⚠️ CW: animal illness (terminal) ⚠️
I’ve had this post–and, consequently, the perspective I should take–marinating in my head for about a week. I am so sick of being miserable that I really would like to put some sort of positive spin on things. In that spirit, I guess there is good news, bad news, and the imminent promise of some sort of news.
Let’s start with the bad: Coco is dying. It isn’t a question of ‘if’ so much as ‘when’. He hasn’t eaten a bite of food since last Sunday. A whole week ago. So, he doesn’t have long now. Our neighbors tried to syringe food in his mouth, but he ran away and hid in a different neighbor’s yard and had to be carried back. My father says he’s just a “sack of bones” now.
Coco has been sick for over a month. I believe I mentioned on this blog that there was a bout of pink eye, or some other infection, that swept through the cats seemingly overnight. Caramel and Nutmeg bounced back quickly, but Coco never really seemed to get better. Anise and Poppy also seemed to struggle with clearing whatever infection it was, but they were both killed whilst on the mend.
I have a few pictures of Coco in the midst of his sniffly, goopy-eyed glory. He’d sometimes get a little better, sometimes a little worse. We fed him extra vitamins (he was the only cat who would eat them a la carte as if they were treats), the neighbors smeared some strange homemade paste on his eyes and tried to clear his congestion, and we waited to see if he’d bounce back. Behaviorally, he was more or less the same, so the idea of it being life-threatening was very far off our radar.
My mother planned to take Coco to the vet after taking Nutmeg, but between work, packing, homemaking, and Nutmeg-tending, it was a task that just fell through the cracks. Moreover, he did finally seem to turn the corner, and his eyes cleared up.
A few days after I picked up my mother and brother from the transit station, my father sent us an update. Coco was climbing our plantain tree and running around the backyard, seemingly sprightly and much healthier than he’d been. We all thought perhaps he’d just had a nasty cold. The street cats sometimes seem to heal much slower than you might expect, so maybe it’d just taken some time.
Then, suddenly, within just 24 hours, he was worse than he’d ever been. My father mentioned that he didn’t eat at all one day, which was odd. Then, he laid under a car and refused to budge. He wouldn’t eat, drink, or even move. By the second day of this, my father and one of the neighbors took him to the vet a few towns over to find out what they could do for him.
The vet told my father that Coco has feline leukemia virus. They put a pouch of fluids under the skin, dosed him on antibiotics, and told him this was all they could do. They told him they could not predict what would happen next. He would either bounce back, or he wouldn’t. I have…thoughts on how the vets handled this diagnosis, but I think it’s probably unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
My father took him home, put him in Gaia’s bed, and has kept him upstairs ever since. He looked like this when he got home from the vet: thoroughly miserable.
You must understand this is very unusual behavior for my father. He is allergic to cats, and was raised to believe animals go outside. He even relegated Gaia to the outdoors for seven years. He was adamant we not feed them. I think if it was any other cat, he would never have taken them to the vet, much less taken them to his living space. But my father is exceptionally fond of Coco, and promised us that nothing would happen to him in our absence. We did want to bring Coco along, even though it was financially inadvisable, so the compromise was that my father would take excellent care of him while we were gone, and once the dust settled, we would be able to bring him with us.
My father immediately started taking Coco aside to feed him privately so he wouldn’t have to deal with any other cats trying to nab his food. He told us about his plans to set up a catio on the balcony, which was Coco’s favorite place to retreat and laze the day away. The two of them hung out a lot, and he complained Coco made it difficult to mow the lawn since he’d follow him around.
So, I suppose it would be just our luck that this one cat my father likes so much would happen to be terminally ill, and that my father would have to deal with his final days alone, not even able to touch him without sneezing. He says Coco still follows him around like a shadow, clearly seeking affection, and that it is difficult to give it to him. He takes Coco around in a cat carrier to the neighbors to visit other people who love him. They all spoil him, give him water, beg him to eat a bite of food, pet his head, coo at him. My father says he seems to enjoy the attention.
He is jaundiced and bleary. Showing signs of cognitive decline. The neighbors want to bury him next to their beloved pet dog who passed a few years back. Every day, I wonder if this will be the day we get the news. I want to hold out hope that he will make a miraculous recovery, but even the FeLV support groups on Facebook don’t seem to have any words of optimism to offer.
