I didn't have her long, but she for sure left a noticeable void now that she is gone. I was expecting years, not a couple months. My husband rescued her after someone tossed her along with her litter mates, mother (who we also took in), and another female cat out in the cold, back in November. When he brought her home she was freezing cold, dehydrated, and skin and bones thin. We warmed her up, got her fed and re-hydrated, and she was gaining weight, though was still tiny. Even though it was my husband that rescued her she really bonded with me, he would pick her up and bring her to me and you could hear her purring as soon as she saw me from across the room. She was a real velcro cat and I had to hold her when I was trying to do thing and was always right there either in my arms or watching nearby when ever I was trying to do anything around the house, but especially in the kitchen. I was joking with my husband that I needed one of those cloth baby slings so I could do things while carrying her around. The only time she didn't want to be with me was when I went to bed, for some reason she didn't like being in the bedroom, she preferred to roam the house at night, probably more fun to be had. Also since she was a kitten and I have other cats I also had to make sure to give her her own food separate from the other cats, meaning meals for her became part of the daily to do list.
Last Friday (the 6th) I took Freya into the vet to get her shots (the core shots and rabies), she was her normal skittish but feisty self. She was so tiny (only 2kg) I thought she was around 4 months, but when the vet examined her she had all her adult teeth so she was more like 6 months. She seemed fine when we brought her home, and even the next morning was being a normal crazy kitten zooming around the house around 11am. Around noon we found her collapsed and unresponsive on the floor in a cat tunnel. We called the emergency vet and rushed her over, my thought was some sort of bad reaction to the shots the day before. They started working on her right away but she must have gotten into something that was destroying her red blood cells, the vet thinks Tylenol, apparently it fits most of the symptoms, but she went downhill so fast, which seemed to puzzle him too. So it's hard to say and unfortunately some things take time to show symptoms so it could have been anywhere from hours to a couple days ago she got into something. Although we do have Tylenol in the house we are good about keeping it put away out of reach of the cats so I don't know, and there was a few other things that could cause it but nothing seemed to really fit, for example things like onion and garlic, which we do use in cooking, but she would have had to eat a lot of it. They also ran a blood test and her liver was good, but oddly her blood sugar level was high. They were treating her with the antidote to Tylenol overdose and she did seem to be trying to recover, they were seeing new red blood cells being made, and the plan was for them to keep her in the clinic for a few days while they treated her. Unfortunately as we were driving home they phoned us that she wasn't recovering fast enough and had taken a turn for the worse, she was on a ventilator but her lungs filled with fluid faster then they could suck it out and pump air in and she ended up passing minutes before we got back to the vet. I'm now left with a big bill and no kitten.
When we got home we looked around for anything she could have gotten into, but were unable to find anything. There are no pill bottles or even any boxes with blister packs knocked down, spilled, or chewed on. I'll probably never know what it was, which really sucks, not only do I feel guilty for not protecting her but I also don't want any of my other cats to get into whatever she did. So far all the other cats seem fine, my only guess, if it was Tylenol, is maybe a pill was dropped on the floor and we tossed in the garbage and she managed to get it without us noticing (we have trash cans with lids but they do knock the trash over from time to time), but that is just a guess.
It's hard to accept the passing of a kitten, at least with a older cat you can at least have the feeling they lived a good life. Freya barely got a chance to live, it's not fair. I might post the pics of her that I have later, it's still too painful to look at them, it was hard enough just typing this... I don't want to believe she is really gone. I have several other cats, but I miss my little one.
Last Friday (the 6th) I took Freya into the vet to get her shots (the core shots and rabies), she was her normal skittish but feisty self. She was so tiny (only 2kg) I thought she was around 4 months, but when the vet examined her she had all her adult teeth so she was more like 6 months. She seemed fine when we brought her home, and even the next morning was being a normal crazy kitten zooming around the house around 11am. Around noon we found her collapsed and unresponsive on the floor in a cat tunnel. We called the emergency vet and rushed her over, my thought was some sort of bad reaction to the shots the day before. They started working on her right away but she must have gotten into something that was destroying her red blood cells, the vet thinks Tylenol, apparently it fits most of the symptoms, but she went downhill so fast, which seemed to puzzle him too. So it's hard to say and unfortunately some things take time to show symptoms so it could have been anywhere from hours to a couple days ago she got into something. Although we do have Tylenol in the house we are good about keeping it put away out of reach of the cats so I don't know, and there was a few other things that could cause it but nothing seemed to really fit, for example things like onion and garlic, which we do use in cooking, but she would have had to eat a lot of it. They also ran a blood test and her liver was good, but oddly her blood sugar level was high. They were treating her with the antidote to Tylenol overdose and she did seem to be trying to recover, they were seeing new red blood cells being made, and the plan was for them to keep her in the clinic for a few days while they treated her. Unfortunately as we were driving home they phoned us that she wasn't recovering fast enough and had taken a turn for the worse, she was on a ventilator but her lungs filled with fluid faster then they could suck it out and pump air in and she ended up passing minutes before we got back to the vet. I'm now left with a big bill and no kitten.
When we got home we looked around for anything she could have gotten into, but were unable to find anything. There are no pill bottles or even any boxes with blister packs knocked down, spilled, or chewed on. I'll probably never know what it was, which really sucks, not only do I feel guilty for not protecting her but I also don't want any of my other cats to get into whatever she did. So far all the other cats seem fine, my only guess, if it was Tylenol, is maybe a pill was dropped on the floor and we tossed in the garbage and she managed to get it without us noticing (we have trash cans with lids but they do knock the trash over from time to time), but that is just a guess.
It's hard to accept the passing of a kitten, at least with a older cat you can at least have the feeling they lived a good life. Freya barely got a chance to live, it's not fair. I might post the pics of her that I have later, it's still too painful to look at them, it was hard enough just typing this... I don't want to believe she is really gone. I have several other cats, but I miss my little one.