post pics of your cat(s)

sorry for the bummer post, but i just felt writing something to take my mind off of that painful emptiness in the apartment without her...

she was 11 years old, a real douchebag of a cat that destroyed everything in her path including people's hands and legs (of people of whom she was not afraid ), and i let her because why the hell not. dropped and kicked around cell phones, headphones, remotes, scratched monitors... all the furniture in the apartment looks likes rags because of her. all of that made the moments of her showing affection and some sort of kindness of fondness of me all the more special and memorable. extremely energetic and hunter-like for the most of her life. i was kinda bummed that she only got to live in the apartments on higher floors, because it seemed she was really fit to be some wild street cat that would form cat gangs to fuck shit up in the neighborhood.

about a 3 weeks ago i noticed that she had lost quite a bit of energy, wasn't as playful as usual and had some difficulty breathing, straining her belly quite a bit with every breath. the vet diagnosis was chylothorax, a pretty rare condition. what happens is an abnormal amount effusion of some fatty liquid into the area between the ribs and the lungs that makes breathing difficult as it accumulates. most often the actual cause for that is unknown and sometimes this condition resolves just by itself. so the decision was to try to manage it with periodical removals of that accumulated liquid, low fat diet and blood pressure lowering meds in hope that it will resolve. i also ordered rutin, a supplement that's supposed to help and potentially gradually tie the channel that's leaking that liquid, but i didn't even get to try it as i had to order it from abroad and it still hasn't arrived.

those periodical liquid removal procedures seemed like they helped a bit, even though she didn't quite return to her previous self. but yesterday things got a bit worse, her breathing with the belly increased, but she was still active enough, had a good appetite and purred a lot so that it didn't alarm me too much. today was bad, she ate very little, wasn't active and breathed more heavily and the last hour hour of her life was pretty brutal. she breathed rapidly with open mouth, meowed loudly, salivated a lot, pooped in the middle of the room, stumbled...i rushed her to the vet who tried to remove the liquid many times approaching from various directions but almost nothing came out. possibly the lungs got damaged, or the liquid got pocketed somewhere, or some underlying condition was actually kicking in hard, anyway there weren't any more sensible options to try and she was doing really bad so me and my mom (it was her cat initially) decided to put her to sleep and then buried her in a grove nearby :(

still kicking myself hard for not doing all i could. should have done more through tests to maybe find the underlying cause for that chylothorax, should have rushed her to the vet yesterday instead of waiting...but still, no more than one hour of suffering in a 11 year long easy life is a pretty good deal after all.

went to feed some stray cats that hang around the house with her food after i came to my senses a bit after the whole thing, they were real glad and one was especially ecstatic after the meal, purring and rubbing on me from every direction, felt pretty good.