black-and-white cat – Page 29

Don’t Mind if I Do

I was sitting on the floor this afternoon when Boo came over unprompted and crawled into my lap and fell asleep. I wasn’t prepared for it and not sitting in a comfortable place, but I let him stay as long as he wanted. He’s still pretty skittish but the transformation he’s undergone in a few days is incredible. There’s a downside to this. I’ve been sleeping in the bedroom so Sam can keep his routine of sleeping on me, while my wife is sleeping in the basement with Boo, who kept her up most of the night showering her with affection.

Two Days Today

Two days ago Boo trembled in fear at our introduction. Today he curled up beside me and slept with his head on my chest.

Remarkable.

Say Hello to Boo

Meet the newest member of our family, a seven-month-old kitten named Boo.

I thought it most likely we would adopt one of the many impossibly cute two-month-old kittens at the Oregon Humane Society as it seemed like it would have the best odds of integrating with our other pets. But my wife found an older kitten named Bronco who had been at the shelter for a couple of weeks but was struggling with life there. His previous owners said he got along with cats and dogs so she went down Wednesday evening before OHS closed to meet him. He was extremely shy and shook like a leaf when she met him, but eventually he warmed up to her and she wanted me to meet him.

OHS was closed on Thursday for the 4th of July but we went down first thing on Friday morning. He shook at first too when I met him but then warmed up much quicker than I expected and soon was walking in and out of my lap and purring loudly.

It was settled. He was coming home with us, and getting a new name.

I didn’t try for pictures yesterday since it was such a stressful day for the poor little fellow but in the meantime his confidence has grown by leaps and bounds. Plus a new camera arrived this morning that is much less obtrusive and he was happy enough to be my first test subject, pausing for a brief moment while playing in a paper bag.

As with Scout, Boo takes his name from Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”. At the end of the book, Boo and Scout share a moment that is one of my favorites in all of literature. Our Boo and Scout never met as Boo joins us five months after her death. Their coloring is similar but that wasn’t a deliberate choice (that’s Boo above, Scout at a similar age below). The timing worked out nicely as a few weeks ago the similarity would have been too much for me to bear.

So welcome, Boo. You’re home now.

Twelve

Scout would have turned twelve today.

This was my view these past twelve years as I edited nearly every image you’ve seen here, Scout in her heated bed, sitting right in front of me. Usually she’d be curled up in the bed but sometimes she’d watch me as I worked. She was a tiny little thing so if she was laying down she had to stick her head up to reach the top. It didn’t look too comfortable but it always made me laugh.

Oh Scout, you were the best, and I miss you so.

Treasures

We weren’t sure how Templeton would react to having another cat in the house when we brought Scout home in May of 2001, but thankfully he accepted her quickly. She idolized him and snuggled with him every chance she got, and he’d often lick her head and sometimes give her an entire bath. The two friends have been reunited again. As we did with Templeton, we had Scout cremated and my wife picked up her remains on Saturday. Scout’s ashes now join Templeton’s up on the mantle.

I took this picture of Templeton and Scout snuggling in the window seat of our old house in November of 2001. Nearly everything in the picture has changed since then. Both Templeton and Scout have since passed away. We moved half a year after the picture was taken and I no longer have that wonderful window seat where the cats and I so often snuggled. The pad that lined the seat, just visible in the lower left corner, was made by my mother-in-law who passed away a few years ago.

The blanket though, made by my wife for me years ago, remains. Time has taken its toll and there are tears in the fabric, but it remains the blanket I use every day in my office. It links all the pets together, as all past and present spent many hours sleeping and snuggling on it. I took it into the bedroom when Scout and I stayed there at the end of her life, she spent her last day on it as she slept on my chest.

There are more valuable blankets, but none more treasured.

Before the Warm Beds, There Was a Pillow

Another picture of Scout at five months old in 2001. Even as a kitten Scout often wanted to nap near me, which in general I found adorable, but when I was working at the computer she would sit directly on my right hand and try to sleep, meaning I couldn’t so much as move my hand without waking her. We hadn’t yet discovered the wonder of heated cat beds, but I came up with a compromise that she accepted: I kept a pillow beside my keyboard that she could sleep on.

Templeton started using it as well, but once the cats got hooked on the heated beds, there was no more need for the pillow. I did keep the beds right beside me though, right up through today, and part of remodeling my office meant making sure there was space for three heated beds near my desk and couch.

Tidy

Scout at 5 months old in 2001, she had been with us for a few months at this point. She sat and slept in very tidy positions, a big change compared to our other cat Templeton.

Scout at the End

These are some of the last pictures I took of Scout, taken around noon on the day she died. At this point she had already regressed quite a bit from the energetic cat I brought home after her blood transfusion, but we were still a couple of hours away from getting the news that she most likely had cancer of the spleen and would not recover. At times she seemed fine, just quiet, but I knew her so well that even then I knew she was slowly fading. Other times, as in the second picture, she even looked miserable and was only comforted when I set her on top of me.

