Updates

Several people have asked how we are doing since Natalie was sick. Neither my mom or myself caught the flu and we are very thankful for that. Natalie went back to school this week and every day she has come home so tired. She is sleeping 11-12 hours a night and still tired in the morning. It has been an adjustment for her since during the week home, she slept later in the morning and had any where from a 2 hour daily nap to up to 5 hours of napping. Her nose is still runny, but the cough is just about all gone.
Joey is still having a hard time, though he did sleep curled up to me last night and late this afternoon he did eat a little can food. He did rub against my legs a couple of times and now is sleeping on my bed. He seems to sleep better there when Maxx is sleeping at the foot of the bed. He did respond more to being brushed today. In this picture Joey is awake, but that is how he looks lately. He keeps his eyes almost closed as if he is just too tired to open them. He reminds me of some one who is so depressed that all they want to do is sleep. But if I compare the last 3 days, today has been his best day so far.

The Traveling Cat

When I was growing up, my father was in the Army so we moved around quite a bit. When I became an adult, not only did I like to travel to see different places, but I also moved a lot because of jobs or other opportunities. Since Selah lived with me, she had no choice but to move with me or to travel with me when I went home to visit my family. Selah was a great traveler and mover except for one thing. She would get motion sickness. The day I picked her out was right after work and I lived about 45 minutes away. So I put her on the floor of the car on the passenger side. Not far into the ride, I heard this little cry and soon the poor kitten had purged from both ends. I had no idea that this would become routine with her. I learned to travel with plastic bags, paper towels and extra newspapers and ALWAYS put her in a carrier. I had heard about a woman who was traveling through the area where my family lived. She was not from the area and was traveling with her two cats. She was in an accident and the cats ran away from the car. Complete strangers in the area combed the area for her cats and thankfully found them. After I read that, I always made sure Selah was in the carrier. The other thing about being in the carrier was that any where between 10-45 minutes into the trip (which could be as simple as a visit to the vet or 9 hours to Pennsylvania) there would always be the moment when you knew what was coming. Selah had this distinct meow. You would hear her start to meow in this fashion and you knew the purging was about to begin. When I traveled from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, there was one rest stop that we consistently stopped at about 45 minutes into the trip. It was like clockwork! She wasn't always the quietest traveler either. It seemed the older she got the more she would meow during a trip. When I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina, I don't think she stopped meowing the entire trip.

Although traveling in the car involved a little upheaval for her, moving did not. She quickly adjusted to her new surrounding and it was never traumatic for her. She started her life out with me in Fayetteville, North Carolina where she lived with me for 4 years. At that point I moved to Romania to work in an orphanage and with a local church. Leaving my friends and family were hard. But the hardest part was leaving Selah. You can talk and correspond with family, but you can't with your animals. At that point she moved to Pennsylvania and lived with my mom for 2 years. It was a great time for her as she got to spend a lot of time outside. She loved chasing grasshoppers. When I returned to the states, I picked her up and we moved back to Fayetteville into an apartment for awhile and then into a house. We stayed there for a year and then moved to Boston. In Boston we lived in a company provided apartment, the second floor of a two family dwelling, (both of these in the same suburb) a side by side duplex in Newton, Ma and then another side by side duplex in Brighton, MA. Our total time in Boston was 6 years and then we moved to the Triad area in North Carolina. We first lived in an apartment and then 6 months later moved into our current home, where she lived for 7 years.
Maxx joined us after 10 years together in Boston and Joey joined us 2 years after living in North Carolina. I really think our current home is the one she liked the best and I am glad this is where she was at the end of her life. I can't help but look at the woods in the back yard and think of her last travels down to the creek and back. Even at the end, she was still a traveling cat!

Joey Update

This morning I found Joey under the bed and curled up in a ball. I took him down stairs to the litter box and he did a few things that had me concerned. So this afternoon we were back to the vet. Joey saw the vet that performed Maxx's life saving surgery and I saw the vet that was with me on Monday passing by and she stopped in. I explained what was going on with Joey. He had some tests done and it turned out that everything was okay, but both vets felt that the major changes like the litter box being gone, the cups of water gone and the bathroom door being closed were quite traumatic to Joey. So just like a little child, he was waiting as long as he could before he had to go which was causing some problems. They also felt that he was indeed grieving for Selah. The vet that saw Selah commented that "cats don't live in our houses, we live in theirs." So they suggested that I put a litter box back up stairs as well as the little cups of water. When we got back from the vets, Joey ran up stairs and began eating. I showed him that "things" were back where they had been before. Only this is a different litter box so I am not sure if that is going to be a problem for him or not. I hope in the future to gradually move it back down stairs. But for the time being if it helps him, it will be worth it. He does seem a little more like himself though he does indeed seem sad. He is actually sleeping on top of the bed instead of under it right now.

Day 2-Joey Grieves

Today I had planned to write more about Selah, but I will save that for tomorrow. Thank you so much to all of you who have called and sent emails. Everyone has been so kind and I appreciate it so much. I am still so sad today and I know with time it will pass as so many of you who have lost pets have shared. It has hit me hard, but I am surprised by how hard it has hit Joey cat. Yesterday when I came home, I cleaned up all the special things I had done for Selah to make her life easier. I had a litter box in my bathroom, little Dixie cups of water in the bathroom and a towel at the foot of my bed where I left treats and her dry food so she didn't have to get off the bed to eat. Joey thought these were all for him too and he enjoyed the benefits. Today these are all gone and I am not sure if that has affected him as well.

