What’s your cat’s story ?

[Kiwikinon]

Hello friends !
It’s my first thread here (not problem related) so I’m not sure if it’s the right place for it.
I’ve known my kitty only for a month now and I’m just so in love with him ! He is already a part of the family. so I’d like to Know more of your loved ones
I’d love to here about your pet’s story,
How was your first meeting ? Does their name have a particular meaning ? Pictures are welcome !

I’ll go first !
Here is my boy, Kiwi I chose this name because when I first met him he was so cold, and so small he looked like one !

I took care of a lost kitten one day and was so sad when he had to leave that my brother Surprised me with a kitten ! he was supposed to be weaned but when I met him, he was so small he could fit right in my hands !
My poor brother didn’t know anything about it, and brought everything a cat needs, yes a cat, but not a kitten ! he still did an amazing jobThank you for bringing him into our lives

 

[aliceneko]

Toffee and Fudge were semi-ferals who were born in the garden of an abandoned building serving as their cat colony. Altogether, there were about 70 cats in the colony and they were still rescuing cats from the site when I adopted them. The shelter rescued them when they were a month old and we adopted them when they were nearly four months. Due to their background they still have quite a skittish nature and hate loud noises and strangers, but when with us they're happy and confident - and love snuggles more than anything else!

 

[Kat0121]

Lilith and Sophie were rescued by the Humane Society and put up for adoption. They had been found with about 20 family members near an abandoned house. They figured that they were from a backyard breeder that had left all of them behind after an eviction or foreclosure. I saw Lily's picture on their website so I went to meet her.

She was in a small room with 2 other cats. her brother and sister. Her brother had been adopted and was waiting for his family to pick him up. When I went in the room with the employee, she gave me a bag of Temptations treats and showed me where the toys were. Lily and her brother were sitting near the front of the room. Before she left, the employee pointed towards the far corner of the room. There was an all black cat sitting under a chair. She told me that the cat in the corner wasn't friendly and I could just ignore her. I knew immediately that I was NOT going to do that. I was more than annoyed. Who tells a potential adopter to ignore an adoptable animal?

So I sat in the chair near the door. I started giving Lily and her brother some treats and we played with the toys. They were friendly and we had fun. I looked up and the little black cat was watching us intently. I started talking to her and asked her if she wanted to play or have some treats. I tossed a few treats her way and she slowly came closer. The longer I sat there, the closer she got. Soon, she was taking treats from me, letting me pet her and we were all playing. She became comfortable enough that she let me pet her while she was eating from a dish next to the chair. After a while I went to the front desk and the same employee was there. She asked me how things went with Lily and if I wanted to take her. All of a sudden, I heard a voice say, "I'll take BOTH of them." I looked around for a second and then realized that I had said it. She was absolutely stunned that I wanted to take Midge (her shelter name) because none of the employees or volunteers had been able to bond with her and I must be "special". I later found out that they had been there all of 2 weeks. I couldn't bring myself to leave her there for two reasons. One was that she would have been the last of her family still there. All the others there were gone (they did not all go to the HS. Just a few did) and I couldn't leave her in a place where adopters were advised to ignore her.

They got spayed, I picked them up and here we are. Midge became Sophie when I called DD who was away at school from the shelter parking lot. The name was her idea. I love my little Lily Belle with all my heart but my Sophiesaurus is my feline soul mate. We call her that because she can be somewhat destructive when she gets the zoomies. DD came up with that too.

Lilith

Sophie

 

[Lola3791]

I adopted Lola from the local shelter after my previous cat, also named Lola, died. I was so close to getting another cat there, but I'm so glad I changed my mind. Lola is the sweetest cat and I love her so much.

 

[maggie101]

Hello friends !
It’s my first thread here (not problem related) so I’m not sure if it’s the right place for it.
I’ve known my kitty only for a month now and I’m just so in love with him ! He is already a part of the family. so I’d like to Know more of your loved ones
I’d love to here about your pet’s story,
How was your first meeting ? Does their name have a particular meaning ? Pictures are welcome !

