Who's got cats? Post your puss!

My husband’s kitty, Zeus. Aka Buddy. Just passed this year at 22 y.o. We miss that lazy fuzzball

 

Very sorry for your loss, but sounds like Zeus had a very long and good life! I just lost two this year as well, so I understand, it is very weird coming home and not having anything furry and four legged greeting me!

-T

 

Ya it’s dumb lol told my wife that’s only way she can get one gotta recoup that cash.

 

After Ringos visit to the vet and some meds, he’s back in the saddle again! So much more energy and back to himself. He still needs to get some teeth surgery so I’m not looking forward to that, but hopefully that will keep any infection from coming back.

 

Ditto. My cockatiel Elliott just passed at 21 years old back in May, a few months after Zeus. Been a rough year but they both had a hell of a good run and were pampered and happy critters. Coming home to the empty house sucks.

 

These are our sister cats that we adopted nearly 3 years ago as kittens. Pendant is the one looking up at me and her sister Libby is the one sitting up right. Both love boxes! Pendant is my little sweetheart and Libby is firmly attached to my wife. We also have an orange Maine Coon mix that is my daughter's, and we have a Russian Blue mix that is his buddy.

 

Mr. Blue and Mr. Simba. Simba is my daughter's cat. Blue is his buddy.

 

Yes, it does. The temptation is there for me to rush to the shelter to fill that void again, but I am trying to avoid an impulsive decision. I don't miss the stinky litter boxes and cleaning up part of cat ownership!!

 

We rescue dogs and have had as many as 12 (down to "only" 9 now) so I didn't think I should have a cat. One day I found this emaciated kitten hiding in my chicken coop. I took her straight to the Vet and they told me they didn't want to do anything because they were certain she would not live through the night due to an upper respiratory infection, as well as having "every parasite known to man". I slept with her on my chest all night, hand-fed her for a week and this is her today. I thought that the only appropriate name was "Lucky".

 

good on you @freds4 for all your rescues!

lucky is a lucky gal indeed, and a beaut of a puss!

when we have pets, they're always a rescue.

it's safe to say that i like animals more than i like most people...

 

Yep, and she can be a lap cat. I was surprised by how playful she is. Just have to watch the rear claws and teeth.

 

"Paint me like one of your french girls" -Nyla 2020

 

do i spy a box of krispy kreme doughnuts and a coke?

that is a breakfast of champions!

let me ask a question. does it feel like you walk / talk faster than everyone else at work?

 

Our female “Tamale Kitten”
“Tamal” or “Tamal Tamew” for short (that last one because she lets out a squawky meow whenever you pet her). She likes to snuggle into small spaces, and even though she’s 5, she never grew adult teeth so she only has baby teeth - but it doesn’t stop her from killing lots of birds and rodents.


Our youngest “Jack Jack”.
Also known as “Badoo” and simply “Baby Cat”
He’s pretty low key, loves attention almost more than the dogs, will go limp if you pick him up and carry him around, and LOVES to hang/snuggle with our 2-yr-old lab Ally.


Our oldest cat “Oscar” (actually our oldest animal now) who also goes by “The Scer”
He’s 8, and I rescued him after a friend of a friend found him on the side of the I-205 bridge obviously tossed from a car. He was maybe 8-10 weeks old, had broken ribs, the skin/lips on his lower jaw were ripped loose and hanging from the gum line, and his upper lip was split through his nose and all the way to his forehead... the animal hospital they dropped him off at said they’d put him down if no one came to cover the cost to try and fix him up (not the most expensive cat I’ve ever had, but close), and when my wife called me to stop and check him out on my way home from work he was about the sweetest damn cat I’ve ever seen... he just purred the moment I held him despite being beat to hell. Needless to say, he’s my buddy.
He still purrs if you just look at him, and he loves to flip flop all over on his back getting belly rubs and kneading dough with his paws.

 

good on you @RainMan_PNW for rescuing The Scer!

a beautiful fur-fam you have there!

 

I’m a sucker for an animal that needs rescued. Unfortunately, I also live out in the hills and our animals are all inside/outside (they can come and go pretty freely outside). That has meant we’ve lost a fair number of cats to coyotes over the past few years, which is hard. These three are smart and cautious and have done great. We also had three others that were well into their teens that have gone of old age... the one that my wife had as a 6-mo-old kitten when I met her was 19-1/2 when we finally had to put him down. That was a hard one...he was pretty special...

