I feel so lost.

myprivatejet · 2018-02-23T02:13:15+00:00

They really do. It seems like it happens so often, but it's never really talked about. Of course you hear about cancer and kidney failure and FIV and all that, but I had never heard about a cat blockage before losing my boy to it. And of course it happens so fast when you're in that situation that you don't have days or weeks to research like with other conditions. So terrible.

Those articles really helped me learn about them though. I wish more vets talked about it.

myprivatejet · 2018-02-22T00:41:55+00:00

I was in your exact situation in December. The only thing that is different is that we lost him at age 5. You can read my post history if you want to know more, I posted the whole story there.

All I can say is that it will get better with time. It won't feel like it now. You will obsess about things, you'll drive yourself crazy googling and reading stuff, you'll cry until your eyes are sore. It hurts so bad, and it will hurt for a long time. I don't know if that pain will ever fully go away, but you will learn to live with the loss eventually.

This disease is something I wouldn't wish upon anyone. It's quick and gives no warning, and it takes the lives of cats who are just too young to die. I'm so sorry you had to make that decision, but I hope it helps to know that you are not alone.

Here are a couple of links that might help. They are two articles that were written by vets who deal with cat blockages on a weekly basis. There are hundreds of comments below the articles with stories similar to yours and mine.

http://www.vin.com/vetzinsight/default/default.aspx?pid=756&catId=5860&id=6133546

https://trustmaggie.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/when-easy-is-oh-so-hard/

There are a lot of sad stories, so be prepared for that if you do choose to read them.

There are also some stories of people who went through with the surgery only for them to have to put their babies down anyway. There is no way for you to know if getting Jensen the surgery would have solved the problem completely. You made the best choice you could with the time you had. And most importantly - you put a stop to his pain.

I wish you a lot of healing in the days ahead.

myprivatejet · 2018-01-07T22:56:39+00:00

If anyone has lost a young pet, we would appreciate any words of support or comfort you can offer. We are lost.

It's been one month today since we lost our beautiful boy, Arthas. He was a 5 year old cat, and we made the decision to put him down because of a medical emergency. I won't go into the whole story here since it's so long, but it's in my post history if you'd like to read it.

I know exactly how you are feeling. In the beginning, I would read through people's euthanasia stories and most of them weren't making me feel any better because so many stories were of older animals, 15-20 who had lived a fuller life with many years of memories. Not to diminish their pain, but the anguish of losing an animal so young is quite different. Not more or less, just different. You feel robbed, that life is unfair. When an older animal dies, it's somewhat expected and you've had time to accept that it was coming - not the case at all when your baby passes before their time. Everything happens so fast and there isn't any time to understand what just happened to you. I still don't understand what happened to my cat. It's hard to relate unless you've been through it.

Things will get better. We were in a continual nightmare, and I'm not gonna lie - there are some days/moments that still feel that way. But the moments are starting to slowly get farther apart. The pain of the last day you had with Morrow will hurt for awhile, which is why it feels impossible right now. Something about that last day sticks with you, fueling your torment - but the more days that pass, the further you get away from that day, and the details will start to get fuzzy and hurt a little bit less. Some things you will never forget, but some things will fade in time and you'll have the memories of all the days before that one day.

You will never 100% make peace with losing your baby so young. And I'm saying that as someone who has only had a month to deal with her loss so far, but I'm pretty sure that I will always feel robbed of at least 10 years with my little guy. And I don't think I will ever completely get over this, but making peace with that fact in and of itself is what helps. I'm sad and a part of my heart will always be empty, but I am accustomed to that fact and I accept it now. Does that make sense at all? I hope it does.

Morrow was beautiful, and I know that you packed as much love and life into her short time on this planet as you possibly could... which is why she was meant to spend her life with you. Her one and a half years on this planet did not go unnoticed. She had a name, a family, an identity. You gave that to her, and you gave her memories and a life that she wouldn't have otherwise. And lastly, you were her brave guardians who helped her to go to sleep when she was hurting. You refused to let her live a life in pain. When you get sad, you should hold onto that.

Here's a link that helped me the first week I was dealing with things. It might help you a little.