I’ll go first !
Here is my boy, Kiwi I chose this name because when I first met him he was so cold, and so small he looked like one !
View attachment 341326
I took care of a lost kitten one day and was so sad when he had to leave that my brother Surprised me with a kitten ! he was supposed to be weaned but when I met him, he was so small he could fit right in my hands !
My poor brother didn’t know anything about it, and brought everything a cat needs, yes a cat, but not a kitten ! he still did an amazing jobThank you for bringing him into our lives

Hello! And welcome
Peaches was found in a hole 5 weeks old, now 9, Maggie was rescued 3 months old now 8. Her mom and her 4 siblings showed up on my porch, Coco was born on my porch,disappeared 5 weeks old then showed back up 1 yr old, now 7

 

[Mer.kitten]

I found Honeybunny a few years ago in a vacant lot it downtown San Francisco. I'd gotten a cl and like a good citizen i pulled over as to not be messing with my phone & driving. It was complete luck-if the call came a few seconds later i wouldve stopped further up the street & never seen her.

I finished my call and looked up and saw her, and was surprised bc you dont see alot of cats in downtown sf. I got out to take a closer look, she was too skinny and hadnt been grooming properly. Luckily she was sweet & came to me, i brought her home telling mysdlf "im not looking for a pet right now, ill find a good rescue for her thatll get her a nice home"-but over the next few days i got to know her and she was just the most awesome cat-i couldnt let her go.

Shes supersweet, hence the name Honeybunny. Never heard a growl out of her or seen her with her ears back since i find her. She does occasionally hiss to voice her displeasure but its more comical than scary-picture a toddler saying "im gonna beat you up!"

100% glad i kept her, she's the best. She can also be a bit of a derp

Pics & vids of the day i rescued her are posted if u search my username

 

[Neko-chan's mama]

I'll write this from Neko-chan 's point of view.

"My siblings and I were born at the shelter. After a couple of months they said we could be adopted. One day in late May, THEY came. My humans!! They started playing with and petting all the big cats. I was confused. I mean, there I was, a cute little kitten. I was told everyone wants cute little kittens. After about half an hour, they started walking to the door! They were going to leave! I had to take matters into my own paws. I sat at the front of my cage and let out the most pitiful mew I could manage. The woman stopped and finally looked at me. I stood up on my hind legs and cried again. I was taken out of the cage and put in her arms. When she held me, I knew for sure she was mine. She was gentle and scratched me right under the chin. I purred as loud as I could and rubbed her face with mine. Then the man held me. He was just right too. Warmer than the woman and a great cuddle and fetch partner. They brought me home and we've had a great 13 months so far. All the toys and cuddles a cat could want!"
So there you have it. We wanted an adult cat and wound up with a 10 week old kitten. But I've always believed the cat chooses you and none of the grown ups were ours.

 

[MonaLyssa33]

After my late cat, Willie, died in August 2017, I knew that I was going to be moving within the year so I decided to not adopt again until then. In February 2018, I saw Remy and Maisie on a local rescue's website and went to visit them at the pet store where they were living. I went there because I was interested in Maisie. Maisie had been in the shelter for 2 years and was considered a difficult cat to home because she is very skittish/aloof. I knew that after Willie died, I wanted a cat that had been overlooked by other adopters. She also has the most adorable grumpy face. Maisie would not let me touch her when I visited, but I didn't really care. I wanted to give her a chance. The rescue wanted her to go with a more social cat though, so that is how I ended up with Remy too. It took nearly a year for Maisie to start feeling comfortable enough to let me pet her regularly. She'll sometimes cuddle with me if Remy is already there with me.

I adopted Flora a little over a month ago. I wasn't planning on adopting a third cat, especially a kitten, but I kept having dreams about babies and kittens and it kind of planted the idea in my head. She's been quite an interesting addition to the family. She's very curious and loves to get into trouble, but she's also a sweetheart.

Maisie and her grumpy face.

Flora on a cat quilt.

Flora getting into trouble.

Remy out in the catio I built.

 

[Kiwikinon]

Omg you all are just heroes, saving cats left and right
shelter cats are as lovely as the kittens, it’s a shame more people don’t realize that ! Thank and you so much everyone for your stories

 

[jisaacson214]

I’m a big fan of the show The Walking Dead. There is an episode where a character named Eugene picks up a stuffed toy & says “I don’t know what this is, but I’m going to call it a Gremblygunk”. The moment he said that I thought ‘That’s the name of my next cat’. Meet Gremblygunk (Grembly for short).

