RIP, Charlotte

I am sorry to have to report that my beautiful tuxie muse has passed away.  She died tonight, at the vet's, covered in hugs and kisses from Jeff and I as she took her last breaths.

I know that I posted a cautiously optimistic post a little over a month ago.  I haven't had the heart to post since then, because she has been steadily on the decline ever since.  At that time, she was eating a few nuggets of food periodically throughout the day; a little less than normal, but enough.  As the month progressed, she ate less and less.  As  of today, she hadn't had solid food in 9 days.

The vet checked her out earlier today, and found that her kidney values had more than doubled since last week, and that the fluid around her heart and lungs had increased.  We couldn't give her more medicine without making her kidneys worse.  In short, there was nothing that could be done for her except make her comfortable.

And we couldn't even do that.  We got her home, and she lapped up a little bit of milk, but didn't finish it.  (Which is a HUGE clue that all was not well in Charlotte's life.)  She kept standing up and shifting around, like cats with an excess of fluid do.  Then when we saw her sitting there, barely able to raise her head, but trying to sleep standing up, that was it.  We made the decision.  We needed to end it TONIGHT.  Making her tough it out so that we could have "one more night" with her was selfish.

And so we opted for one last act of selflessness and took her back in.

God, that's such a hard thing to do.  Even when you know that it's the right thing.

Charlotte won my heart the day that I laid eyes upon her at the shelter; a frightened, angry young tuxie, who wanted OUT of that cage and NOW.  Even when she hooked me with her claws and drug me over to her cage.  Even when she bloodied me in the "meet and greet" room when she panicked about a barking dog.

I grieve that I will no longer have her around to steal my baskets for her own purposes.

Or that she won't be able to give me such perfect photo opportunities like this one.

Or demand a bowl of food with her demanding, queenly "Mrrowr" noise that she would make when she was bossing us around

Whatever it was that she was doing at any given time, Charlotte was a definite presence in this house.  She was the queen.  

We loved her very much.  And I don't know how I'm going to cope with that.  Oh, I will, I know that we humans are good at that in the end, but we'll both feel the after-effects of this one for a good long time.

Good night, my queen.

Charlotte: An Update

Just a quick post tonight, but Charlotte is feeling much more herself.

Her appetite continues to return, and she's starting to get her spirit back.  I know that when she first got home from the hospital, Maera became obsessed with her.  Charlotte couldn't flick an ear without Maera coming over to thoroughly sniff every inch of her.  I KNEW Charlotte wasn't herself because she just lay there and tolerated this treatment... sure, her ears were back, but there was just no fight there.

Well, yesterday Maera came over to sniff her, and Charlotte slapped her across the face.

And she is regularly begging for milk at the refrigerator, and using her hyponotic eyes on me.

So.  Her prognosis might not be a good one, but for the moment, we have our Charlotte back. Grumpy, demanding, sweet, imposing, talkative, loving Charlotte.

Charlotte

Well, Charlotte is home from the hospital.

I'm still concerned about her, but maybe a little bit more relaxed than I was when she first arrived...  because when she initially got back home (Thursday) she wasn't eating.  And she didn't eat all day Friday.  Friday night, she started throwing up stomach bile.  We got up a couple of times when we heard that horrible pukey noise that every dog or cat owner has learned to dread, then once more after dawn this morning.  Throughout all of this time, the only real comfort is that she was still drinking water.

We called the vet's office, and they determined that it was probably a reaction to one of the four (!) medications that she is now on, and decided that it was safe enough to take her off of it.  And so we did.

And she went all day without eating.

At 4PM, Jeff called the veterinary hospital again to update them about her still not eating, and they said that it had now gone on long enough that they would prescribe an appetite stimulant.  (The original hope had been that she would decide to start eating on her own, naturally, without outside help.  It's not like she isn't on ENOUGH medication as it is.)

We decided that I would go pick up the appetite stimulant, while Jeff stayed home and watched her.  (We wanted to be absolutely certain that she wasn't sneaking away and puking behind furniture.  We MUST know if she's still having trouble.)

Unfortunately, on my way home, I got caught in an hour and a half traffic jam due to tunnel closures (which I should have anticipated, but didn't.)  Sometime around the 45 minute mark, Jeff texted to say that she'd taken a couple of bites on her own!

So, despite good-natured grumbling about an unnecessary trip followed up by an even more unnecessary traffic snarl, I was and am delighted.  And we have the appetite stim if she doesn't continue to progress.

We're thrilled to have her home, and thrilled that she seems to be a bit more interested in eating.

The nature of her illness is still very serious.  Congestive heart failure is always bad, and cats have fewer treatment options than we humans do.  It's a particularly hard blow, because she HAD the terrible prognosis of a six months to a year and a half to live, then outlived it, THEN we were told that she didn't have congestive heart-failure.  We had just begun to accept the idea that we might actually get to have her with us for a normal cat's lifespan.

