Worst Week of Our Lives
My boyfriend and I have been trying so so hard to make a family for ourselves for years. We both love dogs and cats, and to me a pet to makes us a family.
We got a kitten 2 years ago, he was happy and healthy and we were so proud of him we wanted him to have a sibling so he could learn from another cat and have a playmate. We found a sister for him after he had grown a bit, exactly the same age (6 months both of them, we had been reading on the best match for kittens). We did the Jackson Galaxy method and separated them for a while so they had time to bond. They liked eachother. Things were going great.
My boyfriend took them to the vet and the girl was diagnosed with FeLV and we were told we needed to part with one of them to keep them healthy. We gave the boy to my boyfriend's parents. They were happy to take him but we missed him all the same. We always said if anything were to happen we would take the first kitten we got but we didn't and his parents didn't want to deal with the emotional damage of a sick cat.
Time passed and we were glad to have given the boy to his parents. They were happy, we were happy given the circumstances and our girl meant the world to us. She reached her first birthday when we were told it was unlikely. We planned her second birthday all year. It was important to us. She took a dive last week. We paid $5,000 for a 2 night overnight stay and blood transfusions because her body was destroying her platelets. We spoke in hindsight and we would have spent our entire emergency fund on her had anything been possible. The vets found 5 tumors and diagnosed her with stage 5 lymphoma. We had to put her down.
My boyfriend and I are not good with grief. We googled and asked our vet about the amount of time FeLV lives in a home. They said 48 hours. We waited 72 hours. I may be the issue in that I move on too fast with grief. I got our first cat eithin two days of my childhood dog passing because I couldn't deal with the pain in my heart and needed a distraction. Those cats were so important to me, they were never just a distraction.
I was on a desperate search for something to make things right, they had gone so wrong. The world had been cruel to us. I thought that with the luck we had things couldn't possibly be worse. I found two kittens on the shelter website. They looked like the two babies we lost. I sent them to my boyfriend and we were off to get them.
We got them, they were normal for the first 24 hours then took a dip the second. My boyfriend told me I was pestering them too much and they were trying to settle in (understandably. I was very worried from having had a chronically ill cat and he mentioned that to me). We gave them some space. This morning after 24 hours I checked the tent we made for them with blankets, I checked the smart feeder video and they hadn't touched it so I took them to the emergency vet. They both seemed okay but I was wrong. I even knew my Uber driver and the cats were sitting up so I opened the box for him to pet them. (I was worried something horrible would happen from my last vet visit and I didn't know if I could drive myself home if something bad happened and I was crying like that again.)
The babies were triaged for low heartrate and temperature. In the end they guessed they had neural FIP. The first baby was put down in my arms from a heartattack which I wasn't expecting. It was really hard because we didn't have any time with them. The second seemed to be going from the same cause and she was put down too today.
I just feel cursed by god I guess. 3 euthanizations in 1 week I wasn't built for this. I have done research and maybe I was naive to think that things would go right a second time kittens are so fragile. But I feel awful all the same. What is worse is I felt that I was just reliving my cat's death 2 more times. The kittens died and I barely got to know them though I took care of them the best I could. But the paperwork. The overnight medical. The hope that you want to feel so badly but that feeling feels like it could lead to being hurt again was all there. I just feel numb to everything now. Hoping feels cursed right now when I think something may go right it goes wrong.