- Joined
- May 13, 2017
- Messages
- 16
- Purraise
- 19
MOD NOTE: Jezabel's story is part of this long-standing thread: When a cat is dying...
Thank you everyone for your thoughts everybody.
I called the vet like you guys suggested to tell her that it was probably soon, but kind of had her on standby. So I ended up waiting a couple of months.. she started having problems getting up our stairs and was urinating everywhere until she wasn't going...at all...we had been carrying her up the stairs for the last 4 months and putting her in the litterbox. One day we did and she just struggled, got out of the litterbox and passed out.
That night she was in the other room sleeping in her bed (her last days she seemed to prefer hanging out with us on the bed, but would go down her pet stairs to her other bed to sleep at night.) That night I got a really bad feeling and that I needed to check on her.
I walked in to her wheezing with her mouth wide open and breathing very heavily which broke my heart just watching.
Joe and I lay on the floor holding her paws until it subsided.
Then I picked her up and brought her into the room with Joe and I to sleep.
She seemed calm sleeping in between us...she stretched her little head out to curl up against my head, I hope it comforted her somewhat. I could tell she was in a lot of pain.
The next morning I called the vet at 8 am and left a text.
The vet said she could come at 4 pm. It felt like we were in some kind of torturous countdown.
Three days previous we had started to go outside with Jez in our yard and lay with her on a blanket (my husband works from home most of the time) as even though she was kind of a scardy cat and hadn't gone outside much, but suddenly she was VERY interested in the outdoors, like she was when she was younger. She was very wobbly and frail, and we were always close, so we knew she couldn't sneak off to die.
Her favorite place was always behind our house, in protected forest. Its a gully with a pathway that has a stream at the bottom. For the first time in years we brought her there...we carried her down to it and set her down by the ...The second day she tried to get a drink and actually GROWLED at us when we didn't let her because we worried what it would do to her.
Her last day alive we let her get a drink.
When she decided she was done with drinking that water, we brought her back up to the backyard where she had strengthened her claws years earlier on all the trees...where she would walk to the back of the yard and pace along the fence like a little grey tiger...andchew on the grass in the circular garden and lay there with the wind whipping through her hair and put her on the green blanket that matched her eyes.
It was only a matter of time.
Waiting is torture.
Just sitting there looking at her on the blanket, (and then on my husbands belly- she used to LOVE doing that and licking his whiskered face... and she would DEMAND to be obeyed as she did it, but now her plump little body over the months looked almost skeletal on his belly. No licking his face now. She hadn't for weeks.
The Vet texted me at 3:45 and told me that she would be there in 15 minutes.
I felt my heart jump.
It is amazing how anticlimactic this kind of death is. My dog (who was her best buddy) died on a Sunday and I couldn't call the vet...he had seizures and died horribly. This at least was a peaceful death. The only comfort I have is that the vet said that its almost like a "high" for the animals...they die feeling very, VERY good.
And yet it rips you up like nothing else.
The vet came and talked to us, told us her ( Jez's) options. This was it.
Even more heartbreaking, while the vet talked to us Jez got up and immediately squatted like she had to go, and her legs trembled horribly.
Joe (my husband of 26 years) got up and got her, and said that he said to himself that if she struggled when he picked her up that he would reconsider putting her down.
She was limp.
In the end, we sat with Jezabel, she put her head in my hand and the vet did it.
I tried to stay calm but inside I my heart was breaking...I saw the light go out of her eyes... I said "Oh God!" and then she was GONE.
I went inside the house and couldn't hold it in anymore. I just sobbed. God I miss her.
I swear last night while I was going to sleep that I felt her get on the bed. (that hasn't happened before yesterday) I couldn't sleep for HOURS. I miss her so bad.
Strange too...My husband I go walking and before I hardly ever saw cats. Now I see them ALL the time...One time I was walking and I thought if I see a cat I'll be ok...about 10 minutes after that a cat showed up on the trail I walk. Today I saw a black cat and a white cat named "Casper" of all things...Casper the friendly ghost cat?
He was white. I just keep thinking Jezabel, did you do that???(All the cats I have seen and played with that I've seen on the trails I've been on have had collars.) I don't want another cat, I just can't handle the pain of losing another animal some day but I have to wonder whats up with that?
