Saki is gone

[lavendertook]

My baby is dead.



Her breathing continued very labored this evening and didn't settle out again after a while as it had been doing all weekend--it had been labored earlier in the evening but it got better for a while as she laid her chin on my hand, but then it got bad again and she just couldn't get comfortable and kept fleeing, so I put her in her crate, and took her to the emergency clinic. She touched my fingers through the grate a few times in a frantic way and I talked and sang to her, but on our way there about 11 pm I heard her breathing stop suddenly, and knew she was gone. They pronounced her dead at the clinic. I petted her empty body and left her with them to have her cremated and her ashes will be sprinkled along with other pets at an orchard in Pennsylvania. claudia603, I sent her wrapped in the wool blankie you made her that she loved to sit on.

Maybe if I didn't hesitate and left earlier, she could have been saved, but it was just as likely she could have been poked and prodded, and then died alone in a cage kept all night under observation. I hesitated because of that, because I didn't know if being seen by a vet who didn't know her would help, and that her symptoms weren't different than the vet tech saw yesterday at our vets when Saki choked up before she gave her the sub cut fluids, and I didn't want to put her through more poking and perhaps being left for overnight observation in a strange metal place alone that might not have been able to help anyway, and she had been so up and down this weekend, though the downs were getting longer, and I was hoping she could hold out to be seen by her doctor tomorrow to know if the throat stitches could come out.

I hate that she suffered a lot this weekend, but she also purred some and I brushed her a lot and we cuddled this morning and I am so glad I slept on the futon next to her the last 2 nights, and I stroked her as she rested her head in my hand this evening. Maybe it was not worse than dying unconscious in surgery or being peacefully euthanized. Like the cats I had euthanized, Gabby and Milli, she told me it was time, and for them it was right and peaceful as I held them--but Saki, it IS like her forceful self to leave on her own terms and not wait to be euthanized. And we were still together at the end.

But my heart is so broken. She is so wrapped around it. 17 is a ripe age, and for the last few years, I feared losing her many times and at those times did not expect her to get this far--every day was a gift, but I so wanted her to be here healthy and happy longer still. Still, I was treating all last week like my possible last week with her with knots in my stomach all week--I knew what surgery can mean. But I also knew what a big ass fast-growing tumor could do as well, so we had to try. Oh, my clever, loving, empathetic, determined, and adorable little girl, bringer of the extreme cute, I miss you so so so much. I am going to miss all the wonderful things you did and were. She was truly an amazing being.

Tuxie is beside me. I don't know when he will realize she is gone for good or how it will be for him--he adored her.

No more Sakiness. How can there be no more Saki? My world is immensely shrunken.


Also posted at http://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/182735.html with comments

Comments

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Ah, Lavender, how lucky all your kitties have been to have you. You are a wonderful cat-mom. Thanks for the good wishes for Elsa. She and her foster brother are seven now, so we have our fingers crossed. Only one of our Siamese cats made it past nine (three died at nine and one at four, all of cancer); Raoul, our fat, sedentary cat lived to be 16. He died of cancer, too, but after a relatively full life. (So much for getting plenty of exercise and eating moderately to keep you going.)

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I cannot believe they are 7--they were just kittens! OMG! And you had just lost Andre (wasn't it?) of the sultry looks, and Raoul just before. That's not fair so many of your babies lived so shortly--you're a terrific loving meezer mom. I hope Elsa and Charles break Raoul's ripe old age for a new record.

I just posted some pics of Saki--I'll be doing a lot of that in the coming days to comfort myself. I'm hoping some of the fur on my screen and keyboard cover is hers.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Yes, time flies, doesn't it? We got the kittens on Christmas day 2008, weeks before our daughter went to DC for Obama's inauguration then left for Coast Guard boot camp. It has gone by quickly, hasn't it?

Yes, we got the kittens to be company for Angelo (your memory for names is excellent!) after Pixie and Raoul died within months of each other. Angelo got to like the kittens but died the following year himself.

I, too, hope Elsa and Charles make it past the Fatal Nine, in spite of their propensity to oral disease. We've got our fingers crossed, they are such characters and such affectionate cats.

I will look at your photos when I get back from my half shift at the library. Must run!

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Is your daughter happy in the coast guard?

I remember Angelo and his long suffering with the kittens--I'm glad he got to like them. The next set of pics I 'm going to post of Saki reminds me of a pic you posted of Angelo when he was in full seduction mode, like Saki is in this set.

I will cross everything for them an their longevity. I was so relieved when Saki made it through into her teens after having lost Stormie at 9. I remember when Charles and Elsa were kittens with respiratory issues, and I'm glad they got past that, and am hopeful they are self-innoculated from early waning after gainng the strength to conquer that hurdle.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

What a memory you have! Yes, they had/have feline herpes. Endless sneezy, snotty noses and bouts with conjunctivitis. The vet says that like human herpes simplex it lives on in the system dormantly until there is weakness, illness or stress, as with humans. They still do a lot of sneezing compared to previous cats but they seem happy and fit otherwise.

