My wife and I put our beloved cat Mr. B to sleep about a week ago. I hope you will include him in your thoughts and prayers.
Mr. B had at least two deadly medical conditions. First, he suffered from CRF, which will eventually prove fatal unless a more fast-acting terminal condition appears. His CRF was quite advanced. We were giving him subcutaneous fluids (150 ml) twice a day to keep him hydrated. He’d stopped using the litter box and so we had wee pads all over the house, which he would use 95 percent of the time. He was also on a special diet for CRF cats, Science Diet K/D.
Second, he had some sort of cancerous growth in his nasal/sinus cavity. I’ll never forget discovering the first sign of this cancer. Mr. B was sitting on his bed when I noticed that he had a bloody nose. My vet told me to bring him in immediately. They ran some bloodwork and noticed that he had elevated calcium levels, which almost always means cancer. We didn’t know exactly where the cancer was. The vet told me it would be fatal no matter where it was, and so we opted not to put Mr. B through the torment of more medical procedures that would ultimately prove to be merely “academic”. Our vet estimated that Mr. B had between three and six months left.
I’d long thought that Mr. B would eventually die from kidney failure, which we’d been contending with for years. However, the cancer was aggressive and relentless. We were giving him prednisolone and this bought him some time, but we knew he would not be with us much longer.
Over time I grew so angry about and frustrated by his illness. After that initial nosebleed, Mr. B always had a bloody, snotty nose on one side…always. He was very congested, making it difficult for him to breath through one nostril, and when he did breathe it was sometimes very noisy. I can’t tell you how sick I grew of his snotty, bloody nose.
Mr. B was a free spirit who insisted on his personal space. However, at some point the seriousness of his condition seemed to dawn on him. The way he acquiesced to our help was incredibly touching, bringing home to us just how sick he was, but also how much he trusted us to care for him. He gave himself up to us like a little lamb, making it harder than ever for us to imagine letting him go.
For me, the hardest part of this whole process was the beginning. The day our vet told us that Mr. B had cancer and would die within 6 months was overwhelming to me. I almost fainted in the vet’s office, but I lay down on the floor quickly enough to avoid losing consciousness completely. My vet initially thought I was feeling faint because I couldn’t stand the sight of blood and had just seen them take a blood sample, but I explained to her that the sight of blood wasn’t the problem.
We brought Mr. B home that day and in some ways I think that’s when we started saying goodbye to him. Every time I looked at him or held him, the inevitability of his death seemed more real to me. It was terrible, but I also appreciated having this period of time to really show Mr. B how much I loved him and to give him the kind of care he deserved. And we took very, very good care of him, right up until the end. I’m so glad and thankful for this and it was a consolation to me after his passing. We had some good times in those final months. I cherish them now.
The very last day—the day we had Mr. B put to sleep—was also extremely hard. However, at this point Mr. B was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe and our greatest fear was that there’d be some horrible period of suffocation before his death. So making that final decision was not too difficult in our case. Now, however, we find it very hard to cope with his absence. We miss him so much. He was the friend of a lifetime.
I'll try to include a few photos of Mr. B below.
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