Cat story from my husband:
“When I was at UNCC, I was living on the third floor of our building with some friends. Whenever I let Purr-Zha out, he wouldn’t go downstairs to the outdoors like you’d expect. He’d go one floor upstairs and make a beeline for the Cipriani twins’ bedroom and lie on their bed. I swear I didn’t train him to do that. Good boy.”
I took Purr-Zha back to the vet’s office this morning, after he sneezed and blew thick ropes of saliva all over himself. They did a full body X-ray, and even I could see the large spots on his lungs that meant cancer. He’s down to six pounds, for a loss of a pound and a half over the last five months. He’s just had so many health problems that any one of them could have explained his weight loss and lethargy. I don’t blame anyone for not making this diagnosis sooner.
For the moment, he’s okay, but it’s a matter of days. After talking with the vet about what he could expect as far as the quality of his death at home versus being put to sleep at the vet’s, we’ve decided to go ahead and end his life at the vet’s. They asked us to check in on Monday and let them know what we wanted to do. So we’re spending some quality time with him here, and unless something dramatic happens one way or the other, we’ll be bringing him in early next week.
He’d been on prescription diet, but the vet gave him some commercial cat food, which he ate well. He also got fluids under the skin and some prednisone and such to help him feel better. It did help, as he managed to jump onto the couch and go to sleep. The fact that the prednisone helped him makes me wonder if maybe he isn’t arthritic as well.
We’ve been told we can stop the thyroid medication, since he has an empty stomach so much of the time and is probably upsetting his stomach more. I’m off to the grocery store to get him some cat comfort food. Needless to say, he’s also getting some major loving. If nothing else, this will be a nice last weekend for him.