Twygal - Oct 1, 1994 to April 27, 2012

Fred (Toe) - Fall 1995 to Oct 2011

Rainbow - April 7, 1994 to April 15, 2012

Twygal's last day

Twygal on Wednesday: she didn't like her trip outside

Friday morning Dr. Tammy will be helping Twygal escape her suffering. But I’m afraid she has already left the fold in part.

It has been a difficult week because Twygal has continued to eat, drink, and even play despite the growing lump on her face. However, on Wednesday she stopped eating. On Thursday she became very grumpy, refusing even to be petted. She has always been a very sensitive cat and I’ve had to tread lightly with her emotions and moods but that’s just a part of her wonderful personality.

Thursday evening she started bleeding from her mouth and nose again and she’s having even more difficulty breathing. I’m just comforted that she will still sleep on top of me in bed. That is, as long as I don’t touch her.

I worried about her last moments because she always gets very stressed when I take her to the clinic. I don’t want her passing to be so traumatic for her, though it definitely will be for me. To make her transition a little less stressful I will be giving her a light sedative before leaving home.

Though they were never friends in life perhaps Twygal will join with Bluebird and Rainbow and romp happily in heaven.

Twygal's struggle

 This is a note to the Universe: enough all ready!

Isn’t enough that I just lost Rainbow last week? Hasn’t Twygal suffered enough with her colitis trouble? Do we really need any more?

Twygal’s “lump” has been slowly growing and pushing her face out of whack. Today she won’t eat very much and has been mostly quiet all day. Last night she really got to me when she found Rainbow’s little cubbyhole and hid there for part of the night. Now, just now, she started bleeding from both her mouth and her nose.

 

When I spoke to her vet on Saturday he gave me a list of things to watch for in order to make “the decision” in other words, euthanasia. One of the things was a decrease in appetite, which is always a bad sign. Another sign is blood from her nose or mouth.

I was hoping for a good night’s sleep tonight but now I’m sure I’ll be awake all night watching Twygal and hoping the bleeding stops. And I’m afraid I’ll be calling the vet first thing in the morning.

Have any of you ever had a cat with a nasal tumor? If so, did you treat it? How did it progress and did you have to make “the decision?”

Please keep Twygal in your thoughts tonight (if you see this before morning).

Rainbow in the Sky

Rainbow

April 7, 1994 - April 15, 2012

Rainbow and Springtime

Isn’t amazing how things work out? Every spring, no matter what, the lilacs come out and every spring just as the blooms are fading along comes a rain or storm to wipe out the last vestiges of their aroma. Every spring a short window opens when we should be able to find morels, and every spring I struggle to fit into that window.

Every year people look for the robins to proclaim the arrival of spring and sometimes, like this year, they come early. I always thought their travels were related to the sun’s position but now I realize it is more the temperature that brings them north. However, we sometimes, many times, see robins in January. So perhaps we should wait until the redwing blackbirds show up in the highway ditches staking out their territory, and announcing their readiness for mates to welcome spring.

Turkey Vulture gathering - see on the fence posts?

As for me I wait until I see that first black feather friend soaring up above in search of prey to truly count the coming of spring. Turkey vultures are the true harbingers of springtime and all it means to a winter-weary world. Their funky red, wrinkled heads watch for the tiniest movement in the grasses, stoop to clearing the highways of road kill when necessary and dress the skies with their graceful ride upon the air.

Lando Calrissian

Like the elves from Middle Earth, my cats are drawn to the west it seems. Too many times I’ve seen its attraction pull them from my life. First it was Lando who wanted only to go, just go somewhere, anywhere, on his last day on earth. When I set him down outside for a bit of fresh air he headed west. What his eyes saw in that direction I’ll never know but west was the only thing he wanted at that moment.

Pixel, her brain wracked with cancer, alternated between twitching from seizures to circling directionless to heading west in the yard outside the vet school. She’d lost all control of her poor little body yet knew that she wanted to head west. Bluebird, thin and weak from the cancer in her body wandered the house but always ended up at the back door, the western door of the house. She’d never been outside in her life except in a carrier yet she knew she wanted to go west in her last days.