I don't remember Stormie, Lavender. When did Stormie die?

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Poor babies, and a perpetual worry for you. *hugs*

Stormie was the first kitty of my own--a beautiful petite seal point siamese from the shelter in Chapel Hill, NC and came with me up to MD and died from IBD at 9--wasting away for 4 months while I shoved innumerable meds down her poor throat under the recommendation of a vet who was trying too hard because he lost a beloved dog when he was also in grad school. She died heaving her way out in my arms, and I lost all direct memory of her beautiful face, but that last pained look. I did my best by her, but years later I realized I put her through too much, but didn't know better at the time, so have done better by all my successive cats by what I learned.

Stormie was somewhat like Saki hyped up on speed. And quite a climber, and surprise jumper on one's back, loving, possessive in the extreme, and with an incredible range of sweet songs. She was the love of my young adult years, as Saki was the gentler love of my middle age.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Stormie sounds like she was a real character! I'm sorry she had such a protracted end. I did the same thing when our first cat to die got cancer. I made him hang around far too long, not wanting him to die at the vets, to whom he hated going. He was in terrible distress by the time I threw up my hands and brought him in, even more than I knew at the time, not realising how much suffering cats conceal. It must be hard for kind-hearted vets, looking on, knowing they can't force owners to make this heart-breaking decision, yet sorry for the pets made to suffer longer than they should. It's not as though my cat wants to finish his novel, or wait to say goodbye to far-flung family members, reasons a human might choose to linger in spite of great suffering. But, like you, I learned from that, and did not prolong subsequent cats' last sufferings so pig-headedly. I still have an awful time making the call, waiting a little too late in each case, but not nearly as badly as with that first cat to die.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

*hugs you* Because Saki was in such good shape before the surgery and the wonder of how much good time she could have had without it, the what if's came back for another round last night if she could have been saved, which always involve endless research and I couldn't do any more at this point without enrolling in vet school. Failed surgery is what it is. Failing to get to the emergency clinic in time to more likely put her through further misery than save her and get her back into a condition she could recover from is what it is. I think I need to find me a local pet bereavement support group.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Are there pet bereavement support groups? That is great. People think, Oh, they're just animals, after all, but the bond between a person and their pet can be very deep, or, maybe, more importantly, have a deep impact, even if their relationship was one of "mere socializing", its importance not realized until the relationship was removed.

A person can feel bereft and despondent after the death of an animal companion, as can other animals can who have been that pet's companion. We certainly have seen grief and dismay from our surviving pets, when the pet who went to the vets never came back from the vets. And it went on for a good long while. (Not as long as for a dog, probably, based on people's stories, but as long as for humans, who are not typically as devoted as dogs.)

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I'm having a hard time finding anything around here. I'm very blessed to have you all for my online support group. I started going through another bad round of what if's the last couple of days, just when I thought I had put that all away, and couldn't stop researching her surgery and complications and what if I had a different doctor and . . . I'm better today, and I hope I can just keep to the clean grieving. Surgeries fail and that's all. She lived 17 good years with very little suffering at the end. I think all the work that went into treating her hyperthyroidism and IBD the last 3 years wrapped our bond closer and made her more of a way of life for me. We were lucky to have each other for so long and I must remember that blessing, and as Jan writes--let the bubble of her gently float away. Jan wrote a beautiful, loving poem for Saki and me, and I posted it with pics last night, if you haven't seen it yet. I still need to get to your last entry with Jan.

Though Moo is not grieving, I think Tuxie is a little bit--he must miss her obsessive grooming that included him.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

I will look for the poem Jan wrote, Lavender. And give Tuxie a rough series of licks for me, in token of Saki's "obsessive grooming", ha ha. Yes, they love grooming each other to the point of Deep Spittiness, do they not?

I hope you will be able to let go of the "what if" scenarios. No one ever gets it right, when the ending is death. People think they make the right decisions when the outcome is continued life, but not if the outcome is death. Still, however resisted, death comes to us all, our pets and ourselves, whatever our decisions, "the Gift of the Second Born." As Arwen might have said, once she'd been left by the death of Aragorn, "Some gift!". Mortality remains our brick wall--scary, inevitable and daunting--yet, perhaps as Tolkien believed, there is, however unimaginable, a wider, deeper life on the other side of death's wall. That is my hope, even if I still find the wall "scary, inevitable and daunting".

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I went through a few horrible rounds of the second guessing the last couple of weeks--I think I'm past that worst part of the grief process now, I hope it doesn't' come back for more rounds.

I just miss her so much, but I am starting to get used to the past tense now, though she will always be with me and present in my heart--but this part of my life with her present is over and a new one is beginning, the bad and the good. I'd love to not be agnostic and feel there is an afterlife, but since I've had serially possessive cats, I'm not sure how I'd keep them all feeling as centered as they needed if we were all there together--Storm and Saki would be at loggerheads, unless I could get them bonded to each other as well as me--that would be an eternal project--so how a Heaven would be a Heaven is a mystery to me. (-:

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

A feline theological discussion -- I'll bet Saki would offer excellent input. :)