 

[Krienze]

I had wanted a kitten really badly and my mom finally caved and said I could get one. So we drove to the shelter and were looking. We saw this BEAUTIFUL little grey kitten in the window and I fell in love right away however we couldn't adopt that day, I honestly don't remember the reason why. This was YEARS ago (I was like 16 at the time.) We went back the next day and she was GONE, literally seconds from being put to sleep. They stopped the whole thing so we could adopt her, I swear my heart had never raced so fast as I did when they thought maybe she'd already been put down. I still have her today. My old lady, I love her =)

CiCi had a very similar story. Our cat oliver had just passed and Isabel was missing him bad so we thought, okay, we'll adopt a kitten. We went back to the same shelter and tried to adopt her but they told us she was to damaged to adopt. My mom reached in the back and plucked her out anyway and we took her home. She was damaged, very shy, never recovered and was always scared. But she went 11 years with us and I think if we hadn't adopted her, she'd have been put down.

Sammy was unexpected. My step-dad had started up his truck one night and a SCARED cat came running to us. We fed her and noticed she was pregnant, so we took care of her. When she went into labor, she came RUNNING to our house and yowled at the front door until we let her in. One of her kittens didn't make it, but Sammy did. He's my little fighter. Since the day he was born, he's been my best buddy. We're very rarely apart.


We adopted Jasper after losing CiCi. I didn't know if I was ready for another cat or not, but I knew I wanted to give another animal a home because I thought maybe that was what CiCi would want. So my mom and I found this beautiful white cat at a shelter and spoke to the woman who agreed to bring her out to the store so we could meet her. While waiting though, this tabby cat stuck his paw out from the bars and insisted on us giving him attention. I asked if I could hold him and just... from that moment on I knew this was my cat. We never even got to meet the other cat, we took Jasper home. But I remember feeling awful because in the cage next to him was his sister, who we did not take with us.

This is where Mia comes in.

I could not stop thinking about his sister, so I called the shelter and asked if she had been adopted. She had been, but... there was one more kitten left from the litter that I had NOT met, because she'd been sick so she'd been recovering. She'd been having a hard time finding a home.So, we agreed to meet her. Loved her at first glimpse. She's my little sweetheart and even though the first month or so was bumpy with her and Jasper, everyone now gets along great!

 

[Elphaba09]

Since I have so many, I will try to shorten their stories. This is going in order of when I got them.

Astrid Cordelia Rose and Estella Flannery Thyme became mine after I received a phone call one day from my daughter who was visiting her father. (That in itself is a long story!) They had gone to his friend's house, and the friend was going to use two young cats as target practice because he was sick of feeding them. I immediately left and got my daughter and the two cats. Astrid is after the author of "Pippy Longstockings." Estella is from "Great Expectations" Their middle names also have meanings to them. Estella has become my adult son's cat, so when he moves into his house, he is taking her. They have an extremely special bond.

Next came Willow Elizabeth Sage and Fennimore Strider Black. They were found by a friend of a friend after their mother was killed by a coyote. They have a brother named Pip who lives with my friend. Willow is from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Fennimore is for James Fenimore Cooper but with double "n" because they were found near a barn on Fenn Rd. Fennimore is a big boy, weighing in around 19 lbs. Willow looks like a baby next to him. Willow has become my daughter-in-law's cat and will be going with them.

Next came Simon Greystoke Thane and Tara Lenore Tierney. My friend's mother was feeding a Tara as a stray and wanted to catch her. When she did, Tara escaped but led her to Simon, who was very sick and near death. Simon is from "Firefly." Tara is from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Then came Freya Adaline Prynne. She was supposed to be our last. My daughter found her as a feral kitten across the street from our house shortly after we moved into it. She s rather small, weighing in around 5 lbs. Freya is the goddess Freya.

Freya was supposed to be the last, as I stated, but she is far from the last.

Next came Evangeline Evayne Snow. She was supposed to be a TNR that my son caught behind his former place of employment. She had been there for at least two years and had several litters of kittens. When he brought her home, she was too sweet to let go. She is also deaf. Evangeline is from the poem of the same name. (This is her with Simon.)

Then came Silas Endeavour Book. I found him and his sister almost two years ago outside a store near our house. He was almost 5-weeks old, extremely malnourished, covered in fleas, and, according to my vet, hours--at most--from death. A woman who helped me get the two sweeties took the girl. Silas had been burned with a cigarette lighter on his leg. Silas is from "Silas Marner." Although he could almost fit in my hand, he is now our largest cat by far. At last measuring, he was 39" long from nose to tip of his tail. He likes to sleep, so most pictures I have are of him sleeping. This is him on our daybed.

