Better Than Therapy

This year has been hard.

I've tried multiple times to write up an entry and either the browser/computer fucked up and I lost it, or it was just too hard, too emotional, to finish it.

I lost both of my cats, one extremely unexpectedly and the other pretty unexpectedly. All around the beginning of the year and within 2 months of each other. I also lost my niece unexpectedly and Mathew and I moved into our first home!


So, within the first few days of 2024, I did something I NEVER do because I know he hates having his belly touched, I grabbed Chance's "bag", his little pouch. I felt a lump. It made me nervous, especially because he wasn't acting any differently. Nothing about any of his behaviors had changed. I called his vet and set up an appointment. When I got him there, I couldn't find it. Neither could the vet tech. They told me it was probably just some fatty cells and that it wasn't anything serious. They asked if I wanted to do a full blood workup and I said yes, I wanted to do it anyway (he was 13). She must've decided to double check, because she did a basic sonogram on him and found what looked to be one big mass and some smaller ones. They wanted to confirm it by having an actual sonogram company come in and check him out. So we did and that would be in basically a week and a half.

It was then confirmed that he had colon cancer and that it had metastasized. To say I was devastated was an understatement. I had to ask the vet about the previous year he had lost some weight (a couple of pounds) and I had blamed it on a senior food I had bought that his stomach didn't like (he was vomiting multiple times a day). He had been putting on weight, looking normal when all of this happened. The vet, immediately realizing what I meant, said that it wasn't my fault and that colon cancer comes on quickly, saying 6 months tops, which would've been much later. Time that he had left was hard to guestimate, could be a couple of weeks, could be up to 6 months. It would depend on how quickly the mass on his colon grew.

That didn't take very long. From the time of me noticing the lump to when I had to put him to sleep was a month. It was horrible how quickly he declined once we confirmed what it was he had. He survived on Churrus for over a week. It also helped with him pooping that having him on a stool softener. So I stopped using it. But it was so hard. He lived in my chair for those last few weeks, on a towel that I changed every other day. He was always with me and it was so hard when I knew he was in pain. The vet told me that he would let me know, because the pain would be too much. She said that we could do pain maintenance, but that would be selfish of me. As much as the thought of him not being in my life was impossible to imagine, keeping him going when it would otherwise be more humane to help him cross was worse.

So, on February 5th, I held my baby as he passed.

My other cat, his brother, his littermate, didn't do particularly well during all of this. Because of Chance's colon cancer, he didn't particularly smell great. He was leaking fecal matter all the time (hence the need to change a towel every other day). It wasn't a lot, but enough and due to the cancer, it just smelled...off. Fritz could tell. He stayed up at the top of the cat tower until we realized that he flourished in our bedroom. Acted like himself (he was a happy, full of love, dopey baby). We had noticed he had lost weight during these few weeks and had got him an appointment at the vet just to make sure it wasn't anything other than stress. Which, right after we made the appointment, was when we noticed the change in him in our bedroom. We had gotten him to eat, drink, and getting a small litterbox near our room also noticed he was using the bathroom.

At the time, he was seen as being fine. It was about a month later, I noticed that he wasn't eating again and he wasn't pooping. Thought maybe he was just constipated. Took him to the vet and they felt a mass. They did an x-ray, was sort of able to see a mass, but noticed there was some fuzziness near his lymph nodes. They had scheduled a sonogram to confirm what it was they felt and what they could kinda see on the x-ray.

In the meantime, they had given him an appetite stimulant. Which was working!

Unfortunately, he didn't make it to his appointment. On April 6th, I was getting ready for work (I have to be to work by 4:15am, so I'd get up by 3/3:30 (now I live further away, 25 minutes, so I'm up at 2:30!) and Fritz always came into the bathroom while I got ready. He jumped off the sink and within a few seconds later, I heard him hit the bathroom door. Then he began to cry in a way I've NEVER heard him do before. He was panting and crying and I freaked out. I called the local ER vet (they have a "pick-a-number" kind of system for when it gets really busy, but you can call if it's a life-or-death type of situation to get fitted in earlier. Thankfully, it was quiet and I was told to bring him in immediately. I called into work and (Mathew, awakened by Fritz, came with me to the ER) headed off to the ER Vet with Fritz.

They took him in and Mathew and I waited in a small room to see what they found out.

It wasn't good news. His chest was filled with fluid, blood. His RBC was 8. They couldn't believe how low it was. They were going to drain his chest and stabilize him. He coded on the table when they attempted to drain his chest. We had gone home, we had just gotten home. I had updated my manager at work, when I got the call. They had resuscitated him, but he wasn't doing very well. They asked permission to help him cross and I said yes. They wanted to know if I wanted them to wait. I said no. The thought of him being in pain just because of me was horrid. So, I flew back to the ER Vet and I got to hold him after the fact.

They would've been 14 on July 12th. They were my babies. I guess if you've had a pet, you'd understand. Especially if it was one you were tied to, a soulmate. To be honest, I'd never really felt this close to a pet before, but these boys were my first cats that were just mine. That I was responsible for. Plus, I'd had them since they were a day old. They'd been through everything with me. The loss of my parents, my two brothers, my sister, my uncle, my aunt. My move from NY to here in Indiana. I knew I would be a mess when they passed, but I hated that it felt like they were taken from me. I know an incredibly healthy pet can get sick really quickly, but...man I had thought maybe they'd be one of those cats that lived close to 20 years.

I still haven't gotten another cat yet. I want to...it's just hard. I don't want to judge them by their differences to my boys. I also want to know that I'll be able to have a healthy relationship with them.

Then, during all of this, in March, my niece had gotten sick. From what seemed (or believed by her doctors) like a mosquito bite possibly carrying the West Nile, my niece contracted bacterial meningitis. She also suffered a small stroke and was in the hospital for like 3 weeks. She ended up recovering nicely and was put on an anti-bacterial medication.

Then in early June, 2 weeks after she finished her medication, she was back in the hospital, looking like it hadn't fully gone away and had attacked her brain stem. It ended up blocking her brain from getting oxygen and she was put on full life support. After about a week, she was considered brain dead and let off of life support. She was only 34 years old. She had 3 young children, one starting kindergarten this year and another starting pre-K.

Of course, her services were the weekend BEFORE we closed on our house. So, I was able to fly out Saturday, the day of her services, spent the night at my sister's house, then flew out the next morning so that I could be back home for closing on Monday.

It was such a mixed bag of emotions. Crushing because I was incredibly close to my niece (she was only a few years younger than me) and it felt so surreal and excited because something I didn't know that me and Mathew could ever do and that was buy a house, our first house!

Because that is where we are now, enjoying our new home and getting used to being homeowners. The space alone has been wonderful for both of our mental healths. We went from a 660 sqft apartment to a 2400 sqft house with a garage and a backyard! It feels so liberating.


Man, 2024 has been hard so far. I had been hoping for this year to be our year of just everything being good and it ended up starting off terrible. I'm hoping that with buying this house, it can be the turning point of the year and things can go up from here. So. Let's hope.