For the rest of the afternoon, I put my camera and laptop away and just lay on my back and let her sleep on my chest, listening to her breathing and purring to try to determine when it was time to say goodbye. Whenever I got up to go the bathroom or check on the other pets, I lost my composure and broke down in tears. But when I was back in the room with her, a complete calm came over me, which kept my breathing nice and gentle as she relaxed on my chest, rising and falling with each breath I took.

If I could have been guaranteed she would die peacefully, I would have kept her there to the end. But I was afraid she’d die a painful death, or worse that she would suffer a painful seizure or organ failure and still be alive and in pain. I wanted the pain to be mine, not hers, and wanted her to be euthanized.

The only question was when.

When the specialist vet called with the news that Scout likely wouldn’t recover, she said that she shouldn’t have lost that much energy that quickly after her transfusion if it had been any of the treatable causes of anemia. Scout was still eating which she thought was a good sign, she thought she’d stop as she got weaker and agreed that would be a good sign it was time to euthanize her.

But Scout, bless her heart, kept eating right up until the end. She couldn’t eat much at once, I suppose the effort must have tired her, so I kept the bowl beside me and fed her a piece at a time as she relaxed on me. She wasn’t as eager to drink which worried me more, but then I remembered that throughout her life she had tried to drink out of my water glass even when there was water in her bowl, so I brought up a full glass and she drank from that.

I thought Scout would let me know it was time by finding a place to hide, much like she had when she first fell ill, and like our cat Templeton did when it was his time. Since we were isolated in the bedroom I thought she’d hide under the bed, or at least under the covers, but as the afternoon wore on I realized she wanted to stay with me until the end. If I had to get up she went to the spot she had chosen as her spot, the place where I lay my head when I sleep every night.

So close was our bond.

Late in the afternoon when she snuggled up to my face and began purring, she was so close I couldn’t see anything but her face, hear nothing but her purrs, and wanted that moment to last forever. But I could see how pale her nose was getting, a sign the oxygen levels in her blood were dropping low. My wife soon called when she got off work and we agreed to meet at our local vet which was not only close by but also where we were most comfortable and knew the staff, and they knew Scout.

It was time.

It broke my heart to break up that moment, Scout purring so happily in my face, as I knew it would be our last happy moment together. But I didn’t want to risk waiting too long, so I gently eased her off my chest and set her on the bed. Her cat carrier was stashed just outside the bedroom and in the time it took me to take a few steps to the door and turn around again, she had eaten a few bites and was back in her spot at my pillow.

She looked so miserable, I knew it was time.

When she didn’t fight me going in the carrier, I knew it then too. After the short ride to the vet, she perked up a bit at first when we were in the private room, but she stayed quiet, and soon just tried to bury her head in my chest. Our vet came in and gave her a shot with both a painkiller and sedative and Scout soon fell asleep awkwardly on my lap. I couldn’t see her face but we knew she was asleep because she was snoring. Scout was a quiet and small cat, and when she snored sometimes as she slept, her snore was quiet and small too. It always brought a smile to my face, and there she was, about to die, making me smile through my tears.

The vet took her away to insert a catheter, saying it usually took about five minutes, but it took a little longer with Scout because her blood pressure was so low from her anemia. I didn’t have any doubts that we were doing the right thing, but I was thankful we hadn’t waited any longer.

She brought Scout back in sound asleep and curled up in a padded wicker basket, a lovely gesture as I could set her in my lap and still have her look as peaceful as if she had been curled up in her beloved heated bed. The vet gave her two quick injections through the catheter and almost immediately Scout breathed her last.

They were willing to let us stay as long as we wanted, and I would have thought I’d want to stay for a little while. But when I saw her stop breathing, I just stroked her lovely soft fur a few times — she kept herself groomed right up to the end — and I was ready for them to take her. Scout had prepared me to say goodbye all day long and now that she was gone, I let her go.

It was time.

Scout 2001-2013

About twelve years ago, a feral cat had a litter of kittens underneath the house of a friend of ours. The mother disappeared not long after so our friend hand-raised the kittens. When they were old enough to be adopted out, we were offered an adorable little black-and-white kitten.

We named her Scout.

As we left their house my wife drove while I sat in the back seat beside Scout in her cat carrier, but she kept mewing and mewing so I let her out into my lap. She promptly started climbing up my shirt and I discovered that being little doesn’t mean kitten claws aren’t sharp. When we got home, at first we kept her in a bathroom so she and our cat Templeton could gradually get to know one another. Scout hated being isolated in there, so to comfort her I’d lay on the hard floor and she’d curl up under my chin and fall asleep.

Even after being released into the house at large, she’d curl up under my chin at night. She soon grew too large to sleep around my neck and moved to my chest, where she’s slept every night for the last twelve years, usually with her face pointing towards my legs and her tail wrapped around my face.