My mom keeps saying, “It’s just not fair. He’s such a good cat.” And that’s the long and short of it, isn’t it? Everyone adores Coco. He’s endlessly sweet, loyal, silly, tolerant. All the neighbors agreed that if there was one street cat well-suited to living indoors, it was Coco. I wanted very badly to bring him here, too.
What is there to say? I’m devastated. I don’t know how much more I can cry. I drink too much and assemble furniture, try to take my mind off of it, but it’s just so horrible. How can this be the end? I can’t even hold him? The what-if’s are particularly grueling. Should I have stayed longer? What if we had taken him into the vet earlier? What if I’d pushed getting him here? What if, what if? Is there any way that I could have helped?
I think what kills me most is that this disease is preventable. It’s as simple as a vaccine. It’s just because he’s a fucking stray, and I had no money, I had no car, and I couldn’t do anything. Was he born with it? What is there to say? It’s awful. It’s just so fucking awful. This year has been full of so much heartache. Loving stray cats is like asking to be miserable. But who has the money to take them? Just this one visit was over $300, and they couldn’t even do much for him. How can this be the end?
I’ve tried to come to terms with it, but it’s incredibly difficult. I really, truly adored this cat. I’d like to remember him as relatively healthy and vibrant. I have such an incredible number of photos of him. Here are just a few.
I also have a few videos. He has also always had a funny meow. It quickly grew on us, but we did tease him about it often. Edit: Whoops, forgot Neocities doesn’t allow you to upload videos without support. Let’s see if I can find a workaround with Dropbox.
So, that’s the bad news. Very bad news. My father thinks it won’t be long now. The neighbors want to see him again tomorrow if he’s still hanging on. I feel so much dread. I can’t linger on it for too long or else I’ll be too upset to finish. I’ve already stopped and started this post several times.
But there is good news. It’s important to remind myself there is good news.
Nutmeg is here. She made it here safely. She has acclimated very well, and is back to being her playful self. She was reportedly well-behaved on her trip here, which no one expected. I went on a huge Target haul the day before she got here–her presence wasn’t finalized until just 24 hours ahead of time, when the airline confirmed we didn’t need any special paperwork to bring her along. She loves food toppers, catnip, blankets, and attacking shoes.
I have already started a collection of Nutmeg photos, and I am delighted she’s here. She’s been very attached to my brother since arriving. I think they bonded quite a lot when he caretook for her after her surgery. I’m glad she’s starting to settle in.
As for the imminent news…Well, if you know anything about FeLV, you probably know what I’m going to say. It is contagious, relatively common in outdoor cats, and kittens are at an elevated risk of contracting it after exposure. Kittens also have a harder time fighting it off. It is primarily transferred through bite wounds and saliva, with grooming being a common culprit of horizontal transmission.
We still don’t know, and may never know, how Coco got FeLV. But we have no clue at all if Nutmeg has it. It seems almost certain she’s been exposed to it, if nothing else. And, to be honest, she has had milder symptoms that mimic his. An eye with strange swelling here, persistent terrible breath there…frankly, my money is on her having this too.
I’m taking her to the vet tomorrow. We scheduled an appointment as soon as we heard Coco’s diagnosis, and this was the earliest they could fit her in. We won’t know right off the bat if it’s a progressive or regressive infection (assuming she has it), but at least we’ll know what to expect.
My mother is pretty frantic. Nutmeg’s vaccination papers show she was vaccinated for FeLV, but as far as my mother is aware, they didn’t actually test her for FeLV before doing so. There’s a staggering amount of conflicting information, absence of information, conflation with FIV, and convoluted anecdotes to wade through on the internet, and after days of crying, Google spiraling, and generally losing my mind, I’m ready for some answers.
So, tomorrow. 3 o’ clock. I’ll find out. I’m trying to tell myself that even if she does have it, I’ll just have to take it as it comes. Get her some immunity supplements, keep a close eye on her health. Maybe take WFH jobs a little more seriously to spend some more time with her. I feel like I’m setting myself up for failure by not even hoping she’ll test negative, but I just cannot fathom how that could be possible. She and Coco were so inseparable. Anything he has, she must also have, right?
I don’t know. One day at a time. What else can I do? One day at a time.