My cat died October 12, 2012.....Not sure why she died, i will never know for sure,maybe get some th

I am not sure why or what caused my cat to die,i will never know for sure. Maybe if i told the events,some background, i can come up with something close to  closure.

[ i will add any details as i think of them, if any]

Baby cat,named at birth as we til we could think of a name...we never did so the name stuck

Born Nov 5,2000  A litter of one. Died Oct.12,2012

She was a small sized cat,an Egyptian mau/silver tabby type cat, mother looked like a twin of her

At 3 years old,we believe she drank the side of a bleach bottle. Vet believed her stomach was perforated by the liquid. Sickly for a week and a half to a month. She used up one of lives

.

Other than the bleach incident, she went on to the next 9 years til she died, she was extremely healthy looking,extremely intelligent,two times when a small dog was visiting and went to bite my feet, she ran from another room to intervene and swung at the dog to get away from me. When someone cut my toe nails, she bite the person's legs to back off. She showed signs of having strong esp. She never went outdoors. Maybe a total of 20 minutes her whole life. except when she went to the vet.

Fast forward to recently and her death short of 12 years

About 1-2 years ago, we noticed she started putting on alot of weight and getting ready to do something , change food amounts etc. . We always thought she get to 18-20 years,she was so healthy looking but knew the extra weight was not good for her

About 4 months before she died,she was extremely sensitive about her lower abdomen. She would be in good spirits,but quickly angered and struck with claws when her lower abdomen was touched. That is when i started thinking , it might be time to bring her to the Vet. But you see, her mother has been suffering from hyperthroyism and being treated for 3 years, we always thought her mother would go any day. Our attention had always been focused on her mother's health.

So there is the extra weight,sensitive stomach but i am not sure they were directly related to my cat's death.

Wednesday night, my cat did not sleep in the easy chair like the past 6 months but in a cat tent. Thursday, my cat stayed in the cat tent all day...which i realized in retrospect. I saw her drinking water at one point. We went to sleep Thursday night. About 2 am Friday morning i her a loud ,dark,moan, and found my baby near my bed. crouched down,her head looking down, she was fully conscious, her eyes quickly going side to side. I said what is wrong,she did not look up but continued her eyes going side to side. Something was likely taking place inside her.  I yelled for my wife, something is wrong with baby, we got to go to the vet.  During the next half hour as we got dress,got the carrier out.  My cat made it to the nearby kitchen floor and started panting. I put the carrier down, my cat got up and started walking to the carrier,she was looking straight into my eyes.communicating to me, she was hurt and scared

,her front legs started buckling under her,but she made it to the inside of the carrier.   

The vet was a 70 mile trip.  About 50 miles on the way, my cat started moaning loudly, we saw some blood coming out of her mouth.  My wife told me to pull into rest area. She went to the backseat where my cat was in the carrier, my wife said my cat turned around, then all of a sudden sprang up,arching her back,screaming, then fell dead. My wife later said it was good i did not see that, she said she could tell by my cats eyes she did not want to die. She has said 4 or 5 times since, it was good i did not see that. i told her, my cat may have been dead when she arched back, but she insists my cat was still alive,til she collapsed.

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This is my post on the day she died. Thanks everyone 

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/249771/my-cat-of-12-years-died-2-hours

About 11 years old,copying the way i sleep


About 2 years old


This is baby looking at the camera, her mother in the background

I am so sorry to read that your cat passed, I dont think you would know how she did unless there was an autopsy carried out, because it could be anything  

It's easy to say you "should have" taken her to the vet long ago; such things as abdominal sensitivity are very bad signs.  However, it's not a perfect world, and we don't always realize what we're looking at, even when it's right in front of us.  And if you have a 70-mile drive to the nearest vet, I have no doubt that that would be a significant negative force in the equation of when to go to the vet.

Still, twelve years is pretty close to the average life span of cats.  I'm sure Baby knew knew she was loved; she clearly had a strong connection to you.
 

Aww, I'm sorry to hear about your cat. I don't know what that could have been, never heard anything like it.

Did you ask your vet and describe the symptoms? The vet would know better.

Try not to dwell on the "should haves," it won't do any good. You did what you could, cats are hard creatures to detect health problems in.

Where i live in a rural area, the cat heallth/vet services are not all that great. The few vets in the area

have day hours, not available for night emergencies. When you do bring a cat to a vet, they seem

to check the weight,give u your bill,and send you on your way. the nearest vet after 5pm is 70 miles

away.  My cat took about 2 hours to die. If there was a local vet, i would have her there in about 30

minutes, at least to be quietly put to sleep. It seems my cat and myself got punished.My cat more of course.

Your cat was in distress and needed help and you did the best you could, nobody wants to die but it happens to everyone . If my spouse kept saying those things I would tell them it is making me feel bad.
I am so sorry for your loss .

