Dear FDMB friends . . .
I want you to know how comforting and helpful your beautiful words are. It has been hard for me to think of posting. It is hard to know what to say.
Dear Ahi was so very wonderful. Of course, all cats are special. But just like Denise, the woman who originally posted a plea for his rescue here, said, there was something very very very special about Ahi. Everyone who met him loved him.
When Ahi came to me just before Thanksgiving, he was starving, his bg registered "hi" and I thought that was good news, because it meant it was treatable.
He responded so well to insulin, and then we had the cancer scare - thinking that he had the oral squamous cell carcinoma. Then he got the all clear from that. Just eosinophilic granuloma. Great news, right?
By New Years, I was in love with him, wondering if I'd ever be able to let him go to a permanent home. Being with him was just pure joy. He was funny, smart, sweet, and had a way of carrying himself -- you know, that way that only old boy kitties do?
The first thing I noticed about Ahi was how he used his paws. I have never seen a cat use his front paws like that. He was so desperate for food at first, while I was getting it out of the can he would jump up, and reach his paw into the can, and scoop a pawful of food out, then lift it to his mouth to feed himself with his "hands!" Although he looked older to me, he was able to jump about 3 1/2 diagonal feet from the bed to the dresser, to look for food. So he was very spry and lively.
He would use his paws in other ways:
When I slept in the bedroom with him, he would reach out and clasp onto me with a paw, and start purring. It wasn't a touch. It was a clasp. I've never known a cat to his his "hands" like Ahi did.
If I was leaving his room, and he didn't want me to leave, as I walked around the bed, he would reach out and grab me with his front paws to try to keep me from leaving. Which of course, was heartbreaking. If I was petting him and he wanted me to pet him a little lower, he would move my hand with his "hand." And when he didn't want me to hometest him, he would also make it really hard -- with his paws, running interference with my hands. He was increasingly hard to hometest, although he never growled or hissed -- he just used his hands!
He had that wonderful gruff boy voice. When I introduced him to my cats, he was not ruffled. They hissed and made great noise. My one cat, JuJu, would watch him try to jump on the couch with me, and start hissing. Ahi would look at her, think about what to do -- and he wouldn't hiss back, or make lots of noise. He would just whack JuJu once on the top of the head to get her to move out of the way.
Whenever he slept out in the living he would take JuJu's place right next to me. As though he was saying: "I don't know who you all are, but this is my place, so I'll sleep where I like."
He was very creative looking for food. He would turn over the trashcan and empty it, pulling its contents onto the floor. If there were dishes in the sink, I'd walk in there and see him inspecting them for scraps of food.
When I slept in the bed with him, around 3 or 4am (when he decided he wanted food) he would come and lie down right above my head -- on my hair -- purring. This was his "polite" way of asking me to get up and feed him. I'd wake up feeling him pulling my hair and purring.
It was so fun to see how he interacted with my only boy cat, Quixote. Quixoe is 3 1/2 and the three girl cats, who are all 10, do not really "get" him. He tries to roughhouse with them, and they scream bloody murder. He means nothing bad by it, he just wants to wrastle like all boys do. The girls are old gals and do not take kindly to rough play, no matter how good natured. But Quixote never ever hisses, even when he tackles the girls, because to him its all fun. Meanwhile the girls are hissing and yowling and objecting as though someone is trying to kill them when all he wants is to play. It has sucked for him to be the only boy.
From the very first time they were in a room together, Quixote was very very interested in Ahi. When Quixote looked at Ahi, he had a look on his face I have never seen before. It is not a look he ever gave the girls. It was a look of fascination and respect. And when Ahi was turning the trashcan over and pulling all its contents onto the kitchen floor, Quixote was riveted, at a respectful distance, with a look on his face that seemed to say: "Oh, wow, that's really smart, can I learn from you?" From that point on, Quixote shadowed Ahi whenever they were both in the living room or kitchen, always at a respectful distance, with a look of fascination and respect on his face. Learning all kinds of things from Ahi. The two of them would sleep in close proximity to one another on the couch, quite happily. (Although sadly, Ahi never got close enough for cuddling with any of the cats).
One day, I think in January, I was sweeping the living room, and noticed that Ahi was stalking the broom! Thats when I broke out the dangling mousie toy, and he played with it. Later, I noticed Ahi and Quixote "stalking" each other. They never pounced, but they both looked happy and grateful to have a "boy" in the house who understood playing. For a brief time, Quixote had a much older big brother to look up to. And Ahi seemed to humor him with the stalking play, as though he knew Quixote was a younger boy who wanted an older brother to communicate with him in a playful way.