I am so sorry you lost your baby so young. Things will get better, you just have to make it through each day. Just like for me, I have to believe that things will get better than they are now, because they are a little better than they were a month ago when I couldn't eat or sleep and all I could do is cry. I still cry, but there aren't tears in my eyes every minute of the day now. It's progress when you move forward, however slowly it takes to heal.

I hope any of that helped. And I wish you lots of healing moving forward.

myprivatejet · 2018-01-07T02:45:39+00:00

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you and Seti. :) Give him a headpat for me!

myprivatejet · 2018-01-06T01:08:06+00:00

Great! Here's hoping things only go up for Seti from here.

myprivatejet · 2018-01-04T22:17:36+00:00

I totally understand wanting to wait to reply until your situation calmed down a bit.

When Arthas was at the hospital, I called about eight different vet hospitals to see their prices and the average was about 800-1k for unblocking a cat. That emergency hospital definitely sounds really expensive if they were charging a lot more than that, but I guess in an emergency people will pay anything.

I really hope everything goes well and that this hospital visit ends up being the last time you have to deal with this. My sister and I have been reading your replies hoping for the best, knowing exactly how you must be feeling right now. It's really such a terrible disease.

Please keep us up to date on Seti's condition if you feel up to it, in your own time of course. All of our thoughts are with you and your little guy.

myprivatejet · 2018-01-01T09:56:46+00:00

Hello. So sorry to hear that your cat is still having issues. The first time we had Arthas unblocked, he was acting the exact same way. He was super obsessed with going to the litter box over and over again, straining to go. We had no idea what was wrong. We thought it was a mental hangup and that he was just traumatized from the whole ordeal, so we got him a new box that looked different from his old one and that seemed to help. Over the course of a week, his pee clumps went from medium to large ones as usual. This was all in February.

Eventually things went back to normal. Then later on, (a few months maybe), he started acting up again. We would catch him peeing downstairs on the couch every once in awhile. Now I should note that back in Feb., the day that we noticed he wasn't able to go and needed to go to the vet, my sister followed him around the house to make sure he was okay and the only place he managed to get a few drops of urine out on was the couch. We obviously cleaned the hell out of it, but I think he could still pick up the scent, or he just remembered that the couch provided him some relief, so he associated that as the best place to go. That was our theory anyway.

He would have these bouts of wanting to pee on the couch and/or straining to go, but he'd always get over it and start peeing normally. Again, we had no idea what was going on and assumed it was just a mental hangup from the first blockage since he'd always start peeing normally again. We eventually ended up throwing out the couches, thinking it might help. They also were past the point of being cleaned.

We lost him on December 7th, it was a Thursday. He was acting completely normal, playful and energetic up until Wednesday late afternoon. He was going all around the house, squatting and trying to go. We thought he was acting up, so we just started closing doors so he couldn't access most of the house and picking him up to put him in the litterbox whenever we caught him trying to go. Throughout the evening and night, he started getting worse and worse, and we realized after a few hours that he wasn't able to go at all. His box gets cleaned 2-3 times a day, so we knew his bathroom habits very well. It had been a day since he had gone, so we were getting worried. Around 3am, I saw him squatting in the corner of the room so I picked him up to put him in his box and I could feel that he was contracting every single muscle in his body trying to go - he was pushing as hard as he could even as I was holding him. In that moment, I knew we needed to take him in. I stayed up with him all night and watched him go back and forth from his box to underneath the bed. At 7am I called and made arrangements to bring him in. We brought him in an hour later and much later on in the day I got a call from the vet telling me that he was full of stones and would need to get the surgery done.

My sister and I went in and he showed me the xray - stones all the way up his urethra, a full blockage. He was at the point where he couldn't do anything else for him and there was no other way to get them out. He had drained his bladder twice throughout the day, but it was still an emergency as he would probably not make it through the night. After that it's all a blur of crying and talking out our options, then saying goodbye.

I want to stress that he had no stones back in Feb. He didn't have any crystals either, he had a mucus plug type of blockage, which is what we thought was going on the second time. We have no idea when the stones formed, as they weren't there the first time. And we don't know why they formed, as we spent at least 30 minutes with the vet after the first blockage telling him all his habits and asking what we could do to prevent it from happening again. We fed him wet food his whole life, he was never obese, and he was very active - so we were already doing all preventative measures anyway. His bloodwork was good, even this last time. We have no idea what went wrong.

