Goodbye, Tabitha

Tabitha, the cat I’ve had since 2003, passed away yesterday. It’s obviously still fresh and doesn’t quite feel real. She’s been having health problems for a few years now, but everything accelerated starting on Friday, and on Saturday I had to make the decision to let her go.

A few weeks ago, Tabitha developed an ear infection. I noticed that she was having more trouble hearing me and she had started scratching at her ears, along with a bit of discharge. I took her to the vet, and they prescribed an antibiotic.

Giving her the medication was complicated. It had to go deep into her ears, and cats as a rule don’t like it when you hold them down and put medication there. I had to wrap Tabitha up in a blanket so she couldn’t move, put the medication in, and then hold her in place for several seconds. Then I’d let her go, she’d shake her head to try and get the medication out, and perhaps occasionally she’d give me a glare.

The third time I did this, I let her go and she started stumbling around like she was drunk. She stumbled into my office and just plopped on the floor because she was so dizzy. She was better after about five minutes, but this was obviously a concerning reaction. I called the vet, and they advised me to stop giving her the meds. When I asked about what to do about the infection, they essentially kind of shrugged.

I didn’t like that response, so I made an appointment with another vet for this past Friday. Tabitha had briefly gotten better while on the medication, and I didn’t want the infection to come back because she stopped treatment too soon. If the first medication caused issues, perhaps another one would work better.

She also had a few other things going on. Her stools were pretty loose, and her front paws had swollen up. Combine all of that with a ravenous appetite and it adds up to a picture of a sick kitty.

Tabitha has had some issues with her vestibular system for a while. Her sense of balance had been deteriorating for a couple of years, and while it didn’t prevent her from jumping on things, she wasn’t as sure of herself as she used to be. One way this manifested is that she started throwing up on car rides of longer than 20 minutes. In order to reduce the odds of her throwing up, I decided to withhold food around 12pm. Her appointment was at 4:30, so that would give her four hours to digest her food before getting into the car.

However, this plan didn’t really work. Tabitha is used to me giving her food on demand, and when I suddenly ignored her, it confused her. She hopped on my lap. She hopped on my computer desk. She tried being super cute, which is her go-to strategy for getting food. She also sat on the ground and just stared at me. Ultimately it worked, and I gave her more food around 1:30.

I was able to resist her other attempts at manipulation, and we left for the vet at 4pm. She did wind up throwing up on the way there, but it was a pretty small amount.

Once we got there and the vet had had a chance to conduct an initial assessment, she was concerned about Tab’s overall health and wanted to take a chest x-ray. I approved it, and the news was not good; Tabitha had heart failure. On top of that, the medication used to treat the heart failure is hard on the kidneys. Considering that Tabitha was already in stage II of kidney failure, it meant that we had reached the end of the road for what we could do for Tabitha. The options were walking a tightrope of ever-expanding medications that would lower her quality of life…or let her go.

While it was surprising, it wasn’t that unexpected. I’ve known that Tabitha has been on the downswing for a while now and that it was only a matter of time before we’d get to this point.

It was sad news, but now that I knew the time was here, I knew I could take some time to say goodbye. I’d spoil her rotten and give her as much food as she wanted. Then I’d make an appointment for someone to come to the apartment and administer the drugs that would send Tabitha on. She would be comfortable, and I’d make her final moments as good as I possibly could.

Unfortunately, that isn’t how things panned out.

The X-ray showed that Tabitha had a lot of fluid in her chest cavity from her heart failing. She had so much liquid there that it was becoming difficult for her to breathe. We had to remove the liquid so she could go home. I asked about the risks of the procedure. The vet told me that there was a risk of Tabitha suddenly crashing. The liquid caused a lot of internal pressure, and there are times where the sudden change in pressure can cause the body to fail. However, she couldn’t ethically release Tabitha to me without removing the liquid. I didn’t want Tabitha to be in pain, so I approved the procedure.

I did take a few minutes with her prior to starting the procedure. Since there was a chance she wouldn’t survive the procedure I wanted her to be able to at least see me before it happened.

They brought her into the room I was in, and we spent some time together. She was very inquisitive. She got on my lap. She hopped on a couch in the room. She crawled under things. She explored. I pet her, and she soaked up the attention.

It took them an hour or so to perform the procedure and then another 30 minutes to get all of Tabitha’s new medications. We wound up getting home around 10pm. I let Tabitha out of her cat carrier and she was kind of woozy from the meds they had given her. I offered her food. She sniffed it, but wasn’t really interested in eating.

Little did I know that it was a lot more serious than disinterest. At the time, I assumed it was just the drugs and that in the morning she would have her appetite back.

During the night I left my bedroom door open so Tabitha could come into the bedroom if she wanted. She stayed away, which means she was probably not feeling very great.

When I woke up in the morning, I walked into my office to find Tabitha. She’s been hiding behind a whiteboard I have on the floor, but she wasn’t there. I heard a “mrreow” coming from the closet, and Tabitha walked out to say good morning. She followed me into the kitchen and I got her breakfast ready.

I set it down and she started to sniff it. Then she went back to her water dish…but she wasn’t drinking the water. She was putting her nose in the water, but wasn’t licking any water up. She would lean against the water fountain, and the water wound up soaking into her fur. The entire front of her chest was soaked, which was very unlike her. As is the case with most cats, Tabitha really hated getting wet. For her to willingly get herself wet was concerning.