And now they're giving a guarded prognosis of six months to a year again.

Crushing.

But we're going to do the best we can with the time that we have left, however much that might be.    Charlotte still has some improvement to do before her quality of life can be as good as it was before.

Charlotte before, bright-eyed.  Empty(ish) bowl.

Charlotte tonight, exhausted.  Food nibbled at.

But she's a tough girl.  If any cat can fight to live a normal life with heart disease, it's her.

And we will fight the fight alongside her for as long as we can.  For as long as she can, and is willing.

Charlotte is Hospitalized

I should have known that the other shoe was about to drop...  things have been going SO well lately, and I'm maybe kind of sort of a little superstitious about that.  Or maybe it's just that I'm well aware that life has its ups and downs, and we hadn't had any serious downs for awhile.

Well, it started last night.  No, it started over the weekend, but we just didn't put it all together until last night.

When I got home from work, Charlotte was in the recliner.  Nothing really odd there.  I said hello to her and gave her a quick scritch, then grabbed Maera and took her out - Maera was due for her annual vet check-up and vaccinations.  So I took Maera to the vet's, and we came back a little under an hour later.  Charlotte was STILL in the recliner.  And she stayed there all through dinner, and didn't jump down until we made it obvious that we were going upstairs for bed.  I remarked about it, but still wasn't that alarmed.

Until she started choking and vomiting in the hallway.  And her breathing was labored.  She was only able to bring up clear fluid.  All of this was starting to look distressingly familiar.

Then we started talking.  I remembered commenting over the weekend that she looked like she'd put on some weight.  As I was petting her last night, I realized that quite a bit of the weight was in her front legs.  Then I had a light-bulb moment:  that wasn't fat, that was fluid.  She was retaining fluid.  And the clear cat vomit that I'd stepped in earlier that day probably wasn't from Bit bolting back her water like she sometimes does.  It was likely from Charlotte.

I felt sick.  I HAD seen all of this happen before.  Four years ago.   The only thing keeping us from rushing her to the vet in the middle of the night was that she didn't seem to be in too much distress.  After her bout of vomiting, her breathing seemed to return to normal.  We resolved to call the vet first thing in the morning.

And Jeff did.  After he described her symptoms, they told him to take her to the emergency vet clinic.  And so he did.

And it's congestive heart failure.  Again.

I don't understand how this could be.  How she could be diagnosed with congestive heart failure 4 years ago.  How she could outlive her prognosis of 6 to 12 months by so long.  How she could be on medication for three years until the vet said that it was medically unprecedented that she still be alive.  How we could take her off of the medication for 13 months, and have her be fine. No symptoms.  Not one.  And then to have her hospitalized today for congestive heart failure.  How does this even work?

They pulled 100 ml. of fluid out of her chest cavity today.  (How can there even BE that much fluid in a little tiny chest?)  We got a call around 7:00 PM to tell us that she seemed to be responding well to the doses of lasix that she's received there so far.  She's still on oxygen to help her breathe.

They're going to try her on three medications tonight:  if those seem to help her, they will probably be what we have to give her for the rest of her life.  (And I'm so, so okay with that if it means that we get Charlotte back.  For however long that may be.)

And they want to do an ultrasound on her abdomen in the morning.  The cardiologist and the team of vets there are concerned about the legs retaining fluids.  They normally don't do that with "mere" congestive heart failure.  They want to be sure there isn't something else causing it.  Which freaks me out so much because there can be nothing good in her abdomen causing fluid retention.

So now it's a waiting game.  Will the medication work?  Will the abdominal ultrasound find anything of concern?  Will they be able to wean her off of the oxygen?  Will we get her back again tomorrow night?

Charlotte in the oxygenated cage at the hospital.

I hate it when a pet is hospitalized.  There's no way to tell them that they haven't been abandoned.  That we WILL come back for her if she survives.  That said, Charlotte has always handled this kind of thing rather well in the past.  She alternates between bossing around the vet techs and sucking up to the staff.

So everyone keep their fingers crossed, send prayers and good thoughts Charlotte's way.  She needs them.  We all need them.  It's been a very emotionally draining day.

And while this post is about Charlotte, and she dominates my thoughts and emotions tonight, I just can't leave it on such a "down" note.  I want to show you a picture of what we've been up to the past week and a half.

What is that, you say?  How can one cat have so many feet?

Yeah, we're fostering a nursing mama cat and her four kittens.  The babies are two weeks old at this point.  The picture is a little dark because they're at the back of the "den" that I made for them, and the lighting is poor.  Mama (we're calling her Janis) doesn't like it when I over-handle them, so I keep that to a bare minimum and just let her do the work.