We thought he was our last until today. Today I found three kittens under my porch. One has a name. The other two have yet to be decided. The one we have named is Cassian Pendragon Fox. Cassian is from Star Wars. My daughter-in-law is likely taking the other male, and we are naming him tomorrow (I guess today, based on the time!). There is a shortlist. There is also a shortlist for the girl. Just for first names, though. Once we decide on those, we will give them middle names. They go to the vet today! They look calm here, but they really were not! Especially the girl!

Cassian:

Girl (Shortlist of names: Calanthe, Verity, and Xanthippe)

Other boy (Shortlist of names: Ulysses, Hiro, Iroh, and Hercule):

He has a clean nose now!

 

[NY cat man]

Velcro, the stray tuxedo that adopted us, had to be euthanized due to incurable cancer. Not long after, a yellow feral showed up on our porch. She was so persistent that we started putting food and water out for her, but we could not approach her at all. Some time later, apparently deciding that we were safe, she brought around her litter of kittens, but again if we were outside she would hiss at us and run off. The kittens started disappearing one by one, until only one was left, and by this time we could pet him, but still not her. One day, we simply held the door open and he walked in and stayed. That was 9 years ago, and he was such a clinger that we named him Burdock.

The following year was a repeat of the first, and the mother still would not allow us to touch her, but she didn't run off as far or fast this time, and again the last kitten joined us. She was such a queen bee that only Prancer would do for a name.

The next year she brought around 3 kittens and all of them eventually came inside. They are:
Digger

Stretch

and Bashful

With 5 cats, we thought we were done, but then a TNR'ed female started showing up, then took up residence under our front porch. She was like a puppy dog, following us around whenever we were outside, often climbing onto my lap when I was working in the gardens. Eventually, we gave in, and Miss Eleanor, about 4 years old at the time, joined us for keeps

In case you are wondering, despite numerous attempts to trap the mother cat, none were successful, until one morning she was found dead on our neighbor's front porch. We don't believe that Miss Eleanor is one of her offspring, as she is too young for that. All we know is that she showed up, and then stayed.

 

[2CatsAndADaphne]

Hello
New member here. My first cat was a stray kitten in our old neighborhood back in 2001. We named him Jerry and brought him indoors. He lived with my parents and brother for a few years, but ultimately Jerry came to live with me when we were all getting ready to move to another state. Jerry lived a very happy, relaxed and happy life until age 14 when he was diagnosed with chondrosarcoma. We decided to amputate his scapula and right front leg which took care of the cancer. Jerry lived as a tripod for another two and a half years. He passed away in my arms at 16 1/2 one weekend after having seizures and collapsing and not eating or drinking.

I did not think I would ever have another cat ( had no desire ) but I saw one on a rescue's website and went to see her one day. She wasn't at all interested in me or my daughter, but an older adult who had just weaned a litter of orphaned kittens kind of "claimed" us. She was in a foster home with multiple cats and when we left that day, she was the only one that sat in the window and watched us walk away. I thought about her for a day or two and decided it was a sign that she wanted to come home with us. We ended up adopting her from the rescue (she was probably 3). Stella is a very pretty Tuxedo cat. She is a bit grumpy and keeps to herself but she is lovely to have around. We discovered shortly after bringing her home, that she has feline idiopathic cystitis, most likely from stress. She has to be on a special very expensive crap food I buy at the vet. Tried taking her off it two different times but she gets a bladder infection each time I do. I cut the amount I give her each day and supplement with a higher quality food and that makes me feel a little better ;-)

We recently adopted a young male cat earlier this year and named him Pippen (he is so tiny). I did not plan on the adoption, but after dropping off a donation to a different foster home with multiple cats, this 9 month old Manx hopped up on my lap and fell right asleep. I stayed for about an hour and talked to the foster mom about rescue related things and this boy just would not leave. I was elated that he would allow me to hold him like a baby, and carry him around. I went home and told my husband and daughter about this super cool cat and he told me to get back and get him! Back in the car for a 90 minute drive and the foster mom was cracking up. She said she knew I'd be back and that she knew in most cases cats pick you, you don't pick them. I feel like my sweet beloved Jerry had a hand in both adoptions. Two cats are our limit though. Stella HATED Pippen at first, which was surprising to me (I thought as a former mama cat she'd just take to him and "mother him"). After 5 weeks of scent swapping, room swapping, supervision, treats, feeding at the door, Feli-Way plug ins, NurtureCalm collars, they are finally buddies. Whew.