Rainbow as a baby

Now Rainbow, failing kidneys and drug influenced mind, heads west to that door as well. What is it she yearns to reach? What secret world awaits her in the end? Or is it a beginning? Will I see that day; will I see them again someday in the west? Is that how things work out?

I don’t like the phrase “the circle of life” because it includes death. Maybe we should talk instead of the cycle of life; a cycle in which we eventually head west, like the elves, to another world, a better world where we can spend eternity with those we love.

(As I write this Rainbow lies on my lap unable to walk or do much more than lift her head. Tomorrow I may have to help her head west if she doesn’t recover but for now we’re together praying for a miracle.)

Twygal and her "bump"

Twygal's bumpy face

Last night I finally had the pleasure of Twygal’s company on my lap for a bit. For a couple of weeks now she has been avoiding me because she fears that I may be trying to torture her in some way. You see, we are going through another medical “crisis” here.

Twygal started sneezing some weeks ago but it wasn’t severe and I was more concerned at the time with her lack of appetite so we didn’t really pay much attention to her sneezing. A couple of weeks later she had resumed eating but she was still sneezing, though again, not severely and with no discharge. One day, however, I was looking at her as she talked to me (she’s got to have some Siamese in her because she is always telling me about her day) and thought that her left eye looked different. I looked closer and realized that she had some swelling between her eyes that was affecting her left eye and left nostril.

I felt really bad at the time because I’d been concentrating so much on Rainbow’s trouble (see my posts here and here) that I may not have noticed Twygal’s swollen face. I’m sure that’s what was causing her to sneeze. But then it may not have been visible before. I mean, no one else noticed it either.

So, anyway, of the many things it could be infection was the easiest to treat. Dr. Adam suggested that we may need to take X-rays and maybe get an MRI in the future but the swelling and possible infection would only obscure anything else. We started her on a regimen of oral antibiotics and nasal drops. That is why she has been avoiding me. She is getting tired of the struggle we go through to administer those darn nasal drops. At her last visit to see Dr. Adam we decided to discontinue the drops as long as we didn’t see any discharge since it stressed her out so much.

And now, I can finally enjoy Twygal’s company without her being all stressed that I am going to do something unpleasant to her. Unfortunately her swelling has gotten worse. We have continued her oral antibiotic in hopes that the swelling is an infection that is coming to a head.

Twygal showing the blood from her nostril

After I took this picture and enlarged it on my computer I realized that she now has some blood coming from her left nostril. This could be a sign that an abscess is opening and starting to drain but it could also indicate something much worse – a tumor. The only way to determine that is to use an endoscope and look more closely into her nostril. But that would have to be done at Iowa State and I definitely can’t afford it. I really hate knowing that there is something out there but it is out of my reach – that I can’t give Twygal every chance to beat this, whatever it is.

Showing the swelling's effect on her left eye

Please pray with me that Twygal’s condition is not as serious as it appears. And keep her in your thoughts.

Have your cats ever had an infection or tumor of the face? How did it turn out? Also I’d like to hear about your experiences with multiple cats becoming ill at the same time. It really is quite draining to worry about Rainbow and Twygal, as well as Mewdy Blue who has decided he doesn’t like to eat anymore and Meadow who has a UTI! How do you cope?

Kittens finding homes

Now comes the hard part: the part where losses tear at my heart.

Effie before kittens

If you need to catch up to this story you may read my previous posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

All they needed was socialization with other people. That soon came in the form of potential adopters coming to see their favorite babies. First came the retired professor to see Tinkerbell. I had been sending her pictures for several weeks so she’d grown quite enamored with all of the girls. I let her see the room where the kittens lived then I moved them out to the living room where she could interact with them away from the worried mothers.