Thank you everyone for your thoughts everybody.
I called the vet like you guys suggested to tell her that it was probably soon, but kind of had her on standby. So I ended up waiting a couple of months.. she started having problems getting up our stairs and was urinating everywhere until she wasn't going...at all...we had been carrying her up the stairs for the last 4 months and putting her in the litterbox. One day we did and she just struggled, got out of the litterbox and passed out.
That night she was in the other room sleeping in her bed (her last days she seemed to prefer hanging out with us on the bed, but would go down her pet stairs to her other bed to sleep at night.) That night I got a really bad feeling and that I needed to check on her.
I walked in to her wheezing with her mouth wide open and breathing very heavily which broke my heart just watching.
Joe and I lay on the floor holding her paws until it subsided.Then I picked her up and brought her into the room with Joe and I to sleep.
She seemed calm sleeping in between us...she stretched her little head out to curl up against my head, I hope it comforted her somewhat. I could tell she was in a lot of pain.
The next morning I called the vet at 8 am and left a text.
The vet said she could come at 4 pm. It felt like we were in some kind of torturous countdown.
Three days previous we had started to go outside with Jez in our yard and lay with her on a blanket (my husband works from home most of the time) as even though she was kind of a scardy cat and hadn't gone outside much, but suddenly she was VERY interested in the outdoors, like she was when she was younger. She was very wobbly and frail, and we were always close, so we knew she couldn't sneak off to die.
Her favorite place was always behind our house, in protected forest. Its a gully with a pathway that has a stream at the bottom. For the first time in years we brought her there...we carried her down to it and set her down by the ...The second day she tried to get a drink and actually GROWLED at us when we didn't let her because we worried what it would do to her.
Her last day alive we let her get a drink.
When she decided she was done with drinking that water, we brought her back up to the backyard where she had strengthened her claws years earlier on all the trees...where she would walk to the back of the yard and pace along the fence like a little grey tiger...andchew on the grass in the circular garden and lay there with the wind whipping through her hair and put her on the green blanket that matched her eyes.
It was only a matter of time.
Waiting is torture.
Just sitting there looking at her on the blanket, (and then on my husbands belly- she used to LOVE doing that and licking his whiskered face... and she would DEMAND to be obeyed as she did it, but now her plump little body over the months looked almost skeletal on his belly. No licking his face now. She hadn't for weeks.
The Vet texted me at 3:45 and told me that she would be there in 15 minutes.
I felt my heart jump.
It is amazing how anticlimactic this kind of death is. My dog (who was her best buddy) died on a Sunday and I couldn't call the vet...he had seizures and died horribly. This at least was a peaceful death. The only comfort I have is that the vet said that its almost like a "high" for the animals...they die feeling very, VERY good.
And yet it rips you up like nothing else.
The vet came and talked to us, told us her ( Jez's) options. This was it.
Even more heartbreaking, while the vet talked to us Jez got up and immediately squatted like she had to go, and her legs trembled horribly.
Joe (my husband of 26 years) got up and got her, and said that he said to himself that if she struggled when he picked her up that he would reconsider putting her down.
She was limp.
In the end, we sat with Jezabel, she put her head in my hand and the vet did it.
I tried to stay calm but inside I my heart was breaking...I saw the light go out of her eyes... I said "Oh God!" and then she was GONE.
I went inside the house and couldn't hold it in anymore. I just sobbed. God I miss her.
I swear last night while I was going to sleep that I felt her get on the bed. (that hasn't happened before yesterday) I couldn't sleep for HOURS. I miss her so bad.
Strange too...My husband I go walking and before I hardly ever saw cats. Now I see them ALL the time...One time I was walking and I thought if I see a cat I'll be ok...about 10 minutes after that a cat showed up on the trail I walk. Today I saw a black cat and a white cat named "Casper" of all things...Casper the friendly ghost cat?
He was white. I just keep thinking Jezabel, did you do that???(All the cats I have seen and played with that I've seen on the trails I've been on have had collars.) I don't want another cat, I just can't handle the pain of losing another animal some day but I have to wonder whats up with that?
Last edited by a moderator:
