Cataan,
I'm not going to argue whether your cat had heart attack or not. I had to challenge what my vet said once and maybe I asked more questions than others, probably because I've been an RN for 24 years and worked in health care for 27 years. The only way to truly know what the cause of death was is to do an autopsy. Maybe your cat had 'abc' or it was 'xyz' as the cause of death. I don't know. What I do know is that it's easier said than done to not speculate or go through the 'shoulda-coulda-woulda' and 'what ifs.' All I can do is share my own personal experience with you, which occurred last Spring through Summer months.
I'm going to tell you my story about my favorite cat, Nala. This may take a bit, as it's been less than a year since she left me. It feels as fresh as it did when this all happened last year. A nearly similar series of events are going on now with my male cat, which parallel last year's events, with my female cat. I had admitted my Dad to the hospital in March '13 for the second time in one week, just seven hours after being discharged from the hospital. There were also problems going on with the sump pump at my Dad's home that took my attention away from Nala.
When I chose Nala from the litter, I chose her personality. She is a darker tiger-striped cat and her 'daddy' was a Siamese. She loved to 'talk.' She was also high-strung and bit wary of strangers and fast moving 'small people.' (Children) She often hid away under a bed in a back bedroom when the doorbell rang, when we had family gatherings or when the environment became too loud for her. She also liked to 'hide away' behind boxes or dressers where she could not be found.
I had not been working for several years and I had been staying at home, taking care of my Dad and helping out my older sister who began having health problems. Because money was tight for me, my strictly indoor cats did not go to the vet for about five and a half years.
When my Miss Nala Kitty started her downhill slide in 2013, it seemed to show up suddenly but I know now that there had been 'soft signs' that I didn't catch right away of something going on all along. It started with loss of appetite, I think, due to the pain she was having, but hid very well. She used to love eating a few small pieces of bacon, but began to lose interest in it. For about two months, I missed it. Prior to all of the above happening, Nala would sit on my left thigh to get petted while I had my laptop on my right thigh and the right arm of a reclining chair. Although she was not overweight, her weight would make my leg ache after a while. Then one day I noticed she felt very light on my leg and her weight didn't cause my leg to ache at all. I gave myself a ton of grief over not catching this sooner. (I later blamed myself for not taking my cats to the vet regularly.) She also started doing this meowing at the back door when I was in the garage. But, then again, Nala was my little 'talker' and it just seemed like she missed me when I was not in the house. I thought that maybe she had some separation anxiety since my Dad was in the hospital for about five weeks. I chose to monitor her weight loss and 'wait and see.'
Urine on my bedroom carpet and on stacks of papers appeared and one day I caught my male cat in the act. Simba, my male, was blamed for any and all urine findings. (In hindsight, he was probably only doing this because Nala had done this, because she associated the little box with painful urination.) My male cat gets jealous and pees on my things to 'punish' me.) My leather purse was ruined as well as a pair of leather slip-ons. (At least the perpetrator had ‘taste.’) I took both cats to the vet. The male, Simba, did not have any urinary infection issues, but both cats had signs of kidney problems. I did treat Nala for a urinary tract infection (which often happens when people get dehydrated) with a long-acting subcutaneous injection. The vet and I discussed doing a thyroid challenge test to see if this was the cause of the weight loss, which involved pre-medication blood work, giving a thyroid medication daily for a few days, and then more blood work. I mulled this over for a couple of weeks, waiting to see if she would get better once the infection had cleared, before finally agreeing to try this. Nala was a tough cat to give a pill. I hated giving her pills maybe more than she hated taking them. An x ray was done. The vet and I looked at her xray but something the vet said about the x ray just did not seem to fit. It bugged me.
Over the weekend, I gave the thyroid medication to Nala and I decided to do my own mini-assessment on her. I palpated (felt) a large mass on the area in which the vet had pointed to on the x ray, stating that this was her liver. What I thought I found was an enlarged kidney. When I took Nala to the vet after the weekend for her follow-up blood work, we would later find out the result was that her weight loss was not due to a thyroid issue. I asked the vet to recheck the x ray again and to palpate the area of the mass I had found. She agreed that this was her kidney and it was bigger than the size of a golf ball.
The vet scheduled me with an Internal Medicine Vet at a specialty clinic in my city. Blood work and an ultrasound were done there. Both of her kidneys showed Lymphoma masses and she had smaller masses in her abdomen. Her pancreas was enlarged. (I understood why she refused the bacon, knowing the correlation between the two. I would later blame myself for giving her too much bacon too often.) Lymphoma could be treated with Chemotherapy, I was told, and she could have another three months to a year to live, or, if untreated, it was three months. Oh, wow! My favorite little furball is terminal! Being given this diagnosis plus the pressure of having to decide what is in the best interest of my furbaby, hit me like a ton of bricks! Keep in mind, I hand-picked this one from a litter when I adopted her. She was smart, and she was my favorite. In making my decision, I kept in mind that she had lived a fairly long, comfortably-spoiled life and she was 14 years old (72 in people years,) and went with my 'gut.'
