Bye Cassie, Kitty Kitty Kitty. I will miss you!

LoriAnn and I put our 18.5 year old cat, Cassie down on Wednesday.  This is the 4th pet that I have put down in my life time.   It has also been the hardest. 

Since Christmas she was hiding a lot.  Although she was eating (without puking it backup) she was still losing weight.  Last Monday, she just looked ill.  You could see it in her eyes. When she walked you could see she was in pain.  Tuesday she didn’t keep any food down and stopped eating.  Wed the vet took some blood work and said her kidneys were NOT elevated which is good, but her liver indicated problems.  She was also very tender in the stomach.  She barely moved while at the vet, even with the elevated adrenaline that pets get at the vet.  Selfishly I could have probably gotten the meds necessary to keep her around for another few weeks, maybe months.  But with tears and much sadness, I said goodbye to my kitty.

After that I went home and crawled into bed with a 101.8 degree temperature.  I guess I got the flu somewhere in the last few days.

Cassie was supposedly Megan's cat.  With Megan not home all the time, Cassie quickly understood that I was the alpha in the house and latched onto me.  When LoriAnn was introduced into her life, Cassie saw her as someone she just had to contend with.  But when needed, Cassie knew LoriAnn was a great substitute for me for affection and food.

This has been my first sickness that my cat wasn’t there to ‘purr’ me through it.  Now as I walk around the house I find how much my brain has been trained to watch for her.  I also still scan the carpet for evidence of her being sick.  I also am aware of how trained I was to put things away in the kitchen, so she wouldn’t get to them.  I know that I may never retrain my brain completely, for I still find times when I do things my brain was trained to do while in the military.  And that was 36 years ago.

I will miss you darn Cat!!!