Sunday, April 11, 2010

We're not doing so well on the pet front.

We had older momma cat put to sleep about a month ago. She was on thyroid medicine and had been slowly declining. I went out of town on a family emergency, and when I came back she could no longer eat, smelled terrible, and had an eye infection. Hubby took her to the emergency vet (of course this happened on a Sunday) and she was put to sleep once we learned she had a huge tumor in her neck that was preventing her from eating and had pressed against the nerve that controls blinking -she could no longer move the eyelid causing the eye infection.

Peanut took it very hard. We talked about heaven and how she no longer is sick. How the angels are looking after her and how she can watch over us. I pulled out our copy of Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant and it seemed to be a comfort for Peanut (although I always cry when reading it.)

Now I'm afraid we need to add Dog Heaven to our library. Lily's had vomiting spells for the past couple of months. The vet couldn't find anything wrong when it first started and gave Lily a round of antibiotics and anti-nausea meds. It worked for a while, then the vomiting episodes started again. Two weeks ago it got worse and I realized she had lost a good bit of weight. Again she was given anti-nausea meds and another medication for her liver (I think). Last week she was tested for Cushing's Disease and came back negative. She's miserable, nauseous, week, and not eating even after another visit yesterday with anti-nausea shots and pills. The vet doesn't know what's wrong, her liver enzymes are off, and if she continues like this I don't think she'll last much longer, nor do we want to prolong her misery. Hubby and I feel terrible and we're worried about how the boys will handle it when she passes.

1 comment:

Meadowlark said...

I bet they'll handle it as well as I did when one of our dogs got into the rat poison and frothed and foamed all over the front yard or the other dog who got rabies and lurched towards us and my mom had to drag us into the house and then grab the .22 and cap that thing or 7 times until he stopped coming at us.

Um, yeah. Sounds freakish, but kids are resilient as hell if we just let them be.

Sorry for a story that probably has you quivering under the bed. :(