I went in to feed her and scoop her litter box, feeling heavy-hearted, sad, and worried about Charlotte.  I poked my head into the den, watching the four babies nursing.  And then I heard it.  Purring coming from two teeny, tiny little babies.  It brought tears to my eyes.

Dare I see it as a sign of hope that one of them looks a lot like a miniature Charlotte?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I don't know about you, but my animals, cats and dogs alike, HATE change.  Of any kind, unless it means a new kind of treat.  They're usually down with that.  (Well, the dogs are.  The cats are very suspicious of new kinds of food.)

Last weekend, we had a rather large get-together at our house.  The cats usually get pretty upset when we have people over, and there were some allergy-sufferers in the mix, so we shut them away in bedrooms, split up so that they didn't get on each other's nerves too much throughout the event.  (Later, when the numbers of guests had dwindled, we did let the cats out of the rooms.)

The dogs got to stay downstairs with us, and helped us entertain.  Don't get me wrong, unlike the cats, the dogs LOVE guests, but they do get rather unsettled when we change stuff.  People are hanging out in the dining room!  OMG, there's people in ALL THE ROOMS!  OMG, there is a person in my favorite spot on the couch!

Argos waits for the first guest to arrive, anxiously.

But I've learned to just keep an eye on the dogs, and if they start to get too worked up over the fact that there are SO MANY PEOPLE to pet them, or if they start pacing nervously, or panting, that it's time to go outside, or pull them off to the side for a quiet pet, or a treat.  It usually goes fairly well...  and was definitely smoother this year, now that Maera has matured a bit, and doesn't pee with excitement every time she sees someone she likes.  (Imagine our first party, after adopting her.  She'd go into a room, see one of her favorite people, pee.  She'd race to the next room, see ANOTHER person she likes, pee.  Repeat process, all night long.)

So I guess it's not really DURING the entertaining that we have a problem, with the dogs or the cats.  Cats get isolated, which is what they prefer anyway, dogs are allowed down with the guests, with a sharp eye on them.  It seems to work.

But where I seem to have trouble is during the preparation.  I can't believe that we're the only pet-centric household that runs into this problem.

Whenever I clean, it upsets all of them.

Well, maybe not Charlotte.  She just stayed nearby to keep a close eye on me, to make sure that I did everything up to her specifications.

You missed Item #3 on the checklist, just so you know.

But the dogs paced nervously.  I mean, guys C'MON, it's not like I never clean around here.  But maybe a combination of the super-duper heavy cleaning plus the anticipation that I was feeling for the party did it.

The cats were complete pests, getting in the way, and sometimes actively hindering the process.

What, you weren't trying to dust here, were you?

I do the best that I can to make it easier on them:  I take the dogs for walks, make a point to take play or snuggle breaks, but it's clear that they all want for me just to sit down in a chair and stop with all of the activity already.

But it doesn't seem to help even when I do.  They're so attuned to us, they KNOW something is going to happen, and it makes them nervous.

Maera, post-party.  It's exhausting being a host, she says.

We all had fun with the party, but I think they were all glad to have the house back to normal the next day.

And then Jeff and I went and upset them all again this weekend by moving furniture around.

Sorry, guys.

Next weekend, I promise will be boring.

Does anyone have any tips for how to make this easier on the pups and kits?

An Adventure in Living Room Seating

Maybe, maybe life is slowing down a little.  I've said this before and been proven wrong, so don't hold me to it.  But...  there is hope.

One of the things that we noticed, after things started to calm, was that our recliner, well-loved and well-used as it was, was simply not comfortable any longer.  And a couple of "mystery bolts" fell out of it, leaving us scratching our heads on exactly where those bolts belonged.  But it left the chair somewhat lopsided, and it felt unstable.  I was sure that someone was going to sit in it some fateful day, and the entire thing was going to collapse.

So, to make a long story short, we went chair shopping last month.  We went into the store with the intention of buying one replacement recliner, but we actually bought two.  Since we have two greyhounds that hog up the entire couch.  :)

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Now we have two chairs for humans.

Actually, we have one chair for humans.  The other one has been adopted.

Annie was first.  Look at that sassy face!

Her Royal Majesty Queen Charlotte was next.

And finally, Bit, who was actually scared of the new chairs at first.

As you can imagine, if I am this fascinated by the new "cat chair" then at this moment in time, things are actually very quiet.  You will hear no complaints from me.

Some other factoids:

• Argos and Maera are in great health, and high spirits.  It's almost as if they can smell spring in the air.  Though I can't smell it at ALL.  I think that they're calling for 4-8 inches of snow on Sunday night, and I am not pleased at all.  This winter needs to end!  I need tree buds!  Green grass!  Daylight until 9:30 PM!  I'm looking forward to the sunlight that comes with summertime, because it was really hard to get any good pictures this winter!  The pets have had next to no pictures taken of them; not because I don't love them, but because there are just too many shadows.  First sign of true spring, the dogs and I are SO at the park, with a camera.  

