AggroChat Episode 34

Bad Name Great Cat

This is going to be a really rough post to get through, so I am sitting here avoiding writing.  That said I need to actually get through this, otherwise I will sit here staring at the empty page all day.  Yesterday started off fairly normally, I got up, got showered and went out for breakfast like I have for years.  The problem is what happened during the middle of the day pretty much broke my heart.  Fifteen years ago this past Thanksgiving weekend, the above cat entered our lives as we rescued her from the cold of my parents barn.  There is some confusion about her name, because I originally named her Sasha having always liked the name.  My wife however had a living terror of a student named Sasha in her class that year…  so the name actually stuck.  The only people who ever called her that were the veterinarian and my mother.  When we got her, she was tiny and into everything like kittens always are… there was a common refrain of “you little shit” as we cleaned up one mess she made after another.  Well the name stuck and she was forever called “Little Shit” from that point on.

She never would have guessed her name was a bad thing however because we said it with the utmost love.  She was my baby girl, but she spent as much time being my wife’s baby as she did mine.  There were so many nights I fell asleep with her purring loudly on our pillows.  She had the most amazing purr that you could literally hear like three rooms away.  For most of her life she always wanted to be somewhere near us, as evidenced by the two pictures above.  In fact I always tried to make sure she had room to lay down either at my feet or on the sofa near me.  You don’t realize how much you have changed your life to fit someone else.  She had all sorts of quirks, like while we were getting ready in the morning she would hop in the shower first and get a drink of water while the shower was running.  Actually that was only one of two ways she was willing to get a drink, the other being from a bright red cup we left on the bathroom floor.  There were many times in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of that cup banging around, letting me know that I needed to get up and fill it up for her.

Some Rough Times

We have had two boy cats that had thyroid issues, so we were well aware of the tell tale signs.  A bit over two years ago we started seeing them in her, so we got her into the vet and had been treating her with a topical cream that I had to smear into her ear morning and night.  She was an absolute trooper and stayed still as I “greased” her ears as I referred to it.  About one in three cats experience some digestive problems associated with thyroid disease, so when she started having issues with inappropriate elimination… we thought it was all tied to the issues as a whole.  It became a nightly task for me to come up and pick up the messes left by her during the day.  Frustrating as it might have been, she was worth every bit of the effort.  Over the last two weeks however it had gotten noticeably worse.  She was spending pretty much all of her time sleeping on the couch, and then barely making it off the couch before having to go potty.  Yesterday afternoon we took her into the vet to see if maybe we needed to tweak the dose of thyroid medicine again.

Little shit had always been a waddly cat with a huge belly, and we always attributed it to her just being built “stocky” she reminded us of one of those strong country women, that while they might not win a beautify competition had the sheer presence to get job on the farm done.  As she lost weight her belly became more distended, which again we attributed to her odd body shape.  However upon seeing it the vet was immediately concerned.  Upon taking some X-Rays the news was pretty grim.  There was a massive growth in her stomach region pushing in on her bowels and likely causing pain to eat and got to the bathroom as well.  With her age there was nothing really surgery wise that they would recommend as the likelihood of recovery was pretty slim.  We were left with the extremely hard choice of either taking her home and waiting for her to get worse and die, or letting her go.  She had always been a very clean girl, with extremely preferences in her potty habits.  She hated a dirty litter box, and there were certain kinds of litter that she absolutely refused to use.  I could tell the last year was rough on her, because when she was force to used to bathroom in a bad place there was a look of panic on her face.  With the extreme increase over the last two weeks it felt like we were not terribly far from her messing herself in her sleep, and that is something she would not have wanted to happen.

So we made the decision that seemed like it was going to be the best for her.  She had struggled with many things over the last few years.  She was struggling to move around the house, and we had to install pet stairs on the sofa for her to get up and down easily.  She had not slept with us for about a month, spending nearly 24 hours a day sleeping in my chair on the sofa, snuggled into blankets that I am sure smelled like me.  When we tried carrying her to bed, she would last for a bit but ultimately hop down and return to the sofa.  Cats do an amazing job of hiding what ails them… and I think she was trying to keep away from us from showing how much she hurt.  I wish I could have fixed her, made it all better…  but I couldn’t this time.  Truth is she has probably always had this mass in her belly, and we always thought it was just her unique shape.  This might have been the first time she ever had an x-ray… and unfortunately it happened far too late.  I wish I could go back in time and have caught this earlier, but I am not really sure how we could have known.  All I know is that I lost one of my best friends, and one of the sweetest animals we will likely ever have.  Yesterday it felt like my world was falling apart, and I am still not sure if the gravity has really hit me.  Laying down last night, as I called for the cats to come to bed… I had to stop myself from yelling for Little Shit.  We will miss you baby girl.

AggroChat Episode #34

I am so thankful to the awesome people that I record with.  During the day yesterday I was not sure if I could go on that night and record a podcast.  Then something happened over twitter.  Someone mentioned me stating that they had found the podcast that day and was really enjoying it.  Turns out they listened from show 33 to 24… so some 14 hours of our podcast in a row.  I have to say hearing that greatly improved my day and gave me that push to keep going last night.  I just was not sure if I could be my normally jolly self, and carry the show…  so Kodra stepped up and did an excellent job as master of ceremonies.  Actually he did a phenomenal job matching pretty much everything that I normally do and then adding his own flourish.

There was much discussion of Final Fantasy XIV as usual with Raven talking about completing her second Novus weapon and beginning a second Nexus grind, and several of us talking about our victory over Ultros and solid attempts on Tier 5 in Binding Coil of Bahamut.  I talk World of Warcraft raiding, and looking forward to beginning the Highmaul Raid after missing Thursday and my raids first two boss kills.  We talk Heroes of the Storm, since this week they finally saw fit to give Rae an invite.  That game is exceptionally fun and better suited for a more casual gamer than League of Legends is.  Over the course of the week we have played quite a bit of it and talk about our personal hero preferences and playstyles.  Kodra runs a much tighter ship than I seem to, because we actually clocked in at just barely over an hour once editing was finished.  Extra special thanks to Kodra for steering the ship while I couldn’t quite muster the oomph to do so.