Losing a pet is never easy, but this was harder than I thought. Magic came into our lives in January 2006 after we had to put our 21-year-old cat Zoe to sleep. This is Magic's story.
Magic came to us from a rescue group. He was a 6-year-old neutered male cat, slightly overweight and slightly arthritic--probably from the extra weight. When we met him at the shelter, he was so anxious to leave. He purred and purred--you could hear him across the room.
His picture at Petfinder
We brought him home and he and our other cat Feather, a Maine Coon (who is also not in good health now), began the adjustment process. You might call it more of a tolerance process, or peaceful coexistence. For the first month, Magic was a lap cat, but when he decided that he had been accepted, he became more of a hermit cat, preferring to sleep under the computer desk rather than on my lap watching TV. Although if I was on the computer, he would climb up in my lap and sleep.
The first time we left Magic and Feather with a housesitter, I heard all about it when we came home. He was most upset. He talked to me for almost an hour and it took 30 minutes before he was willing to let me hold and pet him. Then he started purring--and drooling!! Pure happiness for Magic meant drooling all over my shoulder. With subsequent trips, he realized that we would always come back, so he didn't worry so much.
Magic
Because Magic had become my cat, my husband wanted another cat to call his own. We found a lovely gray young female, Sophie. She wanted to play with Magic and Magic didn't want to be disturbed. (A little background on Magic--his previous owner was an elderly woman who died. The shelter took him in, but didn't know much about him. I think he really wanted to be the only cat in the house.)
Finally we got a fourth cat to play with the third one. That worked out really well for them, but Sophie still teased Magic whenever she could. She would find Magic hiding and sit in front of her until Magic cried for help. ("She's looking at me, Mom.")
Last September both Magic and Sophie became very ill. They had some kind of stomach virus. Both required substantial veterinary care and we thought we might lose them both. But they were strong and survived.
In the process of finding out what was wrong with them, our vet xrayed Magic and discovered that he was a she. Not a neutered male as the shelter had told us, but a spayed female. What a shock! A truly Magic cat. Now we had four females, not one lonely male and three females.
A truly Magic cat
I'm not sure that Magic ever really got her health back completely from the September illness. Her arthritis got worse, and I took her for acupuncture. That didn't really seem to help.
Then on June 8th, several days before we were to leave for a week-long trip, Magic was lying on the rug in front of the kitchen sink and I noticed she was lying in a puddle of urine. She was not walking well, and looked like she was at death's door. I called my vet and said it looked really bad and I wondered what "magic" bullet there was to save her, or whether I would have to have her put to sleep. The vet said she could give her a steroid shot and it might perk her back up, but if she had any kidney problems, it could make those worse. Well, we went with the steroid shot and Magic looked great within 24 hours. We went on our trip, came home to find Feather in misery from severe arthritis and hip dysplasia, but Magic looked fine.
Magic taking life easy
Then last Wednesday, I took Magic back to the vet because she had stopped eating. After xrays, the vet discovered that Magic's kidneys were huge and badly infected. She was put on antibiotics, ate about a day, but Thursday night she threw up in my bed. Friday my vet came by the house and gave her an antibiotic shot and fluids. Saturday and Sunday she returned and gave her more antibiotic shots and fluids. But Magic still wasn't eating anything. Drinking a lot, but not eating. Yesterday the vet picked Magic up early in the morning and took her to the office, gave her Valium and she ate almost a whole can of food. We thought she would be on the mend.
But yesterday evening the vet came by again and gave her another Valium to see if she would eat and no luck. She was going to return this morning on her way to work to try Valium once more, but during the night Magic went down hill. One of her eyes looked terrible. We called our vet and she went to her office, picked up a euthanasia kit and came back to our house. She took one look at Magic's eye and said that she thought that Magic had become completely septic.
Making the decision to have Magic euthanized was fairly easy, but dealing with the aftermath is so hard. I have been crying ever since. I have her curled up in a basket, ready to bury her by Zoe in our backyard. She looks so peaceful, and it is so hard to let her go.
I know there are many pet lovers here at Daily Kos who share this kind of pain and understand that doing the right thing is easier than accepting the result. I wanted to share my loss with the rest of you and know you will help me get through it.