 

Outside cat and medium size dogs don't live long around my house with coyotes. It has gotten better with more fences. The coyotes use to run our street. Countless neighbors have lost dogs and cats. One neighbor let his Jack Russell out and heard a yelp and it was gone. That one was tough. His dog use to come over and jump up in my lap.

 

This post made me LOL! That is the truth, be ready to be grabbed by the front daggers and kicked by the back daggers and unable to get your hand back! Your cat has a super cute face!!

-T

 

Two feral cats watching the leaves fall this morning.

 

I've already posted my cat but this pic is too awesome. Em-cat hurt himself on July 1st - I think he missed a jump and landed bad. Anyway, he had lost the use of his back legs. The vet thought he was a goner but we held on hope and he's walking but it's flat footed and he's incontinent. Lately he's had some bad bladder infections and a few days ago we almost put him to sleep because he was peeing blood. He absolutely loves this house and hates the vet so I thought we'd wait it out and when he gets to the point where he seems super uncomfortable, I'll pay the extra amount and have a vet come here to do it. Right now, he seems really happy. When I get near him he just purrs. Anyway, he basically travels in a plastic bin with puppy pads - whatever room I'm in, he's with me. I had just changed his pad, turned around and he was posing for me. Very modest little guy. Best animal I ever had, damn it.

 

Cool cat, I hope he recovers soon.

 

I remember your post - those fangs! Cool cat...they definitely become a part of the family and part of our lives. Putting my wife's 19-1/2 yr old cat "Josey Lynn" (named after the Outlaw Josey Wales) down was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Most of our cats have gone off on their own about the time we've talked about having to do the deed, but "Lynn Bug" was one we had to take to the vet. Still miss that damn cat.

 

I fell out of my chair doing something stupid a few years back and he ran over to check on me. He heard the AC pan dripping and came and got me. It sucks - he's only 8 and he was already suffering from Kidney failure. He got hurt on my daughters birthday. We were in the other room and he walked up to me for me to pick him up and I thought something was wrong. About an hour later, he couldn't walk.
But yeah, they really do become part of the family. As weird as it sounds, this little dude is the best friend I've ever had.
I'm sorry to hear about "Lynn Bug". You just gotta believe they are waiting somewhere for us.

 

Some of the ones we've lost:
Leo "Chipmunk" that my wife found on Halloween on the side of the road near our house. We're pretty sure he had been snagged by a bird of prey and then managed to get free because he was banged up with a few puncture wounds but no broken bones (which we'd expect if he had been hit by a car). Unfortunately, the front door was left open one day when he hadn't quite gotten big enough to learn his street smarts, and we're sure a coyote got him.


Spooky. My parents originally found her as a starving kitten in a graveyard near their house about the time we got Oscar. She spooked when we brought home our first dog and never came back.


Jake "Jakey Beans" - polydactyl who used his extra digits like opposable thumbs. I came home one day not long after we got married and my wife said, "We're going to Portland to get a cat." He was cool as hell - he'd been the cat of a roommate of my brother-in-law who just didn't have the room to give him a good life in his tiny studio apartment. He was 15 and was starting to have issues with kidneys and joints when he just didn't come back in one evening.


Josey Lynn "Lynn Bug" - he was my wife's literal shadow for 19-1/2 yrs, and his meow was a little squeak. Taking him to the vet to put him down was tough.


And it doesn't look like I have one of Santino "San Man" - he was the other one my wife had when I met her. He was also about 15 and was having lots of general old age issues when he just didn't come home one night.

And I can't find a picture of Finnegan, who was a shelter rescue shortly after we lost Leo. We lost him almost the same way we lost Leo, and that was the end of new cats for us for about 3 years...just couldn't take the heart break. Until my daughter and her boyfriend came home with Jack Jack.