She eventually went back to her food dish, and sniffed the food again. One of her quirks is that she licks up her wet cat food instead of biting it. She wasn’t licking the food up. She’d do the same thing as she was doing with her water; she put her nose very near it and sniff, but didn’t lick the food up. It was obvious that she was trying to eat and that she was trying to drink water, but somehow wasn’t able to.

Tabitha was going in a circuit from her water fountain to the food dish and then back again. She kept trying, over and over and over and over. This was extremely concerning. A cat having no interest in food usually means that they’re about to die. I had never heard of a cat wanting to eat/drink but being unable to.

I tried several things to get her to eat and drink. I removed the water fountain and gave her a bowl to drink water out of. That didn’t help; she just dunked her whole snout in there while managing to not lick anything. She then started dipping her paws in the water, like she was trying to work out how to get the water from the bowl into her mouth. I was afraid that she would spill the water bowl, so I switched back to the water fountain. She followed me into the bathroom, so I ran the shower for a minute so she could go into the showed and lick the water up; it’s kind of gross but it’s one of her favorite things.

I even mimed licking in the hopes that she’d realize what she was doing wrong. No change. I got out a treat and tried to feed it to her by hand. She would smear the treat on her nose, but never licked it off.

This was abnormal behavior for Tabitha and extremely concerning.

The vet I had taken her to the previous night is closed on weekends. I eventually decided to go to the emergency vet to have her evaluated. I initially was going to wait and see if things resolved for Tabitha on their own, but after it became clear that she was unable to eat or drink, I realized it wasn’t something to wait on. I put her in the cat carrier and we drove over to the emergency vet.

The vet assessed her, and the news wasn’t good. She didn’t know what was wrong with Tabitha. There wasn’t anything they could do there. My options were to take her to another emergency vet with better facilities and hope that they could figure out the cause…or euthanize her.

There were no other choices.

Tabitha had already had a traumatic 24 hours. The previous night she had been poked, prodded, x-rayed, sedated, and had a lot of fluid removed from her chest. Now she was desperately hungry and thirsty but unable to eat or drink. Taking her to the other facility meant that she’d be subjected to even more tests, traumatized further, and the entire time unable to have any food or water. There was no guarantee that the tests at the other facility would even be able to figure out the issue, so there was a very real possibility that she’d have to endure all this testing for no real benefit.

I just…couldn’t do that to her.

My priority has always been Tabitha’s quality of life. Subjecting her to further testing at that point would have crossed that line. The only choice left was euthanizing her.

They asked where I wanted to have it done, and I asked if they had any rooms with windows we could open. With a breeze, I’d feel safe enough to take off my mask. Unfortunately, none of their procedure rooms have windows. They offered to do it in my car, and I countered by suggesting outside.

The emergency vet had a little outdoor area with a pond and some trees. They brought out a chair for me to sit in, and a few minutes later they brought Tabitha out. I sat in the chair with Tab and took a few pictures. I even shot some video so I could better remember her final moments. I then put my phone down so I could give Tabitha my undivided attention.

She was looking around with interest at the surroundings, and started moving around like she wanted to go for a walk. That wasn’t really an option because she had an IV in one of her arms, so I held her close and started walking around the pond. Her hearing was messed up, but I still talked to her and let her know how much she meant to me. I told her that she was a good girl and that it was time for her to move on. I told her it was okay to let go, and that I would miss her.

Typically when I pick Tabitha up, she wants no part of it. She tries to push me away and tries to hop on the ground. This time she let me hold her. She leaned against my shoulder and was staring, wide-eyed, at everything.

After a little while the veterinarian came out, and I took Tabitha over. We got settled in the chair, and the vet started administering the drugs. Tabitha looked up at me, and I pet her and reassured her that everything was okay. I stroked her as the drugs kicked in. After a minute or two, it was over. She was gone.

The vet walked inside to give me some privacy, and I started to sob. Tabitha had crossed the rainbow bridge.

A life well lived

I’m still coming to terms with the rapidity of her decline, but there’s no denying that Tabitha lived a long time and had a really good life. 20 years is the upper bound for a cat’s life expectancy, and Tabitha nearly made it. She would have been 20 years old in July.

We had a lot of adventures together. I always did my best to ensure she had what she needed to be happy. I think that overall, I succeeded.

Pets are with us for such a short amount of time compared to our own lifespans. We know when we select a pet that we’ll likely have to say goodbye a lot sooner than we’d like. There’s no good time, and while Tabitha’s ending was not what I would have preferred, it came at the end of a very long life.

The veterinarian on Friday evening told me that Tabitha was so loving and trusting that it was clear that she lived in a loving environment.

And now for some cat pictures.

Goodbye, Tabitha. I miss you.

Because she was a cat, one of her favorite past times was taking naps, and giving it her all.

She was always switching up her behavior. At some point within the last year or two, she realized that if she tapped my face that she would always get my attention. She tended to do this to let me know she was hungry.

She wasn’t always demanding. Sometimes she was content just to hang out.

Goodbye, my sweet girl. Goodbye.