One of the few pictures I have of Tinkerbell

The most difficult part for me came when she begged to be able to take her kitten home right away. I explained that I wouldn’t let them go until they were properly socialized and had received at least one vaccination. She was just so eager to have her new baby at home. I told her that I might be willing to bring the kitten to her when she was 10 weeks old although I would prefer to wait until 12 weeks. She seemed reluctantly satisfied.

Very rare Trinket picture

I watched as she nearly melted holding and calming the tiny red girl. Her son had fallen in love with Taylor though. After her visit she told me that they wanted both girls. I promised myself that, except for Spotty and B.W., all of the other kittens had to go to other homes – no matter how hard it was. So I had to be happy that another kitten found a home. Before long, the professor contacted me again to say that they’d decided they wanted all three of the younger females! She and her son decided that Taylor, Tinkerbell and Trinket made a great “Charmed” set. Their names became Phoebe, Paige and Piper.

The three Charmed Ones

Tortie’s new family came to meet her one sunny afternoon. They already had one cat, Freya, but wanted a companion for her. The young man wanted a tortoiseshell so I was thrilled when I saw the skittish girl curl up in his lap and calm right down. I didn’t want to intrude on their time with Tortie so I took the opportunity to bring out Spotty and B.W.  I spent the time working with them around the visitors in hopes it would help to socialize them.

Tortie

I could tell that Tortie had found a perfect home. She’d never warmed up to me, a devoted, lifelong cat lover, yet there she was sitting quite comfortably in a stranger’s lap. She belonged to this couple, even before they’d met. All it took was a picture and they knew it – now she knew it too.

During this time I also had to make sure my own family of cats got enough attention. Effie, my 16-year old ex-feral cat was ailing from diabetes. We never could get her completely regulated then she slowly stopped eating. My big mistake was in giving her her insulin before feeding her. You should always feed first then give the appropriate insulin so that they don’t go into insulin shock if they don’t eat. Well, that one horrible day Effie came in to eat with the rest of the cats so I went ahead and gave her the insulin then put out their food.

My last moments with Effie

No matter what I did Effie would not eat and she went downhill very quickly. She was already weak from her recent lack of interest in food but now that she hadn’t eaten anything at all the insulin was plaguing her body. I rushed her into Dr. Tammy but I was afraid it was too late. They did all they could for her during that day but in the end I brought her home in a last ditch effort to calm her down and hopefully bring her around. Unfortunately it didn’t work. She had regular seizures all night long. I sat with her through the night attempting to calm her seizures but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. She was too far gone. First thing that morning I had to let her go.

I spent much of the rest of the day in the kitten room watching them gambol about but I think they knew something was wrong. They worked off their energy for a bit then, as I curled up on the floor they all came over to lie with me. It was a precious moment filled with tears.

How could you not love this face?

Even more special was the fact that Scotty cuddled up to me as close as he could possibly be. He burrowed into my arms and purred and purred. I knew he was a special kitten from the first time I took him from his cage but I already had a home for him. At that moment I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.

When his person came over to see him for the first time in person I tried convincing her to take one of the remaining red tabby boys instead. She didn’t want a red tabby, she wanted Scotty. I remembered that at first she had mentioned how cute the black and white boys were so I then offered to give up B.W. if she would leave Scotty with me. Still she wanted Scotty, even more so after holding him.

Scotty kisses

I kept my promise to give away any kitten that had a home and let her have Scotty. But I spent those last couple of weeks absolutely spoiling him. I really loved that kitten but I could tell that she did too. After all I still had four more kittens, two more than I’d planned to keep.

Tweety and Trucker, the leftovers

I could have done more to find homes for the red tabbies. I could have pushed more people at work to look at them, I could have advertised. But after losing Effie and giving up Scotty I just didn’t have the will to lose any more. The four kittens soon became Mulberry Spot, B.W. Huckleberry, Gooseberry (Trucker) and Strawberry (Tweet).

Next time I’ll tell you how the adoptions went. I tell you now, though, that all of those kittens went to exactly the right homes. They are where they were meant to be.