 

Aww sorry about your boy. Are you sure he doesn't have a saddle thrombus? That can cause sudden paralysis of the back legs and loss of bladder control and is due to heart disease, usually hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The cat will generally yowl in pain at the onset of the thrombus, which forms in the heart because of a low ejection fraction and then gets ejected and hung up in the saddle (where the aorta branches into the right and left femoral arteries and it cuts off the blood supply to everything below it. HCM can go undiagnosed until a cat passes a saddle thrombus and this happens. I would have your vet do a chest X-ray to see if his heart looks enlarged, or and echocardiogram (if you haven't already) if you have the money to see if he has HCM, and if he does unfortunately the outcome is that he will likely develop another thrombus in the near future. The first two cats I had, siblings, both developed saddle thrombi and went into congestive heart failure with it. Some cats do not go into congestive heart failure and some do, I have no idea why not all of them do, I would assume maybe it has to do with the size of the thrombus, how quickly the body starts to absorb it, and how poor their overall heart function is.

I am sorry to give you this bad news, but if this is a saddle thrombus, and maybe even if it isn't and he doesn't improve as far as bladder control and mobility, the best thing you could do for him is let him go. I know it's difficult, as I had to have both of my cats recently euthanized within months of each other not so long ago. It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make, and my mind was filled with guilt for the first few weeks, but in the end you accept that it is what was best for them. Sometimes I think we make our animals continue.living because it allows us to delay feeling the emotions that come with letting them go when it's time.

If you have any questions feel free to PM me. I will have you and your poor little guy in my heart and thoughts.

-T

 

Wow - thanks for writing me. When he first started showing these symptoms, I took him to our vet and they were going to X-ray him. He's hated the vet ever since they removed a couple of his teeth and hasn't quite forgiven them. I couldn't go in with him and had to drop him off. He spent about 6 hours in a cage and they ultimately decided he was in too much pain to do anything because when they would try to touch him, he'd pee a little, scream, and try to kill them.

The vet ended up putting him on steroids to reduce any swelling, gabapentin, and Buprenex. She talked to a Neurologist but it was going to be an incredible amount of money to just do the diagnosis and then the treatment, if any, would had put it around 10k.

So he came home and he was fine with me touching him - through all of this he's never made a yelp with us. We put him on his meds and it zombied him. He'd just lay on a little bed we made for him and stare at me. I ended up taking him off of the pain meds after a few days because it didn't seem like he was in any, or not as much as the vet though. I think she mistook his anger at being there for pain. The vet was staying in touch with us and the night I took him off of the pain killers, she had told me that the Neurologist said if he wasn't moving, then we had a tough decision to make.

That night, I came into our living room to check on him and he had dragged himself about 12 ft to where I kept his little round cat bed. He couldn't get himself in it but he moved. I put him in his bed and each day he'd move a little more as the medicine wore off.

After about a month, he stopped dragging and could stand on his legs, flat footed. If we let him out and about, he'll waddle to my bathroom and try to get in the toilet - usually pooping on the toilet mat.

He's still incontinent - he seems to try to hold it but if he's walking and stresses himself a bit, he'll pee a little. He's on his third round of antibiotics for the UTI. He's had two events where he's peed a lot of blood. Yesterday it was very dark. I put him in his little bin with puppy pads and covered him with a blanket to keep him warm because he was acting a little puny.

Today he's all bright eyed and happy. I noticed for the last few days when I put him in his little pen to get water and food, he stands on his toes longer and longer, before dropping back to the flat footedness. Oh, his tail has been lifting more today than I've seen in a while. This is a cat whose tail never drooped when he was around me. It seemed to pop up a few times today.

I want to say that we ruled out the clot because he still has feeling in his tail, and legs. We thought maybe he fractured his pelvis or did some kind of spinal injury. He gets real attentive to me when I'm touching the top of his spine, near the base of his tail.

Sorry, this was longer than I thought. Probably should have moved it to PM

 

Hi,

So if he injured his spine, you would actually expect his tail to be effected, and everything below the level of the spinal cord injury. I could be wrong, but it would take a significant amount of force to break a cat's pelvis or a vertebrae, such as getting hit by a car or falling from a really significant height. A broken pelvis would also not cause the loss of bladder/bowel control. He was most likely experiencing severe pain after this happened, whether it was a thrombus or some other injury, so I am glad you gave him pain meds. Anyway, I still strongly believe your poor boy had a saddle thrombus and it is probably something to look into since it would give you a better idea on his long term prognosis. Hoping everything works out for the best for both of you! He is very lucky to have you, as you clearly love him lots! <3


-T

 

@Kerch71 and @jaredmillerdvm have a thread for vet advice. They're both vets and very helpful. Have you talked to them @TaquitoBandito ?