Is there a way to move this post to another of the forum. When i first posted i was not to

sure under what category to place it under.  I am thinking about other posters that are

posting in 'Cat health' with more urgent needs.

I've moved this thread to Crossing the Bridge for you.
I'm very sorry you lost Baby this way. It sounds like she had something wrong going on in her stomach/intestinal tract but we'll never know for sure.
RIP Baby cat.

pushylady said:

I've moved this thread to Crossing the Bridge for you.
I'm very sorry you lost Baby this way. It sounds like she had something wrong going on in her stomach/intestinal tract but we'll never know for sure.
RIP Baby cat.

Click to expand...

Thanks for moving my post. It may have been getting in the way of more urgent posts in the Cat health section.

It was kinda a perfect storm of myself not realizing she had a problem .She looked like the perfect healthy cat,

extremely intelligent,clear eyes,wet nose, I was proud of how healthy she was.Meanwhile her mother was/is

in falling health,sickly-looking and acting [effects of hypothyroism],for four years  It was a given, the mother

would go any day. 

We have 2 other cats, one is a male that was always teasing/tapping Baby on the base of her tail,ever so

lightly,just to watch baby run across the room. She would do it to him too. So i thought when i touched her

near the abdomen,she just thought i was teasing her like the male cat would do and she was angry.

Two nights before she died, she was sitting around,looking normal. 'The day before the night she would die

' ,she stayed in her tent all day, i had a thought something was wrong at one point,than a water pipe broke

in the house,i had to call  a plumber,than a  bill..Alot of commotion in the house. Went to bed that night,

next thing i wake up to my cat in trouble. If the pipe did not break, i likely would have picked up something

wrong with my cat before the night came. If a vet was closer, i may have had another chance to save her life, 

or at least let her die easier. I couldnt say this before: she died a painful death and it was not quick. I feel 

i got punished,her more of course.

About the last three years of her life, she slept in my arms like a teddy bear every night. You know in the jungle

how large cats will circle their arms[front legs actually] around a cub cat,like that. 

I got two other things to bring up about her death, i am still not ready to bring them up.completely. When did my cat

die exactly in the 2 hours it took and because i lived where a vet at night is about 2 hours away, what one can

do if a cat is suffering and not going to make a long trip to a vet, a  2 hour trip in my case.

Poor kitty I think maybe she might have had internal bleeding somehow; maybe she had an aneurysm or even cancer, or maybe something with that injury to her stomach, an adhesion that caused some kind of injury... I guess you'll never know.

If it took two hours, and it takes two hours to get to the vet, maybe it was lucky you decided to just be with her instead. That way she was able to be in a familiar place, with her people, instead of in a carrier being driven to the vet's. Maybe you knew somehow you wouldn't have been in time if you'd gone. When you get to know another living creature very closely, sometimes you do know. There's that one cat, Oscar, who knows about his human friends at his nursing home when they're going to die; who's to say a human wouldn't know about a cat?

I don't think you could've done any more. If the closest open vet is too far, the best you can do is to be with the cat, keep her comfortable and warm and let her know you're there. Which is exactly what you did.

Beautiful Baby Cat

It sounds like what she had was a seizure. I'm not sure what to make of the other symptoms though.

I'm so sorry for your loss..

When i was first awaken by a low howl, i found her in that ;duck floating on a pond; position, a cat will do. [if that makes sense]  Crouched down, her stomach on the floor,her paws turned inward under her chest. She sat there,eyes shooting side to side,quickly, Something? was taking place./going on  inside her. Then she walked 5 yards,started panting. About 15 minutes. I placed the cat craddle out and she willingly walked in.  She was fully conscious,staring me in my eyes,looking at me help. About an hour later on the ride to the vet, She arched her back and died,....my wife saw it,later said i was lucky not to have seen it.

I have had 4 or 5 close cats,that cat was one of the highlights of my life. Cats are so special,they can be so in tuned with us its indescribable.

I'm so sorry about your dear kitty. It's easier to say this than to heed it, but it sounds to me like you did everything you could for your kitty. You were there with her in her final moments and obviously gave her a good, long life. I also understand the strength of a bond between human and cat when you've known the kitty since the very beginning. My own kitty left me today at the age of 14, and I can remember holding her in one hand the very day she was born (and her mother being thoroughly annoyed about having to bathe her again). Not to say that these bonds are somehow stronger or better than the bonds between kitties and humans who found one another later in life, but just saying I can relate from the perspective of having a kitty since kittenhood. Your kitty knew she was loved.

Yes kitties go into that crouching position when they don't feel well. Cats do a good job of hiding their ailments, and even if you had seen something earlier the vet may not have been able to diagnose it. it took five visits to the vet for my cat's cancer to be diagnosed

Oh my goodness, l'm so sorry, not only for your loss but what you had to witness

RIP Baby