Every day my mom comes over the house and lets Maxx outside. He usually just hangs out around the patio but stays outside until I get home from work. Joey on the other hand would sleep on my bed where Selah would also sleep each day. At night Selah would be on the pillow and Joey would lay almost on top of me right next to me near the edge of the bed. As soon as I would get up, Joey would be at my feet, rubbing on my legs for some Whisker Lickens his favorite treat. This morning I didn't see Joey the entire time I got ready for work. I finally found him hiding under a side table. When I called his name I could hear him meow almost like a cry. I gave him a few treats and today when I got home from work, they were still there and he was not. I expected to find him on my bed, but he wasn't there. Instead he was under my bed lying in the exact spot that Selah laid for the last week. Again he meowed that pitiful cry. I gave him some treats and he ate a few. This evening I came upstairs and again he was under the bed. I took him out and tried to brush him which is something he loves, especially on the side of his mouth where his whiskers are. But he just laid there and didn't move. So I picked up up and held him and we just rocked in the rocking chair. Seeing him like that made me cry all the more. When I put him, down he left the room and went under the bed in the guest room.
It just breaks my heart to see him like that and I am hoping with time, his little heart will heal too. Joey has always been a one person cat, but I had no idea that he was so attached to Selah. Please pray for little Joey that he will be alright.

Good-bye Sweet Selah

(Correct date on picture is supposed to be October 10, 2009)

It has been an awful week and a half. Last Sunday night Natalie started running a fever and by Monday she was so sick she couldn't eat and wasn't talking. We went to the doctor's where she was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus. The fever stayed until late Wednesday morning and she was doing better Wednesday and Thursday though still congested and coughing and she had a runny nose. So I planned to send her to school on Friday, but Friday morning she was running a fever again that lasted until Saturday. Back to the doctor's, a new prescription and she was able to go back to school today. I have never seen her so sick or run a fever as high as she did. It was heartbreaking to see her so sick. I am grateful she is doing so much better.

The Friday before Natalie got sick, I could tell that Selah had lost more weight and sure enough she was down to 5 pounds. So on Saturday I tried giving her fluids subcutaneously as I had 3 months before. I had done that for 2 weeks 3 months ago and it make a world of difference, to the point that she was eating, gaining weight and I didn't have to give her fluids any more. But this time it was different. She meowed when the needle went in and she "cried" the entire time and struggled to get away. Before she would lay contently and purr. It was so hard to see that I decided that I wasn't going to put her through it again. She was still eating and drinking, but then about 4 days ago she stopped eating. I tried feeding her by syringe, but that was a struggle. On Saturday I stopped giving her food. Meanwhile she seemed to have more difficulty walking as though she had arthritis. But she wanted to go outside more which was unusual for her. Twice a day she would make a journey down the yard through some shallow woods and drink from a little creek that was there. The other major difference was that she stopped sleeping on my pillow at night.

By Saturday I was struggling with whether or not to take her in to the vets. They were only open in the morning as was the doctor's office. I decided that it was more important to get Natalie into the doctor's office. I wasn't sure if Selah would make it through the night. But she did. It was hard to watch her make her way to drink water and go back under the bed. Originally I had plans for the entire weekend, but because Natalie was sick I cancelled everything. Some how the Lord was using that to allow me to be home and spend some time with Selah. I have to confess that I have been crying all week and this weekend as I knew the end was coming soon. I had made up my mind on Sunday that I would take her in to the vet's first thing Monday morning to end her pain. On Sunday evening she was out from under the bed a lot and wanted to be picked up and held. It was a sweet time. I went to bed about 10 and woke up at 11 and checked on her. She was under the bed and okay. After I got into the bed, I heard her meow and fall as she tried to jump on my bed. My bed is higher than the average bed. So I picked her up and she laid on my pillow for about 10 minutes and left. About 5 minutes later, I heard her jump on the bed and she came over to the pillow. She slept on it for about 4 hours. Snuggled up next to my head. She would get up and move to another position and it was so hard to watch her struggle to get comfortable. It was as if this was her gift to me, one last time sleeping on the pillow.

This morning she was under the bed and came into the bathroom. For years she has loved to jump in the bathtub after my shower and drink the residue water. This morning she looked at me and I gently lifted her up into the tub. I added some water and let her drink. Then I took her out. She did this twice.

Then it was time to go. I was the first one at the vet's office and had to wait about 5 minutes for the vet to arrive. There are 2 out of 4 vets there that have seen her the most and one of them was the first one to arrive. I carried her in the exam room and laid her on the table. She was purring and still rubbing her head against my hand. The vet administered the medication and it was quickly over. As heartbroken as I am, I know that she is no longer suffering and no longer in pain. I will miss my sweet girl. Twenty years is a long time and I have been so blessed to have had her that long. We have so many wonderful memories and over the next several days, I plan to blog about some of them. Good-bye sweet Selah, thank you for your love, companionship and all the joy you brought into my life. You will be greatly missed!

Please Vote

I read a book several weeks ago called Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper (http://www.gwencooper.com/) It is the story about a blind cat. It was well written and I think any one who loves animals would enjoy it. I've been following Gwen's blog and through it found out about an organization called Blind Cat Rescue and Sanctuary. Apparently there is a contest running and each day you can vote. The organization that gets the most votes when the contest is over will win $20, 000. If you have time, please take the time to vote to help this wonderful organization. I was excited to learn that they are located in North Carolina. So click on the link below and vote!

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces?siteId=3

Pick Blind Cat Rescue in the state of North Carolina

Here is the link for the Blind Cat Rescue:

http://blindcatrescue.com/