I don't know what to do. A hard admission for me.
My husband and I are trying to decide if the time has come to help our cat - our loving friend - Lexy, cross the rainbow bridge.
I'm writing this diary to ask for suggestions, or consolation, or sympathy, or something.
Lexy is my sand tabby, and my hard-lucky kitty.
She came to me in 2004, just a couple of months old. I was at the Outer Banks on vacation, and my family went to a jetski rental outfit because we wanted to take kids out on the sound.
A baby kitten, very young, was in a pen by the register. There was a sign on it offering her to a good home. Turns out the business owner had found her, stuck in a fence!, after a hurricane had come through. He rescued her, but didn't want to keep her.
I had one pootie at home, but she was already 15 years old and I'd begun to dread losing her. So I was ripe for adoption. I took her home the next day - she curled up in my lap the entire 6-hour drive home, purring the entire time.
As it turns out, purring is what Lexy does best. I have never known such an affectionate cat (and I've always had cats in my life).
Let me fast-forward to last year. In the spring, so just about a year ago, Lexy developed what my husband and I describe as a wattle - a flap of loose skin under her chin. When it started to balloon, I took her to our vet. He took one look and immediately diagnosed the problem - somehow, she had ruptured a salivary gland on the right side of her jaw, and saliva was filling up the wattle. He told us she needed surgery, and recommended a veterinary service about 40 miles away.
They took one look at her, agreed with the diagnosis, and scheduled surgery right away. The surgery cost more than $2,000 - I'm (barely) self-employed, and my husband is a performer so his income is sporadic, but we didn't hesitate.
Afterwards, the vet told us it had gone well - and he told us what an absolute sweetheart she was! That she was purring before they gave her anesthesia, and that when she woke up she was still purring. Everyone there adored her. But he did not remove the extra skin of the wattle; he said that was just cosmetic.
She had stitches along one side of her head, and a temporary shunt to drain fluids, and she had to wear one of those Elizabethan-style collars so she couldn't scratch at them. He told us to take her to our own vet in a week to have the shunt removed. We did; our vet said to leave her in the collar for another week to 10 days to finish the healing. We did - but the very day we finally removed the collar, she scratched and tore open the new skin! So back to the surgical vet we went, and went through the whole process again - another $1000.
Over the summer we took her to our regular vet, because she wasn't healing. This time he diagnosed her with a thyroid problem, something she'd never had before, and said we'd have to give her iodine pills the rest of her life.
In the fall, when she still hadn't healed (she kept finding ways to get out of the collar and scratch herself open), her wattle really started to swell again with fluid. This time we took her to the head surgical vet, a woman our vet said is one of the best animal surgeons he's ever seen. This woman basically said, huh - I don't know what's happening - we'd like to do exploratory surgery to figure out the problem, and oh, that'll be another $4,000. We just couldn't do it - we didn't have the money, we didn't want to put Lexy through it again, and frankly, we believe they botched the first surgery.
I told the woman that as far as we're concerned, they screwed up, and rather than paying for them to do it again, if they wanted to operate for FREE we would consider it. (Since Lexy had never had thyroid problems before the surgery, we also believe they nicked her thyroid gland during the first procedure.) Turns out there's really no such thing as veterinary malpractice ...
We went to yet another vet, just trying to get her open wound to heal. That vet said she had an infection and gave her an antibiotic shot. The wound started to heal immediately, but Lexy (again) would scratch and scratch and find ways to drag the collar off and open it up again. The vet suggested that if we could get her healed, we should think about removing her rear claws so she couldn't keep damaging herself. (Lexy is purely an indoor cat, so in that sense it would be okay, but I know it's cruel to do that do any cat. My ambivalence and sorrow have so far kept me from making that decision.)
Poor Lexy has now been trapped in a collar for almost one year. Every time we think she's healed, she manages to tear herself open again. The wattle keeps ballooning. She has to be shut in our sunroom at night, where she has her own litterbox, and every morning we get up and check to see if she's hurt herself again (as she did this morning).
My husband has taken a picture of her, but I don't know how to insert it.
Lexy is depressed all the time. She's developed an anti-social behavior - she pees in the common water bowls that we have for all our pets (three dogs, three cats counting her), frequently staring right at us as she does it. She mopes in the garage, barely moving. At night, when my husband and I are watching TV, she gets into my lap and stays for hours - if I fall asleep in my chair, she will literally stay in my lap all night. (Which always makes me think of the day I drove home with her, and makes me cry.)
I don't know what to do. Lexy's condition is tearing at our hearts. The life of our house revolves around what we can do for her. She's sad and unhappy, and I don't know that she'll ever be anything close to well. But she isn't in pain, in the traditional sense, and she still purrs any time either of us come near.
Do we have her claws removed, gambling that she'll finally stop shredding herself? Do we keep her in a collar forever, and just do what we can to spoil her? Do we suck it up and borrow the money for the "exploratory surgery?" Do we try to find a way to deal with the grief and let her go?
There are so many pootie lovers here at Daily Kos. I love the pootie and woozle diaries; while I rarely comment, I look at every single one, just to bring a smile to my face. I trust all of you, and really, really could use some counsel.