We also have a Bulldog and she (Daphne) and Pippen are BFFs. They are super cute together.

I have a health concern issue of Pip's, so I will be posting soon and asking for your advice. Thanks and I'm glad to be here.

 

[game misconduct]

Graycie spent the first few months of her life in solitary inside one of those kitty cells . St PetSmart until the day I went there looking for a cat to adopt she picked me went right up to the glass carrying a toy so I told my girlfriend this is the one we are getting. Ofcourse we had to look at another shelter for my girlfriends choice she had made that I had no idea about but things worked out in my favor Graycie wasn't friendly at first growling etc explained why all her siblings got adopted out and she got left behind too bad for her I don't scare easy so we took her home that day and she has been a loving cat from that day on by her own terms of course

 

[susanm9006]

I met Willow at a county high kill shelter. I had lost my 19 year old girl a week earlier and came to the shelter “just to look”. Willow was in a top cage in this crowded shelter, huddled as far back as she could go but at the same time trying to reach out and pull out some kibble from the feeder at the front. There were people standing in front of her cage and she clearly didn’t want to get close to them. I looked at other cats and when her visitors left I moved in front of her cage. She was one year old and stunningly beautiful. Her cage card said she has be surrendered, then adopted and returned two weeks later for being too timid. Since her return she had been at the shelter for almost a month.

As I stood there I began picking up pieces of kibble and pushing them to the back of the cage so she could eat. She seemed to appreciate that and we finished up what was in her feeding dish that way. Then I started rolling a ball that was in her cage and she eagerly jumped into the game. We were doing so well together and then a shelter worker who obviously didn’t know anything about her butted in and without asking grabbed her and said “here, hold her” and plopped her in my arms. She didn’t scratch but was so terrified that I immediately put her back in her cage and apologized for stupid humans. And instantly I also knew that this was not the place for her and that I was going to give her the kind of home she needed. That was nine years ago.

I assumed when I adopted her that day that she was merely a terrified, shy cat but didn’t realize the extend of her lack of socialization until weeks later she came out of hiding. It wasn’t just people she was afraid of but furniture, bags, boxes, pretty much every household item. So she was either feral or raised with minimal human contact but she has been one of the sweetest and well mannered cats I have ever lived with.

 

[trianglekitty]

I already posted this on the health forum and I'm sorry for repeating it (and the length!), but Jonas does have quite a story!

Jonas was brought to my vet hospital after a young woman found him sitting in the middle of the street as a feral kitten, in the pouring rain. He was grotesquely underweight, almost comatose, and both eyes were so infected they were swollen to the point he couldn't close them.

The woman who found him couldn't afford treatment for a random stray and the prognosis was obviously very grim. The plan was to euthanize him immediately. It was a very busy night and the vet got called away before she could give him the injection. He woke up enough to bite me, and on a whim I tried offering him some food. When he scarfed it down I decided to ask if we could give him a chance, with the understanding I would assume all responsibility for payment and would be responsible for finding him a home if he lived.

For *weeks* I expected to find him dead every morning. He was still hanging on, but he also wasn't getting better. We eventually decided that the infection in his eyes was so severe that it was draining his strength. In a last ditch attempt to save him I decided to have his eyes removed. The surgery was performed by the youngest vet at our practice. It was her first eye removal.

I knew there was a very, very good chance he wouldn't make it through surgery. Indeed, I got a call letting me know he had gone into cardiac arrest. I told them to tell the young vet that it was okay and not her fault and not to attempt heroic measures.

She didn't listen, and worked on him for three minutes until she got him back. I got a huge shock when I went into work that afternoon and found him sitting up on the surgical table instead of bagged in the freezer!

The cardiac arrest happened just after his right eye was removed. Obviously the left eye got a stay of execution. The right eye was the more infected of the two, and removing it actually worked as intended. He turned the corner almost immediately after the surgery and started gaining weight.

