Mr. Tumnus the coolest cat
Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to share with you all about my cat Mr. Tumnus, who I lost this week to cancer. He was the coolest cat I've ever had, and the interesting story is I didn't go pick him out; he found me. The name was picked by my sister in law and is from Narnia.
Shortly after moving into my new home, I noticed this cool cat roaming around the neighborhood. I thought for sure he had to belong to someone. This was probably around 6 or so years ago. Anyways, he was super friendly and visited everyone but he had no collar. I wanted to let him in the house but he was spraying everywhere marking his territory.
One day, my camera caught a mama cat carrying something in her mouth into my backyard, and following her was the same cool cat. Long story short, they both brought the whole litter of kittens into my yard, and my wife and I ended up making sure they had food and essentials.
Once the kittens were old enough, I looked into TNR and ended up renting traps and got the whole family fixed. None of them were chipped and appeared to be strays. I ended up keeping two of the kittens and let the mom and dad be back outside.
After that, Mr. Tumnus and Mama seemed to want to hang out around my yard most of the time, and my sweet Tummy boy seemed to have stopped spraying. So I ended up making them my cats, put collars on them, and took them down to the vet for checkups and whatever shots they needed.
Unfortunately Mr. Tumnus initial vet visit came back as him having FIV so I chose to make him an inside cat and hope for the best. He immediately loved it but he wanted to still have outside time so I ended up trying to make compromises by turning my garage into a cat village and putting some cat houses in my backyard.
He loved his life and loved spending time with Mama in the backyard. I tried to bring the Mama cat in but she hated it so she remained an outside cat and still lives in my yard to this day.
Mr. Tumnus was loved very much. He had all the best food a cat could ask for, plenty of toys, cat trees, and even some outside time a few days a week.
Unfortunately his FIV started giving him trouble after a year or two. He had bad dental issues and some kind of auto immune issue with his own antibodies attacking his gums. He had several dental treatments and I did everything to give him the best quality of life.
He also always slept with me at night and loved to cuddle up and sleep right at my side. He was like a fluffy teddy bear sleeping with me.
Last month I noticed he was starting to lose weight and I could feel his spine more. He wasn't showing his usual signs of dental issues so I started paying close attention and it did seem like he wasn't eating as much as usual so I scheduled a vet appointment.
The vet did find that some more teeth were bad again and we scheduled for him to get more dental work. His blood work showed that he might also be fighting an infection so we put him on antibiotics. Unfortunately a few days before his scheduled appointment, he suddenly got way worse. I knew something had to be more wrong so I took him down again for a same day emergency visit. This time the blood work was a night and day difference. Red cells were suddenly low and white cells doubled from the visit just two weeks prior.
It's scary when I think about it, how fast things progressed. Anyways, the vet did an ultrasound and found a large mass. Everything together was basically showing a fast rapidly progressing cancer and so I made the decision to let him rest and go to Heaven.
I don't know how old he actually was but my guess is somewhere between 7 and 10 human years. He had to at least already be a year old by the time he found me.
It's still hard without him. I miss him every day. I try to tell myself I did the right thing. I could have had them attempt surgeries and chemo but with having FIV and already being so weak, I thought I better just let him go.
I know he loved his life and loved me, and I loved him like my own child.
Until we meet again my friend.