A special bond formed between us that lasted throughout her life.

Earlier this week she didn’t come up to sleep on me, and when it happened the second night in a row, I knew something was wrong. She kept trying to hide places, like she was looking for a place to die, so we took her into our local vet who started a bunch of tests and determined she had a severe case of anemia, but didn’t know why.

To try and find the cause, she was transferred to another vet with round-the-clock care and more equipment for testing. Most of the early tests were encouraging in that she looked healthy apart from the anemia, but discouraging in that they couldn’t find the cause. The oxygen levels in her blood crashed to dangerous levels so she was given an emergency blood transfusion and thankfully it was successful and she recovered nicely. So nicely in fact that after they did a test for cancer in the spleen she was allowed to come home and spend the night with us. We were to give her medicines for the treatable causes of anemia since we still didn’t know the cause, while we waited on the results from her spleen test.

We got her home early yesterday evening and set her up in our bedroom, where she and I spent the next day together. At first she was back to her old self courtesy of the transfusion, which was remarkable to me since she had nearly died that morning. She snuggled up with me throughout the evening and then took her normal place on my chest throughout the night.

By morning the effects of the transfusion seemed to be wearing off and she tired more easily so I decided to give her some quiet time so she could sleep. But she wouldn’t sleep unless I lay there with her, so I climbed into bed and she curled up on my chest and we napped for a couple of hours. I got more and more worried as the day went along, as she seemed to get weaker and weaker.

In mid-afternoon the vet called with test results: she almost certainly had cancer of the spleen. They would need a second opinion from another specialist to be absolutely certain, which was going to take a couple of days, but it explained why Scout had been fading so quickly after the transfusion and why she wasn’t responding to any of the medicines she was taking.

By this point she didn’t want to move around much, so I just lay on the bed and let her sleep on my chest. I could feel her fading as time passed, even her purrs were getting weaker, softer, and harder to come by, as I stroked her soft fur as she slept. Late in the afternoon, she turned and crawled up to my face, hers right next to mine, and just purred and purred and purred. It was such a sweet and charming moment that it almost gave me second thoughts about what needed to be done.

While Scout was still purring against my face, my wife called when she was about to get off work. I let her know how weak Scout was and that I thought it was time, so she called our local vet to see if we could come in. We could, so I packed Scout into her carrier, without so much as a protest on her part, and met my wife there. We were led into a quiet, private room where Scout was euthanized.

She passed peacefully in my arms.

It was almost exactly a day from the time I brought her home after her transfusion to the time she passed away. In a strange way, my last day with Scout was also one of my favorites. I got to see her so full of life at first, just like her old self, then see her fade until we both knew it was time to say goodbye. But it was also a day full of snuggling, just the two of us, where she purred and purred and let me know how much she loved me. And I scratched her head and stroked her back and let her know how much I loved her.

And there was that last beautiful moment where we were face to face and she purred so happily. It was a great comfort to me to know what I comfort I was to her, and that even as she knew she was dying, she was where she wanted to be.

Oh Scout, how I loved you, and how I will miss you.

A Night With Scout

Scout’s emergency transfusion was successful, it not only saved her life but left her strong enough that they let us bring her home for the night, as she’ll be under much less stress here. Since we still don’t know the cause of her anemia, we don’t know how long the good effects of the transfusion will last, but we’ll evaluate her tomorrow morning and afternoon and bring her back in if she regresses.

The x-rays came back looking good, there were no obvious signs of cancer or any metal objects that might have caused internal bleeding. They took a test from her spleen this afternoon as it’s swollen a bit, it isn’t unusual with her level of anemia but they want to rule out cancer in the spleen itself. We’ll get those results back tomorrow. Depending on those results, and how she’s doing tomorrow, they may run another test to evaluate the quality of the red blood cells her bone marrow is producing (thankfully we do know it is producing them, a condition known as regenerative anemia — she’s generating red blood cells but her body is destroying them).

In the meantime she is getting medicine for two potential causes of anemia, infection and an auto-immune disorder. I’m hoping the cause is one of these two, as they are treatable to at least some degree. The infection possibility is unlikely but the easiest to treat. The auto-immune disorder would require her to take steroids for the rest of her life, ruining her shot at playing ball in the big leagues, not to mention putting her more at risk of some other diseases, but I’ll take it.

We’ve got her isolated in our bedroom for the time being to minimize her stress, I’m staying with her while my wife is sleeping downstairs with the other pets. We kept her here when she first fell ill and it helped calm her down substantially. She’s been eating and moving around nicely since we brought her home, a far cry from where we were a couple of days ago, and especially this morning.

At the moment she’s curled up on my legs, purring, about to fall asleep, her black-and-white fur gently rising and falling as she breathes. I took this picture of her fur a few days ago, I didn’t take any tonight to avoid adding stress to what has already been an exhausting day for her (and us).

It sure is good to have her home, and in good spirits. Here’s hoping she feels the same in the morning.