In Memoriam: Fuzzface

I had my first kitty (not counting the one I had for a few weeks as a kid) put to sleep today. She had been sick for a month or two, and last month I took her to the vet, where I got some antibiotics, de-wormer, and special food for her. She was doing better for a while after that, but then she stopped eating and drinking again. She lost almost two pounds since a month ago... she was down to about 6 pounds, and so bony that she barely felt like a cat.

She was very jaundiced, and from blood work the vet determined that it could have been one of several things - FIV, FeLV, FIP (which is what he thought it probably was), cancer, or something else I can't remember. None of them were things that really had any cure or viable treatment, and the cost for more tests to determine which one she had would have been somewhere between $600 and $1100, without any real chance of it being something that was curable. So the best thing for both her and me was for me to have her put down.

I cried more than I thought I would, holding her and telling her I loved her, and that I was sorry for all the mistakes I'd made early in having her, when I was mean to her and so on. I held her in my arms when the vet injected her with the anesthetic, and kissed her on the top of her head right before her heart stopped and she went limp. I'm glad I decided to be there, instead of letting them do it with me out of the room.

The whole visit today cost $264... I'd have liked to find out what she had, afterwards, but that would have been another $100 - $170, and I trusted the vet's instinct that it was probably FIP. I could also have saved $77 if I'd taken her home with me instead of having her cremated... but that would have meant throwing her in the dumpster, which would have been really awful. Not to mention the whole bringing her home in a bag or a box part of it.

So, that's it, I guess. The vet was really surprised this could have happened at her age (she was only five years old), but apparently this sort of thing does rarely happen. I came out to charge my phone to call people when I was still in the middle of deciding what I was going to do, only to find my battery had died from my brake lights being stuck on... again. (This happened a few days ago, after being supposedly fixed by the dealership several months ago... I'm taking it to a different dealership from now on.) That, along with the fact that my card was declined by the vet's office - long story, the money that's in there will clear tomorrow so I'm going back there to pay - made this one hell of a day.

But I've been surprisingly okay about it all. I think this means I've made some progress with accepting that life can be unpredictable and difficult sometimes, and that all I can change about that fact is my reaction to it.

Fuzzy, baby, I'll miss you and I'll always love you. You saw me through some very difficult times, and I did my best to take good care of you, even though I did sometimes fail. Thank you for being in my life, even so briefly.

My thanks also to all my friends who helped to take care of her at various times, especially Maggie, Rena, Lara, Connor and Rigel.