Hello all -
I know I haven't been on here in a while. We've had quite the busy summer. We went to Jamaica for a week in June to celebrate our 5-year-anniversary a little early (we were there during my b'day and it was great), and we have had a couple of weekends out of town for weddings, in addition to lots of good times at home with our 4 beautiful kitties.
Well, the past few days have been some of the hardest my husband and I have had to deal with in our lives. We love our kitties sooooo much, and thought that since they were all pretty young (Bailey, Leila & Leo were all turning 4 this year, Claudia turned 3), we'd have them around for a long time. They were indoor cats, also, so that kept them from most environmental hazards that they'd encounter on their own.
Evidently, Leo had an even more difficult time before we adopted him than we previously thought - as some of you know, he was rescued by the group we adopted him from with a bad respiratory infection and the horrible case of earmites that gave him his uniquely shaped ears. At the time we adopted him, he was pretty much cured of all of that - he was supposedly between 1 and 2 years old, but it's hard to know for sure whether he wasn't older than that. All we can figure from the past couple of days is that he got into something when he was out in the wilds on his own that irreparably damaged his kidneys.
Leo came to live with us on April 8, 2004. Last night, after a couple days' spent in the emergency room, we made the heart-breaking decision to put Leo to sleep to end his misery. He was in the advanced stages of kidney failure. From what the vets told us, they figured that Leo's kidneys had been compromised from way back before we adopted him and he just coped with having only partial kidney function for the last couple of years and finally there wasn't enough function left for him to cope anymore. He has struggled with constipation occasionally through the last couple of years - we had to take him to the emergency room in November of 2004, but after a couple of enemas, he was as good as new, and whenever he had constipation after that, it was to a lesser degree and he was ok once we gave him some Lactulose and a little extra TLC. All of it really makes sense now - he was never as active as our other cats, and drank a lot more water than they did - all are signs that he wasn't as healthy as he wanted us to believe. He was the sweetest, most cuddly cat we've ever met, and he shared our bed with us almost every night. He wanted nothing more than our love and affection, which we willingly gave him every chance we got - he loved belly rubs, he was the first to greet everyone at the door, he stayed out and let anyone who came into our house pet him, and he adored his siblings - he loved to clean Claudia and chase she and Bailey, and he even got along with Leila as well as any of the others do.
We know that there was nothing more that could be done for him - he was just getting worse, and he looked like he was in so much pain - he never deserved any of that pain. So, we made the only choice we could make last night, and after, we brought him home, wrapped him in a towel and buried him under a very nice crabapple/hybrid tree off of our back patio. We placed a rose from each of us in with him (we just happened to have some roses from our anniversary last weekend - Brent picked out a lovely dozen yellow roses with orange around the edges - beautiful - they matched his coloring too!), and said our goodbyes. He was such a saint and is in a better place now, but it's been very difficult to accept - I never knew that we had so many tears to cry - just when we think we're done, one of us starts crying again. Leo was very special to us and will always be in our hearts and in soooo many pictures. I just wanted to share a couple of pictures of him and his story. We love him so much, and the other kitties seem to know he's gone too - all are reacting in their own ways.
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I'm glad that he found a loving home, and that he's been well cared-off and experienced your friendship. 
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