• Sally, the timid and defensive foster cat that I wrote about last month, became a little less timid and a lot less defensive.  She and I had many an evening of good quality snuggling.  She was adopted on Tuesday night!  A good thing for her, but a sad thing for me.  I miss her crawling under the quilt with me, purring all the while, or standing on top of me and meowing in my face when it was time to feed her.  It was so very rewarding to watch her come out of her shell, at least a little bit.  She still has a way to go, but she got an understanding adopter, who will continue to work with her.

• The cats are in good health.  They are thrilled that the guest room, previously Sally's abode, is now open to them again.  They are doubly thrilled because at the last moment, as we were about to take the old recliner down to the curb on trash night, Jeff figured out how to fix it!  It's a perfectly functional recliner, albeit old and a bit shabby.  We now have it set up  in a corner of the guest room.  I figure it will come in handy when I'm in there babysitting kittens.  But in the meantime, our cats can have another perch to squabble over.

• We have no new fosters.  I don't anticipate that this state will last long, but I do feel like we need another break.  The cats need a break, and so do we.  Also, we are having an event at our house in a couple of weeks, and may need the guest room to not have feline visitors in it.  AFTER that, we'll probably be ready for the next needy kitty.  Or kitties. I've decided to try a nursing mom with kittens this year, assuming it's needed.

Anyway, it is my intent to not only start blogging again, but to start reading blogs again.  I miss reading everyone's stories and seeing their pictures!  Be patient with me, though.  I imagine that it's going to take awhile to get up to speed.

Sally

Really, at this point, everyone should know that when I "go silent" for several weeks at a time, I'm probably fostering again.  I've tried and tried, but it's a major strain to work a full time job, deal with the commute, tend to my own pets, then tend to a foster, THEN blog.  Sheesh, I'm lucky to be able to throw in "take a shower" or "cook a meal" or "do the dishes."

But, all of that aside, I am indeed fostering again.  This time it's only one cat, whose name, you may have surmised, is Sally.

I was on my way home from work one night on the bus, and checked my email on my phone.  There was a message that had been sent out to the foster list, saying that a cat was not doing very well in a cage, and had started hissing and swatting at people.  But once someone picked her up and held her, she curled up into a little tiny ball in their lap and just tried to hide from the world.  She was obviously frightened out of her mind, and could a foster please PLEASE step up to take her in and give her a quieter environment.

Well, that story tugged at my heart-strings, so I emailed to say that I was willing.  And...  two hours later, I was loading a very frightened little gray tabby into my carrier and taking her home.  I remember being worried about transporting her because the temperatures were down in the single digits that night, so I had the carrier in the front seat with me, with the heater blasting.  I went through a drive-through to get dinner to take home, and Sally complained, quietly but steadily, the entire time.

This is Sally.  She's a gray tabby, and is so tiny... only 5 1/2 pounds!  She's an adult, though a young one, at a year and a half.

As soon as we let her out of the carrier in our guest room, she hissed at us, and ran into the depths of the closet.  Having dealt with scaredy cats before, I knew to leave her alone for a time, and just got her litter box and food and water dishes ready.  Then we turned the lights out and left her alone for the rest of the night.

I was, as I always am, immensely relieved the next morning to see that food had vanished and the litter box had been used.

It's taken us a couple of weeks to earn her trust (made a bit more difficult due to the need to give her daily antibiotics for part of that time.)   She likes to hide in a little blanket-lined basket that I have in the window; when I come into the room all I can see are the little white tips of her ears.  Sometimes she goes into the closet, if something scares her.  But wherever she goes, she is eager to jump over on to the bed to snuggle up to me when I lay down.  She purrs and kneads the bed, rubs her cheeks on my hand, and will eventually go to sleep like that.  Sometimes she will even sleep on top of me.

She's finally stopped trembling when I pet her... when she first started "coming around" she'd lie there purring  when I was petting her, but she'd be shaking like a leaf all throughout.  Talk about conflicted!

She is still very easily frightened though.  If you move too quickly, she might still hiss and run.  If she hears the dogs racing up the stairs (even though she's safely shut away from them) she gets nervous.  She gets nervous and hides if we talk too loudly, or if a toilet flushes, or if my phone makes any noises when I'm in with her.

I think it's just going to be a process.  And every time I start to get discouraged about it, I remind myself of certain OTHER scaredy cats that I've encountered.  Annie.  Thomas.  Junior.  They all came through it, and so will she.

Everyone send good thoughts Sally's way!  We need to convince her that the universe is not actually out to get her, no matter what her past might have been.