She came to me in jan 2012 right after my dad died. just kinda showed up in my house and seemed slightly feral and maybe 4-6 weeks old, not even totally weaned - I had to bottle feed for a bit. she imprinted quite hard on me ever since.
she was almost 90% outdoors her entire life at the old property. she’s a classic barn cat and even in her advanced age I have to stimulate her hunting instinct or she gets bored and destructive. fast forward to 2019 and I had to move. the other tenant on the property had formed a pretty strong bond with her, and we both agreed it was within stella’s best interest not to relocate her - she’s been very healthy her whole life but has issues that vets can only really describe as feline OCD or an anxiety disorder. she gets easily stressed, which may seem harmless, but she’ll stop eating and cats can die very quickly if they stop eating. so i left her with this lady when i moved.
anyway I made my peace with that hard decision. then the lady gets evicted a few months ago and suddenly just dumps the cat in my lap again and ghosts me. at first it was nearly round the clock care - I couldnt get her to eat and was doing everything i could imagine. finally i had to cook an actual salmon dinner w chicken/turkey based gravy slathered all over it to get her to even take a bite of anything, poor girl was so insanely stressed.
i had given her odds of survival about 50% and we had a ton of vet visits for sedatives and crap but she and i pulled through and now she’s a very happy indoor kitty (something i previously thought impossible).
she’s still a bit clingy - we’re working on it. a big test this week for her is when i play the wsop next week is im gonna have to board her. i found a luxury “cat hotel” that im convinced she’ll enjoy, but she gets very very stressed if im not within sight of her for more than a few hours at a time.
love this cat. it’s gonna be so heartbreaking for me when she passes, but I think she’s got a ways to go still
we’ve never lived in such close quarters before and it’s been kind of beautiful, we annoy each other equally and it’s been fun. right now we’ve been in a turf war over my laptop keyboard. she knows she gets a reaction out of me when she fucks with it, and even will time it during critical moments in gaming when she knows my attention is entirely focused on the laptop - since it gets a reaction every time she’s gonna keep doing it, but I seriously need her to stop. she’s very trainable but it involves some psychological manipulation sometimes. frickin cats dude
I’m kind of in shock that we find ourselves here, but Apollo’s companion cat of 14 years (Sputnik, naturally) is doing quite poorly. For a week after Apollo left us, Sputnik was pretty normal, then started to eat progressively less and less. We suspected constipation (a chronic issue for him), and brought him in to get cleaned out (also something he’s had done 2-3 times before).
Recovery has been dismal. Prior times, he rebounded quickly and was almost back to normal the same day. Now it’s been 2 days and he has eaten basically nothing and had a few licks to drink, he crouches and lays in unusual spots. Nothing abnormal has shown on bloodwork, X-rays, ultrasound, or his physical exams in general. ER doc today suspects this could be all brought on my grief because he’s not presenting anything clinically. He just came home from his ultrasound and is drinking a bit more water - fingers crossed that it’s the first step towards him getting better.
Sorry to be such a downer recently! It’s been a rough few weeks.
Anybody have anecdotal experience with grieving companion pets?
I read all the vet advice out there about boarding vs leaving your pet at home with a sitter checking in - advice seems to be its riskier leaving the cat home and probably more stressful. just had to board my poor girl for a week and the vet said it was very difficult for her and she had to be sedated almost the entire time. I feel so bad but she gets so stressed when she isn’t around me.
as soon as we got home, she’s been attached to my hip and quite happy but I would very much like to train her out of this separation anxiety somehow. i feel so bad i put her through that.
when my cat wouldn’t eat after being rehomed I literally had to cook her full blown salmon dinners with gravy and catnip to get her to even get near it.
Yeah, we’ve tried (canned) tuna, and even that’s been a no go. I might actually be cooking salmon tonight and will try it. I’ve never seen him refuse food like this. Quite distressing!
Baby steps forward with Sputnik. Finally pecked at a couple of Temptations treats 2 days ago. Then yesterday, a few treats + small bites of salmon. Very very small amounts of food but at least it was something. Last night he played a bit with a couple toys. This morning he yelled at us for breakfast, didn’t touch it, but later returned for his first few nibbles of actual cat food in almost a week. Fingers crossed.
Starting to wonder if it wasn’t so much grief, but more so that the enema just hit him like a truck this time, and his insides are finally starting to feel a bit better.
We decided to pose today. Countdown to the grandsons visit. So far they’ve liked all the company this summer (other than upsetting the evening schedule). But we shall see what we think of 3 and 6 year old boys.
God. Cat at emergency vet doing terrible. Blood work is not good, breathing not good, last call was 1.5 hours ago and doctor’s like “prognosis isn’t good but we can try giving him plasma” I mean if it was that long ago thats a good sign right? He was completely fine a week ago how can this move so fast? =/