As you can gather from all of this, there was no sign of any neurological problem for Ahi at all, most of the time he was with me. That's what is killing me about the whole thing. It all happened so fast. On the last Wednesday in February -- Wednesday 9 days ago, a week before he was PTS -- Ahi was normal. Except, I had noticed that his pupils were dilated. Then, the next day, Thursday, I saw him walk into a closet door. That is when I realized his vision was going. I though, "OK, he's old, wow, he's losing his vision." So two days later, last Saturday, we went for the follow up visit with the vet, and while I was driving on the highway, Ahi was in the carrier in the back seat. I heard two clicking noises, and then I saw a tail high up in the rear view mirror. Ahi has let himself out of the carrier. He climbed into the front seat with me, crawled onto me (while I am doing 60 on the highway -- yipes!) and stared out the drivers side window. So he still had his coordination and at least partial vision, just 4 days before I ended up having to put him down. The vet said basically: "Oh, he has partial vision loss, but hisretina aren't detached. You should see an opthalmologist."
So I made an appointment for an opthalmologist for the following Tuesday, just 3 days later. But by Monday, the day before the appointment, I could tell that Ahi had lost ALL his vision. He was still acting pretty normal for a blind cat, but he was blind. And by Tuesday morning, the day of the opthalmology apointment, he was clearly neurological: He was walking into walls and getting "stuck" there. He stopped eating. He stopped drinking. He stopped using the litter box. I was freaking out.
The opthalmologist knew immediately that it wasn't his eyes. W made a appointment for the very next day, Wednesday, with the neurologist -- a woman I trust. She is the woman who saved Toonces life after his overdose.
My mind was going crazy. The only time I'd ever seen these symptoms was with Toonces, after his overdose. But I couldn't imagine how Ahi could have been hypo he got only .25 units, and then ONLY if his bg was over 125. I never caught him below 80 lately. But of course that's the first place my mind went, since the only time I've ever seen this degree of neurological damage in a cat was in Toonces, because of hypo.
Then the SPCA vet said that although she thought it was probably a brain tumor, there were other more remote possibilities like toxoplasmosis. I freaked out. I feed my cats partially cooked chicken -- Ahi had some -- could he have gotten Toxo from the semi-raw chicken I gave him?
By the time we got to the neurologist on Wednesday he was in pretty bad shape. He was pacing or walking in circles, he was no longer meowing or talking, even his feet were starting to go under him from time to time. He couldn't -- didn't know to -- use a litter box anymore. I had to give him fluids because he wasn't drinking, wasn't eating. The neurologist said she thought it was most likely a tumor, and that the most likely kind was a pituitary gland tumor. If it was that, she said, the treatment would be prednisone, and it wouldn't dial back his neurological status to normal, although he might improve some. It would be temporary as a pituitary tumor would not be surgically treatable. The other option -- a better one -- would be a meningioma, but Ahi would have to undegro brain surgery. The cats who have surgery for meningioma fall into three categories she said: Cats who come out of surgery better than they were when they went in, but still not back to normal; cats who don't do well after surgery and don't bounce back; and cats who do go back to nearly normal, but that's the minority. There was also the possibility that Ahi wouldn't make it through surgery.
To even know what it was, he would have had to have a $2k brain scan.
So the question was:
If we had the scan, and knew what it was, what would I do anyway? If the scan showed a pituitary tumor, I would have chosen to PTS, because he was already so far gone neurologically that a little prednisone -- the only treatment on the table -- would not have restored him to a decent life. If on the other hand, it was a meningioma, then I would have been faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to put him through costly surgery that he might not survive, that would put him through a lot, with only a minority chance that he would recover to a decent quality.
I suppose I will always wonder would we would have found if I had opted for the brain scan, but at the rate he was going downhill, I didn't think he'd really even make it to the scan appointment, much less all the way to surgery in the best case scenario which was meningioma. So, I decided to let him go. I agonized, but I just couldn't see putting him through all that given the odds.
I've just never seen a cat go downhill that fast before (aside from Toonces but we understand why that happened). It is so hard for me to accept this rapid decline. That is the thing that is hardest -- I am still in shock. Even as I write this, 10 days ago, he was normal.
It is very disappointing, and very sad. But I have to say -- every minute with him was a pure joy. He was such a very special cat. I was besotted with him, dreading the day I'd have to give him up to a permanent home, trying to justify having a 5th cat, wondering if it was fair or right that I was getting more enjoyment out of being with Ahi than my own four. He just had such a BIG personality, was so unique, I have never met a cat like him.
Thank you so much for your sweetness, all these posts give me comfort.
Ahi will be laid to rest at the pet cemetery where Toonces is. It's probably a crazy thing to do but F it. I adored him, and if he had found a permanent home with anyone else on this list (any of you who were thinking about him that way, waiting for me to put out the announcement that he was ready to go -- you know who you are, and I know you are out there!) you would have been madly in love with him too.
So he was your cat too. He belonged to all of you, to all of us.
What a special, special cat.
I just still can't believe it. It was a horrible thing, a fast horrible thing. It is just so hard to believe.
A very special thanks, and deep gratitude, to Venita and the FDMB Cats in Need fund, and all of Ahi's benefactors. And well wishers. I really wish we had all had more time with him. I am so sorry.