I opted for comfort cares only, because I have witnessed and given chemo to people in the hospital. Chemo really wipes humans of energy, causes nausea & vomiting, weight loss & anorexia, sometimes hair loss, in addition to decreased ability to fight infection, low blood counts, etc. In some people, Chemotherapy just really takes a lot out on the person and I felt this would take away from any quality of life remaining if she had to go through this. Nala had lost more than half of her weight and I just couldn't see myself (selfishly) making her miserable during her last moments when there was no guarantee that it would significantly enhance her quality of life or lengthen it. Had this happened when she was a few years younger and caught sooner, I might have made a different decision. It was at this visit that I learned of her dehydration being 4% (or maybe more.) I'd have to pull the paperwork out from last year to be sure. Nala was treated with subcutaneous fluids, a couple of pills, one of which was to increase her appetite, which worked ok for two weeks before she started to vomit the partially digested pill along with bile. I didn't dare re-medicate her for at least 2-3 days as had no idea how much of the pill her body had absorbed. I did everything I could to make her life enjoyable, from pureeing chunky wet food, mixing it with jars of baby food meat and adding in 'num-nums' of small cans of a certain brand of wet cat food, of what I've started to call 'kitty crack.'
The Internist was maybe a bit off in his prognosis pertaining to Nala's length of life, or maybe he had said, "Up to three months," to me and all I heard was "three months," because I had just been thrown for a loop with the diagnosis. I only got to enjoy her company for three short weeks more and then I knew it was 'time.'
Did I blame myself for her death? You betcha! I blamed myself for not doing yearly visits during those five to six years in which I didn't take either of my cats to the vet. The only time from 2008-2013 that I took a cat to see the vet was if I had suspected that something was wrong. I blamed myself for her enlarged pancreas because I started offering her bacon shortly after her last regular vet visit in 2007. (We'd had a small dog that had pancreatitis from eating too much 'people' food scraps and I told myself I should've known better.) I blamed myself for many things related to Nala's death.
What helped me get through the 'blame game' with myself was buying & reading books dealing with pet loss & reading and posting in forums about pet loss, and TIME.
If you want to get sites I used or titles books I found helpful, feel free to send me PM.
~Cheryl
I'm not going to argue whether your cat had heart attack or not. I had to challenge what my vet said once and maybe I asked more questions than others, probably because I've been an RN for 24 years and worked in health care for 27 years. The only way to truly know what the cause of death was is to do an autopsy. Maybe your cat had 'abc' or it was 'xyz' as the cause of death. I don't know. What I do know is that it's easier said than done to not speculate or go through the 'shoulda-coulda-woulda' and 'what ifs.' All I can do is share my own personal experience with you, which occurred last Spring through Summer months.
I'm going to tell you my story about my favorite cat, Nala. This may take a bit, as it's been less than a year since she left me. It feels as fresh as it did when this all happened last year. A nearly similar series of events are going on now with my male cat, which parallel last year's events, with my female cat. I had admitted my Dad to the hospital in March '13 for the second time in one week, just seven hours after being discharged from the hospital. There were also problems going on with the sump pump at my Dad's home that took my attention away from Nala.
When I chose Nala from the litter, I chose her personality. She is a darker tiger-striped cat and her 'daddy' was a Siamese. She loved to 'talk.' She was also high-strung and bit wary of strangers and fast moving 'small people.' (Children) She often hid away under a bed in a back bedroom when the doorbell rang, when we had family gatherings or when the environment became too loud for her. She also liked to 'hide away' behind boxes or dressers where she could not be found.
I had not been working for several years and I had been staying at home, taking care of my Dad and helping out my older sister who began having health problems. Because money was tight for me, my strictly indoor cats did not go to the vet for about five and a half years.
When my Miss Nala Kitty started her downhill slide in 2013, it seemed to show up suddenly but I know now that there had been 'soft signs' that I didn't catch right away of something going on all along. It started with loss of appetite, I think, due to the pain she was having, but hid very well. She used to love eating a few small pieces of bacon, but began to lose interest in it. For about two months, I missed it. Prior to all of the above happening, Nala would sit on my left thigh to get petted while I had my laptop on my right thigh and the right arm of a reclining chair. Although she was not overweight, her weight would make my leg ache after a while. Then one day I noticed she felt very light on my leg and her weight didn't cause my leg to ache at all. I gave myself a ton of grief over not catching this sooner. (I later blamed myself for not taking my cats to the vet regularly.) She also started doing this meowing at the back door when I was in the garage. But, then again, Nala was my little 'talker' and it just seemed like she missed me when I was not in the house. I thought that maybe she had some separation anxiety since my Dad was in the hospital for about five weeks. I chose to monitor her weight loss and 'wait and see.'
