Goodbye Kenzie

Good Morning Friends. If you have followed me on twitter, you probably already know that I am in a pretty broken state right now. I’ve talked a bit on this blog about the recent challenges with Kenzie and I figured I owed it to anyone who ONLY reads my blog to give an update. Kenzie was diagnosed with diabetes in 2017, and from that point forward we have had a nightly routine of “pill and poke” where I feed her some anti-anxiety meds and also give her the nightly shot of insulin. I am so thankful that she took it well throughout the years, because it is hard to fully explain how much of “my” baby Kenzie was. For most of her life she was my partner in crime and was with me constantly. She trusted “daddy” explicitly and knew that I would never do anything that wasn’t extremely necessary for her own benefit. So giving two insulin shots a day, often times caused dirty looks but never any real resistance.

Statistically once a cat is diagnosed with diabetes, the average life expectancy is three years. We managed to get a bit more than four years with Kenzie and I have to say every moment of it was worth it. She was still very much “herself” until last week. I woke up Monday morning and knew something was wrong but wasn’t quite sure what. At first I thought maybe Kenzie was just having a bad day, and she spent most of it curled up in my office. Tuesday she was even more sluggish and we made a doctors appointment for her to be dropped off Wednesday morning. From that point forward she was essentially in hospital care. We don’t know what happened first but theory is… her blood sugar was just a bit off which lead to a bladder infection… which led to diabetic ketoacidosis… which lead to pancreatitis… all of which stressed her liver.

She was starting to go the right direction… when tragedy struck Saturday afternoon and she suffered some form of stroke causing a major setback. At the same time she was going into liver failure and ultimately had to make the call no one ever wants to make. Thankfully I got to snuggle with her one last time, but the entire time she was making these little pained noises while still trying push her head underneath my hand. I am just so heartbroken right now. I’ve lost many animals in my forty five years, but Kenzie meant so much to me that it is very hard to fully express in words. She was a mess… but she was my mess. I had never had a cat that played fetch before, and many a Sunday morning while I was editing AggroChat she would be meowing insistently for me to throw a hairband which was her fetch object of choice. As we started doing telework, she spent so many hours curled up beside me on a PC Case box that I let sit there long enough that she started to use it as a place to sleep.

Right now I am also a bit concerned for Josie, because Kenzie and her were buds. Kenzie had never liked another cat before Josie joined our family. She was part big sister and part surrogate mom to Josie and it was not that unusual for them both to be snuggling on my legs while I sat and played on my laptop. Kenzie and Mollie however did not get along at all… and part of the reason why Mollie tiptoed throughout the house is to skirt the attention of Kenzie. So it will be interesting to see what life is like with Mollie in the coming weeks, and if she may come a bit out of her shell. I’ve had both of them snuggling with me during the weekend because I think they can tell that I am not quite right. Cats seem to know when you need them the most. Losing an animal is never easy, but losing Kenzie is extra hard.

The Vet fought a hard fight over the course of several days and I am extremely thankful for everything they were able to do. I have no clue just how much this bill is going to be yet, but I would have probably paid any amount to keep her safe and at my side. I keep going through this cycle of trying to figure out if I could have done something different, second guessing every decision I made over the past week. The Vet has tried to assure me there wasn’t much else that I could have done, but I also sorta feel like that is part of their job to try and assuage fears. There will always be part of me that feels like I failed to keep her safe and happy, and it even hits home more so since so much of my daily routine centered around trying to keep her alive. I think I am going to be broken for a long while, but I am very thankful for all of the support that you gave me. I do sorta think things have to scab over a bit before I can really engage fully with the world again.

One thing that does bring me no small amount of joy is the fact that Kenzie is permanently part of my blog’s Masthead. When I was playing Monster Hunter World I tried my best to pattern my Palico after Kenzie and named her as such. The truth is that the options were completely incapable of capturing her, so when I asked my good friend Ammo to create artwork of my MHW character, I got her to draw the Palico to look a bit more true to the actual Kenzie. So every time I make a post I will have Kenzie up there, preparing to go to space in her adorable Baan armor set. Goodbye baby, you were a goofball but you were my goofball. I miss you so much.