately needed eye exam, new contact lenses and probably glasses too, with what I spent on rejected and thrown away cat food in the last 10 months.
I have to stand guard over him when he eats (rather, when he licks at the food, takes two bites and walks away) because Murphy is always ready to sneak in and eat the cat food, and the fat content in it is enough to make him terribly ill, which in his case can be suddenly life threatening. Mealtime is tense, as I cannot do anything except stand there while this skinny old beast nibbles and picks, ever, ever so slowly, because Murphy's fast as lighting and will move in and snarf up bites of that delicious and dangerous forbidden food if I so much as turn my head away. Feeding Higgins in another room is not a solution - I tried that when he first moved in, he wants me to stand there with him while he eats, and he wants to eat in the kitchen, and...no, I'm not kidding, it's that crazy. I tried feeding him on the balcony, he stood there and cried. I tried closing him in the bathroom to eat undisturbed, he cried. He wants me to watch him eat. Or not eat, as is more often the case.
Then there's the vomiting at random (often in the middle of the dining room table, or on my work papers, and once, narrowly missing my work laptop) the screaming in the middle of the night, and on and on, and I'm not sure whether I am an awful person who wants to put the cat down because it's so hard to live with him, or if I'm being perversely crazy and guilt-ridden and keeping a sick cat alive longer than I should because I don't want to feel the guilt of wondering whether I put him to sleep mostly because I don't like him. And the vet was no help - she didn't see anything wrong with him other than extreme old age, and I honestly can't afford to spend money on expensive medical tests on a 17 or 21 or God Knows How Many Years Old Cat. I made that mistake with Boris, and spent over a thousand dollars on a cat in kidney failure only to have to put him to sleep anyway. I at least have enough sense to NOT do that this time.
So I'm thinking it over today. I'll continue to watch the cat for signals of...something more definite than these endless mixed signals. But I think the time is drawing near.
Update: He has diarrhea (in the litterbox, thank GOD), and threw up again. He's demanding food, though. We'll see if he eats it.
Update #2: He just cleaned his plate. First meal in 24 hours. We'll see if it stays down.
It's even more difficult to check for some signs because felines have the tendency to be a representative of the moody side of humans. It's why it's hard to capture the right information you want to learn.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar situation with an ancient cat of my own, especially the guilt part. My kids had grown up with the cat. They were long gone out of the house, though, when he started behaving much like yours. Only he was more of a sprayer than a vomiter. He didn't eat either and he became quite intolerable at the end. Unlike your vet, mine was quite emphatic that it was time for the cat to go (I ended up feeling guilty about THAT--that I'd waited too long too do it. oof)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, for what it's worth, I vote for your health over the cat. You've gone way above the call of duty in caring for him. You need a break.
It was such an ordeal for me, that I won't ever have a cat again (I'm 52 and have had a cat in the house almost my whole life.) That's probably not helpful. Sorry. Just to illustrate that I think I understand what you're going through. It really is draining, and so depressing to keep cleaning up those messes in your home.
Janet - I won't ever have a cat again either. I like other people's cats just fine, I'm not a cat hater by any means, but I'm a dog person. Even though as I type this Murphy is beside me bitching for a walk...gotta go. :-)
ReplyDeleteIs there another vet in that practice that you can talk to? When I put my other dog down, the vet that had taken care of her since she was a tiny puppy kind of advised me to do it. He didn't push me in any way, but he let me know that there wasn't any real quality of life there and that there wasn't any hope that Teddie would ever recover. I had to ask myself if I was keeping her alive for my sake or her own.
ReplyDeleteShe's been gone 12 years, and I still miss her, even with another dog. She was just very loving and pleasant to have around, kind of like your Sophie.
Brenda
I know every vet in the practice at this point (and joke about wanting my own parking space). I have total faith in them, they are awesome, and I'm not looking for someone to order me to do it. I'm just wishing the damn cat would stop being so chipper in between his bouts of fixin' to die.
ReplyDeleteWhen Teddie got older, every time she got sick, I would ask the vet if she was going to get better. He would always confidently say, "Sure Brenda, she's going to be fine." The last week she was sick, I took her to the vet several times, and he would run blood work on her, and it came back fine, so he kept reassuring me that she was going to recover and get well. Finally, she got so sick on a Saturday night that I had to take her to an emergency clinic, and they x-rayed her. Every organ in her body was screwed up---she had an enlarged heart, kidney stones, an enlarged spongey liver and fluid in her lungs. I asked the emergency room vet why my vet had missed all this, and she told me that the treatment protocol would be to run blood work first. Since I was telling her that that had been done by my regular vet and it all came back fine but the dog was continuing to get sicker and sicker, she went to the next step and did the x-rays. She explained to me that it is unusual, but sometimes a dog can have pretty advanced liver/kidney disease, but as long as they are functioning well enough keep their blood work normal, it goes undetected. She gave Teddie some IV fluids and got her through the night, and I took her into my regular vet in the morning. The emergency vet also sent Teddie's x-rays to him, and he confirmed that she was too sick to come through. I understand what you are saying about not wanting to waste $1000 on a cat that isn't going to make it anyway, but in Teddie's case, those x-rays settled it. The emergency vet also explained to me that vets get attached to both the animals and their people, and it is hard for them to look you in the eye after however many years and tell you that there is nothing more they can do. My regular vet is a pretty gentle-hearted guy, and I'm sure he knows me well enough to know how hard I was going to take it.
ReplyDeleteBrenda