julie & punkin (ga)
Very Active Member
last condo 2/21/13
The post everyone dreads writing . . . but you all matter and i know many of you have cared for punkin as much as we have. Through coaching each other daily, we get to know each other's kitters and their personalities. I know you need to know what happened.
We let punkin go tonight. He was ready, and in fact, i think yearning for release. The past few days he kept wanting to go outside, i think wanting to find a safe spot to hide where he could pass away. We spent a lot of hours sitting outside next to him this weekend. He just soaked up the sounds and sights. Our backyard is very Oregon woodsy - oak trees, rhododendrons and tons of birds. He'd watch and listen and then lay his head down. We joked about his elevator rides - as our house is on the side of a hill, the backyard is lower than the house, and the downstairs is where he often liked to hang out. As he's worn out, we suggested he take the elevator up from the backyard (me and DH being the elevator). So he got help going in and out of the backyard this weekend.
What a sweetheart and what an extraordinary kitter we had! I've had many pets, but there was something so special and so different about punkin. For one thing, he was a great communicator. He had a psychic gaze that bore into my eyes and told me what he wanted so i could do his bidding. which i always did! hahahaha He had me wrapped around his little paw.
The past couple of weeks had been rough. He got weekly laser treatments for his arthritis, and 9th he got the usual treatment. The morning of the 10th we woke up to a terribly bloody diarrhea mess. It was just awful and i thought he wouldn't make it through the day. But he did - he got meds to soothe his gut and it turned around. Then last Wednesday, the 15th, he had another laser treatment and Thursday morning it was a repeat of the week before. Only this time, he didn't pull out of it. He stopped eating and wanted to be left alone, hiding under my big old oak desk in our basement.
Today the vet thought that he might just be extremely dehydrated. We decided to give it one last try, but an x-ray discovered instead that his body had filled up with fluid. His heart was failing and there was so much fluid around his lungs that they could barely inflate. his abdomen was also full of fluid. The vet said that had probably happened just in the past few days because he showed none of the typical signs of excess fluid build-up during his exam last week.
In a strange way, that gave me a lot of peace. We've gone to great lengths to keep the little guy alive and healthy for the past 2.5 years, but here was something that wasn't fixable. You can have fluid withdrawn and buy a little time, but it comes back. i didn't want to have to be worried all the time that it might come back and he might feel like he was suffocating. he was having so much difficulty breathing today that we knew it was time. The vet came over to our house about 7:15pm and we sat on the deck with punkin, loved him up and then let him go. He's the last of our 12-pets-at-once to pass away, and they are now all buried in the back yard. now we can't ever move!
But for all the question regarding the timing with the laser treatments, i don't want people to be afraid of doing it. i wouldn't hesitate to do them again, but i might not do them as often. they gave punkin a lot of relief from his arthritis, allowing him to jump on tables til the very end. that made him so happy!
I want to thank everyone here for teaching me what i needed to know for punkin to survive since he was diagnosed in december 2010. That time has been such a blessing to us - daryl and i are both weary and thoroughly broke from taking care of him, but i wouldn't have changed a thing, unless we could've simply had more time.
I don't have the energy tonight to shrink photos so i can post them here, but here are links to a coupla pics that i like. Our profile also has some favorite pics in it. As though you need them! ;-)
http://i345.photobucket.com/albums/p378/yachiwycoff/IMG_2305-1.jpg
http://i345.photobucket.com/albums/p378/yachiwycoff/punkinanyaincar.jpg
(the famous "I said 2 cheeseburgers EXTRA RARE!" shot from our trip to Colorado to get him treated for the acromegaly)
and even though this one is a little dark, it's probably my very favorite. It shows so much of his personality - calm, dignified and perceptive.
http://i345.photobucket.com/albums/p378/yachiwycoff/IMG_0187.jpg
well, i just got sucked into punkin-video-land. i'm so glad to have videos of him . . . i'm sure no one else wants to sit and watch punkin videos, but here's a couple of my favorites:
Punkin, Anya and the bag: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=en ... jgknJ7BmOw
Punkin and his catnip plant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK3sriI9 ... Ow&index=5
In any case, I could reminisce on and on about my little punkin kitter, but i will stop there. i'm as ok as i can be - i miss him, but am SO grateful for the relationship that the cursed acromegaly-diabetes gave us. A double-edged sword, if there ever was one. I am more at peace than I would've thought possible. Doing everything you can leaves you knowing that you didn't give up too soon. I know we did everything we could for him.
