My Cat Died Yesterday
Spent my 4th of July rushing my cat to an emergency vet that was like 30 minutes away due to almost everywhere being closed for holiday. I had given him dinner around 11:30 pm and went to stay the night at my bf’s place. I was back home by 10:50 am to given him breakfast on his usual schedule. He was just fine when I left for the night….but when I returned he was panting and laying on the ground in a puddle of his own piss. He had lost the use of his back legs. It must have happened in his favorite cardboard box bc he chewed a hole through it…he must have been unable to back out of it in that state. I feel fucking horrible. I wasn’t home, I had no idea how long he was like that.
The vet told me there was nothing I could have done, that being there to witness his legs giving out wouldn’t have changed anything. He got a blood clot and it wasn’t treatable, it was blocking off blood flow to his back end. He had a genetic heart condition but I thought it was managed. His last vet appointment they told me it wasn’t progressing! That he may be able to live a long and happy life with medication until he goes into heart failure….well. No. He got a random clot at only 7 years old.
He was the sweetest cat, so gentle and so loving. Why him? The vet told me that if there was anything she thought we could do to fix it and give him a good quality of life she would do it, but in that situation she said she didn’t believe this to be true. I could try to treat if I wanted but the clot was quite large and unlikely to dislodge or dissolve…and even if it did, his heart condition means if he could get one clot, he’s now at high risk for more of them. Treatment would involve days to weeks of hospitalization, lifelong pain meds and blood thinners in addition to his other heart medication, and potential permanent paralysis. She said most cats who undergo treatment only live another year at most….And it’s one of the most painful things a cat can go through. He was just screaming and screaming and screaming on the drive to the vet. It was so horrible. I had to make the choice to end his life. And while it was peaceful, I can’t stop thinking what else could I have done.
Could I have prevented this. What if I was home earlier or never left that night. What if I noticed his heart condition was worsening before this happened? There were no signs. The vet said it’s random with cats who have this condition and often there aren’t signs until a horrible event like this. That I was lucky another vet even caught it and got him on meds, that he was unlikely to have even lived this long without what I had been giving him. I’m just torn to shreds, I’ve never lost a pet before and I feel like a part of me died with him. He was also bonded with my other cat and I’m devastated now to leave him alone. He seems okay so far but fuck this has just been the worst event of my life.