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Sep. 27th, 2023 12:06 amI didn't want to write this entry, but if I'm going to actually keep a presence here I suppose I should talk about it here too. On Sunday night we were naffing around the house, getting ready for a blackout scheduled for Monday so the power company could do some equipment upgrades or something, and I went upstairs to try and find my iPhone batteries. I found Maggie on the floor, legs stretched out like they should be stiff although they weren't very, tongue hanging out of her mouth. For a second I thought she was dead and then I picked her up and she yowled, like she was mad. I'd be mad too in that situation I guess? I called my husband, actually called on the phone because I didn't know if he had his head phones on. He came upstairs and took a look at her and we basically went "ER?" "ER."
We took her to the vet ER and I held her out to the nearest person who came out of the back in scrubs and said "Seizure cat" and they took her back immediately, directing people to take our details and to take a medical history. Within about ten minutes or less they had us back in a room. Within fifteen minutes they said they didn't think she would recover from this. Her blood sugar had indeed tanked, her blood pressure had also tanked, I asked how long it would take to do bloodwork just in case it was another low blood sugar seizure (she'd had one of those in February, which she'd recovered from just fine and she's had excellent quality of life since then as far as we and our regular vet can tell) and then the vet came back from, I guess getting the vials together for bloodwork to tell us that she thought Maggie was trying to pass on, and that she wouldn't survive taking bloodwork. So we gave the okay and we said goodbye to her. When we got back the time elapsed between when I called my husband to come upstairs and when we pulled back into the driveway with an empty carrier was 75 minutes.
It was the ... well, the second easiest euthanasia decision to make, the first easiest was Zeus because he was actually on his way out and if the vet had told us "he can pass naturally, he's not in any pain now" we would have just held him until. But definitely the second easiest, because this seizure did look much worse than the low blood sugar one, she really did feel in my arms like her blood pressure had tanked (which I know from holding Zeus, who also had that, albeit with less seizure and more slowly fading over a few hours). And after the few months of health problems last fall we knew she'd taken some damage from her diabetes going all over the place. First her insulin dosage was too low, then within a couple months it was too HIGH, then it was too low again (although thankfully we didn't find this out with an ER visit, just with a regular checkup). So we knew there were problems, and we knew something like this could happen. We just didn't quite expect it to happen within 75 minutes.
It feels more real today, Tuesday night, than it did on Monday. Monday was hard, and I was glad to take the day off because of power company issues and not have to explain to my boss "yeah my cat died and I'm a bit shattered." I actually think she'd understand, she has dogs herself, but I still feel weird saying I might need a couple days, and having a day of enforced doing nothing, because of course the internet was down completely and I ended up laying on the bed, listening to music, and napping in and out of consciousness. That kind of helped. My husband had to go back to work, but his work demands attention more forcefully and immediately so maybe that helped too?
And there's also Cassius. Maggie never warmed to him the way she bonded to Michelle but he adored her, he bunted her and tried to get her to lick-groom him and tried to get her to accept him lick-grooming her. I found him sitting in the spot where she'd seized tonight, and according to my husband (who sees him more in the evening when he's getting ready for bed earlier) he sits there a lot of an evening. I don't think he's waiting for her to come back, I think he knows she's died, I think he's grieving along with the rest of us and I wish I could do more to help. We're giving him extra cuddles, for now.
(There's also a part of me that's superbly bitter at the universe, wondering if the appearance of Felix Doe, Cat of Mystery is the universe's way of balancing out that sudden loss of one cat. Bitter. And a little bit angry.)
Other than that, not that that isn't a lot of "that", things are going well I guess? But it hurts, and I'm still looking around for her when I turn around after a shower (she used to jump in the tub and catch the water that dripped from the faucet in the last couple seconds), when I go into the kitchen (and she would follow me expecting to be fed wet food), when I'm walking around the water bowl (she used to lay down by it, I think because after two rounds of getting hospitalized for dehydration it was sort of a comfort thing). It hurts. And Cassius hurts and I want to make it better, and it's awful.
We took her to the vet ER and I held her out to the nearest person who came out of the back in scrubs and said "Seizure cat" and they took her back immediately, directing people to take our details and to take a medical history. Within about ten minutes or less they had us back in a room. Within fifteen minutes they said they didn't think she would recover from this. Her blood sugar had indeed tanked, her blood pressure had also tanked, I asked how long it would take to do bloodwork just in case it was another low blood sugar seizure (she'd had one of those in February, which she'd recovered from just fine and she's had excellent quality of life since then as far as we and our regular vet can tell) and then the vet came back from, I guess getting the vials together for bloodwork to tell us that she thought Maggie was trying to pass on, and that she wouldn't survive taking bloodwork. So we gave the okay and we said goodbye to her. When we got back the time elapsed between when I called my husband to come upstairs and when we pulled back into the driveway with an empty carrier was 75 minutes.
It was the ... well, the second easiest euthanasia decision to make, the first easiest was Zeus because he was actually on his way out and if the vet had told us "he can pass naturally, he's not in any pain now" we would have just held him until. But definitely the second easiest, because this seizure did look much worse than the low blood sugar one, she really did feel in my arms like her blood pressure had tanked (which I know from holding Zeus, who also had that, albeit with less seizure and more slowly fading over a few hours). And after the few months of health problems last fall we knew she'd taken some damage from her diabetes going all over the place. First her insulin dosage was too low, then within a couple months it was too HIGH, then it was too low again (although thankfully we didn't find this out with an ER visit, just with a regular checkup). So we knew there were problems, and we knew something like this could happen. We just didn't quite expect it to happen within 75 minutes.
It feels more real today, Tuesday night, than it did on Monday. Monday was hard, and I was glad to take the day off because of power company issues and not have to explain to my boss "yeah my cat died and I'm a bit shattered." I actually think she'd understand, she has dogs herself, but I still feel weird saying I might need a couple days, and having a day of enforced doing nothing, because of course the internet was down completely and I ended up laying on the bed, listening to music, and napping in and out of consciousness. That kind of helped. My husband had to go back to work, but his work demands attention more forcefully and immediately so maybe that helped too?
And there's also Cassius. Maggie never warmed to him the way she bonded to Michelle but he adored her, he bunted her and tried to get her to lick-groom him and tried to get her to accept him lick-grooming her. I found him sitting in the spot where she'd seized tonight, and according to my husband (who sees him more in the evening when he's getting ready for bed earlier) he sits there a lot of an evening. I don't think he's waiting for her to come back, I think he knows she's died, I think he's grieving along with the rest of us and I wish I could do more to help. We're giving him extra cuddles, for now.
(There's also a part of me that's superbly bitter at the universe, wondering if the appearance of Felix Doe, Cat of Mystery is the universe's way of balancing out that sudden loss of one cat. Bitter. And a little bit angry.)
Other than that, not that that isn't a lot of "that", things are going well I guess? But it hurts, and I'm still looking around for her when I turn around after a shower (she used to jump in the tub and catch the water that dripped from the faucet in the last couple seconds), when I go into the kitchen (and she would follow me expecting to be fed wet food), when I'm walking around the water bowl (she used to lay down by it, I think because after two rounds of getting hospitalized for dehydration it was sort of a comfort thing). It hurts. And Cassius hurts and I want to make it better, and it's awful.