He eventually came home as a 'foster'. I even found a lovely woman several states away who already had a special needs cat and was willing to drive up to meet me halfway. The problem was that the fate of Jonas' left eye was still unknown. I wanted to wait a few months to see if it would need to be removed as well. It did heal over, but it kept getting ulcers and adhesions. Also...well, I was very much attached by this point. His adopter finally called me out after about six months of dithering and told me Jonas was already clearly where he belonged.

As a kitten, Jonas was frankly a complete and utter punk brat. He was *bad*. Very aggressive, to the point he was difficult to handle. And he was *relentless*. I found myself sitting on the floor on night at 2am sobbing because he would *not stop biting.* Keep in mind I'm a vet tech who has worked with many, many cats, including many ferals. I had never had a cat that defeated me so badly. But he was also incredibly loving and whip smart and such a fighter that you couldn't not admire him. I eventually had to take him to the University of Penn for a behavioral consult. The behaviorist was amazed that this little blind kitten was so incredibly confident. He walked out of the carrier and owned that room. She basically told us he was so smart that he was bored and we needed to run his furry rump and stop being overprotective. I started taking him to work with me and leash trained him and did other enrichment. He was forever a very nippy cat (still is) and he's pretty awful for anyone else, but we came to understand each other. He would sleep cuddled against me, which his forehead pressed against my cheek and his paw draped over my chest.

The left eye continued to have issues, but we found he did have a very small amount of sight in it. Just light and shadow, basically. Then Jonas developed an ear infection. This is when we started to realize that Jonas' immune system was basically nonexistent. I woke up one morning and he had a mild head tilt. Two hours later he was so vestibular he couldn't walk. He spent three days at Penn in the ICU. The swelling in his ear was so severe it permanently paralyzed the left side of his face. The inability to blink caused the interior of his already damaged eye to collapse.

At this point the plan was to remove that eye. Badly damaged eyes in cats can grow a rare cancer that is almost always fatal. That second surgery was done at the University.

For a month after the surgery Jonas was *severely* depressed. He barely moved. I was convinced he was missing that tiny bit of sight he had. It was devastating to see him so still and I started to seriously consider euthanasia. We did numerous rechecks and blood tests during this time and found nothing. A month to the day after the surgery I woke up to find that left socket horribly swollen. He had had a hidden infection brewing the entire time. He had to go back in to have it reopened and cleaned out, and a day later was back to his usual punk self again.

However, that socket would continue to cause problems. The surgeon left behind tear duct tissue. The fluid would become trapped under the sealed skin of the socket and cause swelling and pain. Jonas had to go back into surgery twice more to clean up the mess the surgeon left behind. I want to point out that the *first* eye, the one my baby vet did...that healed beautifully and never had a single complication.

There were other random things. Jonas developed a massive amount of swelling following a rabies vaccine. He had to see oncology and have a wide margin biopsy done to check for vaccine related sarcoma. Thankfully it was only inflammatory tissue, but we could not vaccinate him after that. He would randomly get strange yeast infections on his paws and the *tops* of his ears that the dermatologist had never seen in a cat before. He had a very, very strange event where he started to collapse in his rear legs. I did an MRI and it found some arthritis and herniated discs, but nothing that would account for the severity of his symptoms. I started taking him to physical therapy and did laser therapy, which did seem to help. Then he started to actually walk backwards. No one could figure it out. I really thought I would have to euthanize him since we couldn't seem to find the source of his pain. Then I noticed he was slightly gaping his jaw. On a whim we did a dental, they pulled one bad tooth...and the walking backwards instantly stopped. To this day no one has any explanation for it.

I know this is such a huge, ridiculous list of maladies for one little cat. Every time I had to take him to a new vet and run down his history I would see their eyes go wide. It paints a picture of an animal in constant pain and disability. But Jonas at every point was weirdly robust. Always active and purring and eating and causing a ruckus.

(The issues with his immune system also always made every single new vet recheck him for FeLV/FIV. I swear this one cat has been tested dozens of times.)

Then last year he really started to go downhill and lose weight. Again, I thought that was going to be it. An ultrasound found thickening of his intestinal walls that was suggestive of small cell lymphoma. The internal med. doctor agreed to treat him with chemotherapy for presumptive small cell. Again he surprised everyone and gained back everything he lost and had almost a year of good health.