Urine on my bedroom carpet and on stacks of papers appeared and one day I caught my male cat in the act. Simba, my male, was blamed for any and all urine findings. (In hindsight, he was probably only doing this because Nala had done this, because she associated the little box with painful urination.) My male cat gets jealous and pees on my things to 'punish' me.) My leather purse was ruined as well as a pair of leather slip-ons. (At least the perpetrator had ‘taste.’) I took both cats to the vet. The male, Simba, did not have any urinary infection issues, but both cats had signs of kidney problems. I did treat Nala for a urinary tract infection (which often happens when people get dehydrated) with a long-acting subcutaneous injection. The vet and I discussed doing a thyroid challenge test to see if this was the cause of the weight loss, which involved pre-medication blood work, giving a thyroid medication daily for a few days, and then more blood work. I mulled this over for a couple of weeks, waiting to see if she would get better once the infection had cleared, before finally agreeing to try this. Nala was a tough cat to give a pill. I hated giving her pills maybe more than she hated taking them. An x ray was done. The vet and I looked at her xray but something the vet said about the x ray just did not seem to fit. It bugged me.
Over the weekend, I gave the thyroid medication to Nala and I decided to do my own mini-assessment on her. I palpated (felt) a large mass on the area in which the vet had pointed to on the x ray, stating that this was her liver. What I thought I found was an enlarged kidney. When I took Nala to the vet after the weekend for her follow-up blood work, we would later find out the result was that her weight loss was not due to a thyroid issue. I asked the vet to recheck the x ray again and to palpate the area of the mass I had found. She agreed that this was her kidney and it was bigger than the size of a golf ball.
The vet scheduled me with an Internal Medicine Vet at a specialty clinic in my city. Blood work and an ultrasound were done there. Both of her kidneys showed Lymphoma masses and she had smaller masses in her abdomen. Her pancreas was enlarged. (I understood why she refused the bacon, knowing the correlation between the two. I would later blame myself for giving her too much bacon too often.) Lymphoma could be treated with Chemotherapy, I was told, and she could have another three months to a year to live, or, if untreated, it was three months. Oh, wow! My favorite little furball is terminal! Being given this diagnosis plus the pressure of having to decide what is in the best interest of my furbaby, hit me like a ton of bricks! Keep in mind, I hand-picked this one from a litter when I adopted her. She was smart, and she was my favorite. In making my decision, I kept in mind that she had lived a fairly long, comfortably-spoiled life and she was 14 years old (72 in people years,) and went with my 'gut.'
I opted for comfort cares only, because I have witnessed and given chemo to people in the hospital. Chemo really wipes humans of energy, causes nausea & vomiting, weight loss & anorexia, sometimes hair loss, in addition to decreased ability to fight infection, low blood counts, etc. In some people, Chemotherapy just really takes a lot out on the person and I felt this would take away from any quality of life remaining if she had to go through this. Nala had lost more than half of her weight and I just couldn't see myself (selfishly) making her miserable during her last moments when there was no guarantee that it would significantly enhance her quality of life or lengthen it. Had this happened when she was a few years younger and caught sooner, I might have made a different decision. It was at this visit that I learned of her dehydration being 4% (or maybe more.) I'd have to pull the paperwork out from last year to be sure. Nala was treated with subcutaneous fluids, a couple of pills, one of which was to increase her appetite, which worked ok for two weeks before she started to vomit the partially digested pill along with bile. I didn't dare re-medicate her for at least 2-3 days as had no idea how much of the pill her body had absorbed. I did everything I could to make her life enjoyable, from pureeing chunky wet food, mixing it with jars of baby food meat and adding in 'num-nums' of small cans of a certain brand of wet cat food, of what I've started to call 'kitty crack.'
The Internist was maybe a bit off in his prognosis pertaining to Nala's length of life, or maybe he had said, "Up to three months," to me and all I heard was "three months," because I had just been thrown for a loop with the diagnosis. I only got to enjoy her company for three short weeks more and then I knew it was 'time.'
Did I blame myself for her death? You betcha! I blamed myself for not doing yearly visits during those five to six years in which I didn't take either of my cats to the vet. The only time from 2008-2013 that I took a cat to see the vet was if I had suspected that something was wrong. I blamed myself for her enlarged pancreas because I started offering her bacon shortly after her last regular vet visit in 2007. (We'd had a small dog that had pancreatitis from eating too much 'people' food scraps and I told myself I should've known better.) I blamed myself for many things related to Nala's death.
What helped me get through the 'blame game' with myself was buying & reading books dealing with pet loss & reading and posting in forums about pet loss, and TIME.
If you want to get sites I used or titles books I found helpful, feel free to send me PM.
~Cheryl