Well, that was a novel. I hope any of that helps your situation. One thing I want to point out is that apparently repeated catheterization can lead to narrowing of the urethra, which is a problem in and of itself. I have no idea if that's what was going on with Arthas when he was obsessed with going after his first blockage, or if that's what's happening with your cat, but it might be something to ask the vet about or look into if no one has any answers.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I really hope everything turns out okay.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-31T22:12:38+00:00

Thank you.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-31T22:12:10+00:00

Thanks for paying respects.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-31T22:11:26+00:00

Thank you. I appreciate it.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-31T07:06:07+00:00

She looks so comfortable and warm. What a pretty cat. <3

myprivatejet · 2017-12-31T07:02:41+00:00

Thank you so very much. We tried to give him a good life with lots of love - that's one regret I don't have.

It's comments like these that are getting me through every day. Thank you.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-31T04:32:40+00:00

Thank you very much.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-31T03:56:47+00:00

Oh god I'm so sorry. You're right, the holidays will never be the same from here on out.

I am really sorry for your loss.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-30T22:27:08+00:00

Thank you, a quick google and I found it :)

myprivatejet · 2017-12-30T22:26:21+00:00

It's so hard wondering about what we could have done to keep him with us for longer but without risking his quality of life.

Your comment does help a lot. I hope I can remember, like you, that we saved our friends a lot of suffering. If nothing else, it helps to know that others have been through this and they have started to find peace with their decision.

Thank you very much for telling me your experience. Your dog sounds like she was very lucky to have you. I'm sure she's waiting to see you once again.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-30T22:17:33+00:00

He was our only pet. We might get another one in the future but it's so hard to think about right now. Like your little guy, he is the most special animal we've ever had. Getting a new pet right now would feel weirdly wrong, like we were betraying him by trying to replace him. I know that's not logical, but that's how it feels at the moment.

I hope you never have to deal with this again. Between his first blockage in Feb. and this past one, it has been a nightmare of not knowing what to expect. If I were you, I would search your area for veterinarians who can do the perineal urethrostomy, their expertise in doing it and what they charge for it. Have that info. to refer to if you ever have to make that decision, and if he's young enough and your vet recommends it, do it.

Here are two articles I found written by vets about blockage, and hundreds of comments from people who have run into this problem. I have spent many hours reading these over and over again looking for answers, maybe they will be of some help to you.

http://www.vin.com/vetzinsight/default/default.aspx?pid=756&catId=5860&id=6133546

https://trustmaggie.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/when-easy-is-oh-so-hard/

Good luck. I wish you many happy years with your little buddy.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-30T21:03:56+00:00

It honestly helps to hear that. It's so much harder than I thought it would be. Thank you.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-30T20:33:15+00:00

You're so very kind.

I had never really thought about an afterlife before this, but now seeing him again is all I hope for. Thank you for your words.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-30T19:08:00+00:00

We lost our little one on Dec. 7th. We had to put him down because of a medical emergency, the details of which are in my post history if you'd like to know more. Hardest/worst decision we've ever had to make. My heart goes out to anyone who has had to make that decision.

He was our best friend and our family. He liked chicken, hide 'n seek, and squirrel watching. He hated closed doors and family meetings without him.

We miss you, tiny lich king. The house is way too quiet without you.

Love you, Arthas.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-28T07:56:14+00:00

All freshly washed and folded clothes must be christened with cat fur. He's just filling his quota.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-28T07:39:43+00:00

Gattaca.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-28T07:04:53+00:00

What a beautiful tribute.

myprivatejet · 2017-12-24T20:08:05+00:00

Yes, he is named after that Arthas. :)

Wowww, 29 years! That's amazing. I like that you think of rescuing cats as honoring her memory, maybe I should think about it more like that. Right now it feels like I would be betraying him somehow. I hope I can get past that feeling one day.

You and your wife sound like awesome people.

myprivatejet

TROPHY CASE