Thank you all for your support as we've learned and gone through crisis after crisis with the little guy. I appreciate it. :YMHUG:
The post everyone dreads writing . . . but you all matter and i know many of you have cared for punkin as much as we have. Through coaching each other daily, we get to know each other's kitters and their personalities. I know you need to know what happened.
We let punkin go tonight. He was ready, and in fact, i think yearning for release. The past few days he kept wanting to go outside, i think wanting to find a safe spot to hide where he could pass away. We spent a lot of hours sitting outside next to him this weekend. He just soaked up the sounds and sights. Our backyard is very Oregon woodsy - oak trees, rhododendrons and tons of birds. He'd watch and listen and then lay his head down. We joked about his elevator rides - as our house is on the side of a hill, the backyard is lower than the house, and the downstairs is where he often liked to hang out. As he's worn out, we suggested he take the elevator up from the backyard (me and DH being the elevator). So he got help going in and out of the backyard this weekend.
What a sweetheart and what an extraordinary kitter we had! I've had many pets, but there was something so special and so different about punkin. For one thing, he was a great communicator. He had a psychic gaze that bore into my eyes and told me what he wanted so i could do his bidding. which i always did! hahahaha He had me wrapped around his little paw.
The past couple of weeks had been rough. He got weekly laser treatments for his arthritis, and 9th he got the usual treatment. The morning of the 10th we woke up to a terribly bloody diarrhea mess. It was just awful and i thought he wouldn't make it through the day. But he did - he got meds to soothe his gut and it turned around. Then last Wednesday, the 15th, he had another laser treatment and Thursday morning it was a repeat of the week before. Only this time, he didn't pull out of it. He stopped eating and wanted to be left alone, hiding under my big old oak desk in our basement.
Today the vet thought that he might just be extremely dehydrated. We decided to give it one last try, but an x-ray discovered instead that his body had filled up with fluid. His heart was failing and there was so much fluid around his lungs that they could barely inflate. his abdomen was also full of fluid. The vet said that had probably happened just in the past few days because he showed none of the typical signs of excess fluid build-up during his exam last week.
In a strange way, that gave me a lot of peace. We've gone to great lengths to keep the little guy alive and healthy for the past 2.5 years, but here was something that wasn't fixable. You can have fluid withdrawn and buy a little time, but it comes back. i didn't want to have to be worried all the time that it might come back and he might feel like he was suffocating. he was having so much difficulty breathing today that we knew it was time. The vet came over to our house about 7:15pm and we sat on the deck with punkin, loved him up and then let him go. He's the last of our 12-pets-at-once to pass away, and they are now all buried in the back yard. now we can't ever move!
But for all the question regarding the timing with the laser treatments, i don't want people to be afraid of doing it. i wouldn't hesitate to do them again, but i might not do them as often. they gave punkin a lot of relief from his arthritis, allowing him to jump on tables til the very end. that made him so happy!
I want to thank everyone here for teaching me what i needed to know for punkin to survive since he was diagnosed in december 2010. That time has been such a blessing to us - daryl and i are both weary and thoroughly broke from taking care of him, but i wouldn't have changed a thing, unless we could've simply had more time.
I don't have the energy tonight to shrink photos so i can post them here, but here are links to a coupla pics that i like. Our profile also has some favorite pics in it. As though you need them! ;-)
http://i345.photobucket.com/albums/p378/yachiwycoff/IMG_2305-1.jpg
http://i345.photobucket.com/albums/p378/yachiwycoff/punkinanyaincar.jpg
(the famous "I said 2 cheeseburgers EXTRA RARE!" shot from our trip to Colorado to get him treated for the acromegaly)
and even though this one is a little dark, it's probably my very favorite. It shows so much of his personality - calm, dignified and perceptive.
http://i345.photobucket.com/albums/p378/yachiwycoff/IMG_0187.jpg
well, i just got sucked into punkin-video-land. i'm so glad to have videos of him . . . i'm sure no one else wants to sit and watch punkin videos, but here's a couple of my favorites:
Punkin, Anya and the bag: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=en ... jgknJ7BmOw
Punkin and his catnip plant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK3sriI9 ... Ow&index=5
In any case, I could reminisce on and on about my little punkin kitter, but i will stop there. i'm as ok as i can be - i miss him, but am SO grateful for the relationship that the cursed acromegaly-diabetes gave us. A double-edged sword, if there ever was one. I am more at peace than I would've thought possible. Doing everything you can leaves you knowing that you didn't give up too soon. I know we did everything we could for him.
Thank you all for your support as we've learned and gone through crisis after crisis with the little guy. I appreciate it. :YMHUG:
