*Half of this was written on November 2013, when our Persian cat passed away. Took me quite some time to compose what I needed to without feeling too overwrought with sadness.
5:30am. Still woozy, I get for a cup of coffee. A few sips and I see the vet’s name on my phone screen. This is not good, I thought, intentionally directing my eyes away from the text momentarily. No vet would deem it urgent to call or text at such an ungodly hour if it wasn’t between life and death . I finally open the message and there it was. Glazed in somewhat sugarcoated words were apologies that he “spoiled the morning, but your cat just died.”
After a mariposa dropped by last night, I already took it as a sign that our 8-year old cat Mimi was bidding us goodbye. We were told she had slim chances when I brought her in. Her eyes were switching from dilated to constricted and she was frozen as a block. Apparently she was running a raging fever and an infection, nevermind if just an hour prior she was eating and acting as usual. Her death wasn’t surprising, but it still felt like a truckload on the chest.
The vet suggested a necropsy for free to rule out placental or fetal retention. The necropsy won’t change anything. If Mimi did have a retained, decaying fetus inside her, it meant I was wrong in not bringing her in after a miscarriage and I could only blame myself for assuming she was okay because she did release two fetuses and two placentas and was superb for a whole week post-abortion.
If there is none, it meant they were wrong and any of our previous hunches were right: it could be the immune-attacking FelV virus, an asymptomatic worm infestation, or even an internal organ failure.
Either way, she passed away and no amount of assurance could comfort us. But for the sake of knowing, I agreed.
Turns out, I was indeed wrong. She had a very tiny – almost microscopic – placental fragment retained in her uterus, which “may have been the reason why there weren’t symptoms.”
There is much to be said about the death of an animal. People who have no affinity for pets whatsoever would say we overreact to a creature that’s below us. But those of us who stayed long enough to nurse them from birth to their last days know pets are more than just additional mouths to feed or loyal guards as we sleep or cute little furballs to ogle at.
Like anything we bring home, they are a commitment, a responsibility, something we grow up with. Hey, we even get attached to stolen devices, how could it be impossible to end up loving these little fiends?
A fellow cat-lover asked me if in the near future I would consider adopting another cat. Having had three pet deaths in a year (two of them though, age-related), I say maybe we need to catch out breaths first. Rebounds are not okay, especially that we have a wild beast of a toddler growing at home. Perhaps we should focus on her first, and when she’s old enough to be taught responsibilities, we’ll decide. After all we still have one rottie and anotherkitten to take care of.
But for the meantime, we thank all the awesome people who have welcomed home pets from our home-grown shop for the past four years and took care of them with all might. Thank you for trusting us and for giving our pets a new home.
So for now, we are officially closing shop. We may have stopped breeding cute furry babies, but rest assured we will always be first and foremost, pet lovers who will continue to love cats and dogs of all sizes and shapes, regardless of breed – or a lack thereof.
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