Shelter Positive

I haven’t updated my blog in a long time, and it’s mostly because of many things changing in my personal life. I feel like sharing what has happened, and I will start with loss.

My beloved cats Casper and Lavender passed away in Spring.

I had known Casper as Gibson at the rescue where I have been volunteering. I knew him and loved him for a long time before I adopted him in June 2012 with Disney, my “tripawd” orange tabby sweetheart. Casper had been at the shelter for five years in spite of being a Himalayan mix. Maybe he was passed over by other adopters because he was FIV+ and had allergies, but to me, he was a perfect cat. I’ll never forget the look of wonder he had when he came out of the carrier into his new home.

Casper became the little prince in my house. He slept next to me every night, sometimes on top of me. He enjoyed long brushing sessions and big meals of canned food. He would kiss my hand when I pet him. His sister Dorothy used to groom him; she was his best kitty friend, although he also got along great with his brothers! Dorothy and Casper would wait side by side while I prepared their food and she would lick his head. He would sit by his litter box looking upset and wait for me to scoop it if I had just woken up and hadn’t done it yet. He was very sensitive and easily upset, and I adjusted to his whims. He was a very happy cat. Once, I was giving all the cats some catnip and he was sitting on the side. I showed him the jar of dried catnip to get him engaged, and he immediately grabbed it and flipped it upside down over his head in delight, getting catnip all over his long white fur!

We would play together all the time with little stuffed sushi cat toys and his favorite toy, a little stuffed snake. Casper would try to grab at the toys from me around the corner of the hallway. It was hard to look down the hallway and not see him waiting for me to come play after he passed away. It was hard to see Dorothy waiting for her food without her brother next to her. And it was hard to lay down and not feel Casper’s little paws on the bed.

On April 13, we woke up when we heard Casper meowing in pain at 4:30am. His back legs were very cold and he was inconsolable. We rushed and got him from our home in Lawrence to the emergency vet in Overland Park right away. He had a saddle thrombus (major clot in the branch of the arteries going to the back legs) and a core body temperature that was too dangerously low for his prognosis to be good. We petted him and gave him lots of love in his final moments. It happened so suddenly and without warning… The night before, he had a good time getting petted on the couch with us and playing with his favorite toys. He ate his wet food and had his siblings’ leftovers like usual. The huge loss we felt was worsened by how sudden, traumatic, and unexpected his death was. It was also exactly a year and a week since I had suffered my first cat loss, my Ivan passing away after palliative care for an inoperable tumor. I was grieving again, and I felt shoved back deeper into grief. I also felt cheated; we did not even have a full year with him in our home, and he had waited so long for a home and deserved many more happy years in one. We are glad that we could at least be his family in the end. We will always love him and miss him.

Lavender also passed away unexpectedly on May 29. She was an amazing cat. We started fostering her earlier this spring, fell in love, and adopted her. Lavender was 10 years old and blind, and she had neurological issues and a heart murmur. We set her up so that she had a comfortable and consistent environment in our home office. We got her sensory cat toys with catnip that she would rub on to feel the different textures. She loved catnip but never became excited over it; she took comfort in the scent and took naps with her face against a catnip toy. She had a deep cozy bed that was her favorite place to sleep. She loved getting brushed and hugged; we would make sure to brush her and hold her as much as possible. I would walk around the house with her in my arms. When she was happy, she would rub her face hard against our fingers. She was my snuggle buddy.

Lavender was very brave. She explored her surroundings even when she was uneven on her paws. She hissed at the dogs without backing down if she bumped into them. She had a grumpy-looking face that I loved. She was even brave at the vet, walking all around the room and resting in the sunlight coming in through the window. She was smart too; she felt the edges of the couch or other surfaces and walked off of them backwards so she could hold on with her front paws in case the drop was higher than she thought. She trusted me wherever I placed her, and sometimes I would sit and hold her in my arms until she fell asleep purring.

Lavie seemed to be getting better and better at walking around and using her litterboxes. She started venturing out of her first space, and taking naps in the hallway. I was so proud of her for her progress. Steven and I considered her unique needs when discussing our housing options in the Philadelphia area, where Steven was moving for his new job. We hadn’t had Lavender very long, but we were planning to have her for the rest of her life which we thought would be much longer. Then, she went downhill neurologically very quickly and without warning. She had trouble moving and she was cold one evening, and we took her to our vet right before they closed. After some preliminary tests, we had to decide whether to see a specialist during business hours the next day, and we were worried that she would not last the night. She spent that night in our bed, cuddled in a blanket. I woke up every hour it seemed to check on her and make sure she was still wrapped in warmth and that the heated pad was still on. In the morning, we thought she had gone through that phase and gotten better; she walked down from the bed, ate her breakfast well, and used the litterbox without any problems. When she went into her bed for a nap, I thought maybe she was going to be okay.

I checked on Lavender before our specialist appointment and she was even worse than the night before. Her legs were completely stiff and she could not lift her head or move anything but her tail. We brought her to the emergency clinic, which was also where her specialist appointment was going to be, but at that point, the vet said that there was nothing that could be done. She suspected that a brain tumor may have been the cause of her neurological and sight problems and of her current state. We had to say goodbye to our darling, soft, sweet, brave Lavie. She had been such a close companion to me, and her loss so soon after Casper’s loss was extremely difficult. I will always remember my Lavender and love her.

We chose beautiful urns for Casper and Lavender’s ashes, and we hung photo frames of our beloved kitties. Casper’s snake toy is in a frame too with his paw prints. Lavender’s catnip toy is next to her urn. Their collars are around their urns. Going through these steps of picking out urns and photos helped me feel like I was keeping their memories alive and paying respect for the love and companionship that they gave us in their lives. I also believe in paying forward the chance that they had, in adopting other cats with particular needs to give them a forever home like we had done for Casper and Lavender. I’ll introduce Ralphie and Flagler, the cats that we adopted in their honor, in the next post.