Then a few months ago he had a stroke. I woke up at night because I felt him climb out of his bed beside me and fall into me. When I set him on the floor I could tell he was weak in the rear. I took him to the emergency room, but they thought he just aggravated his arthritis and prescribed pain meds and rest. By the time I got him home he was flat on his side and unable to rise. By that time his regular vet was open. They sent us to VSEC in Philly. VSEC didn't have a neurologist at the time, so they sent us to Penn. It was 14 hours in various hospital waiting rooms. Penn told us they couldn't diagnosis him for certain without an MRI. Even if we had opted to do it, they would not perform it because Jonas was an unvaccinated cat with severe neurological symptoms, which made him a rabies suspect. The doctor at Penn was very certain that it was a brain tumor and not a stroke based on the severity and sudden onset. For some reason I strongly felt it was a stroke. I'm glad I listened to my instincts, because otherwise I probably would have euthanized him that night.

The first few weeks were rough. Jonas was already walking a little by the time we came home from Penn, but he was circling and falling. I had to hold him up in the litter box. I had to hold him up to eat and kind of scoop the food into his mouth while he took savage, uncontrolled bites. It's a good thing it turned out not to be rabies because he got me good a number of times. There were multiple days when I was sure I was going to need to take him in at any time to euthanize.

But after the first week or so it was a steady upward trend toward recovery. He still has some neurological issues in his hind legs (he drags his rear paws slightly and his gait is abnormal.) But he was able to get around quite well, use his cat stairs up to the bed, and even go down the house stairs (with me going down backwards in front of him for safety.)

Jonas is 15 now, and has recently started having periods of severe low appetite. An ultrasound this week showed that his intestinal walls are thickened again. He lost a pound in just a month, and has been having more weakness in his limbs. Either his chemo is no longer working or there is something else going on- possibly a different cancer, and we have reason to suspect it may be in his sinus cavity or brain. My options are an MRI and a biopsy or palliative care. With everything he's been through, his age, and the likelihood that anything we find will likely not have a good prognosis, I'm probably going to opt for palliative care. He is eating much better right after increasing his steroid, but I suspect we're measuring in weeks or days (months if we're very lucky.)

Still. This is a cat who everyone, including myself, thought would die at 8 weeks. And then again every day for weeks afterward. And then again when he DID die on the surgery table. And then again when he was vestibular and in ICU. And again when his socket was infected. And again...and again...and again... So I'm trying to just be happy and grateful for those 15 years, because my little bugger fought for every moment of it.

So. That's Jonas' story. I'm not a person who makes quick decisons. I'm much more pragmatic then emotional. But I'm so, so glad I made a split second decision that night so many years ago and took responsibility for him. I remember rolling my eyes at myself and then thinking it didn't matter anyway because he was obviously going to die overnight.

Sorry, I know this was super long and I doubt anyone will read it but he's been such a warrior. .

Oh, did I mention in all of this that he has asthma and needs an inhaler daily? This cat!

 

[minish]

Here is minish's story who's been with me since 2.5 months old
Old member of catsite Happily returned

 

[Neko-chan's mama]

Trianglekitty, you are a hero! Taking care of a sick cat can really show you what fighting the good fight means.

 

[rubysmama]

I've told this story before, but happy to tell it again.

Despite loving cats from birth, I ended up going many years without having one of my one. Finally things worked out and I was ready to adopt. For some reason I knew I wanted an orange cat.

First time at the shelter, there was a gorgeous fluffy orange male, who just snuggled in my arms when I picked him up. I wasn't quite ready to adopt that day, so someone else ended up giving him a home.

There was also another orange cat there that day. That poor cat was coughing or sneezing, and didn't look like it wanted to be bothered, so I left it along.

A couple weeks later I was back at the shelter, ready to adopt. Only one orange cat that day. A short haired female. I tried pulling her out of the cage, and she squirmed in my arms and I put her back in her cage. Though she didn't want to be picked up, she was a purring machine, and and kept giving me head bumps.

I looked at other cats, but kept being drawn back to the orange female, and before I left, I told them I was going to adopt her, and a few days later, I brought her home.

Once home, I thought back to the first day I was at the shelter, and realized that the little orange cat that was hacking, was the same cat I'd just adopted. I now say she was coughing to keep potential adopters away till I was ready to come back for her.

That was 6 1/2 years ago, and Ruby still hates being picked up, but she's a lovable lap cat, and I could not love her more than I do.

Pic on way home

Relaxing