I adopted Domino 4/20/14. He'd had a rough start in life, and got trapped by his rescuer in Sept of 2012 at an approximate age of 4-5 months, so we just treated his "gotcha day" as his birthday, about as close to right as we could get. When he was caught, he had a spiral fracture of one his hind legs (left), so had to go in for immediate surgery but they could not fully fix the damage as he also had small fractures in the hips with a growth plate involved. So Domino ran with kind of a funny gallop. Of course, once he was at the rescue and recovered from the surgery he had a decent life. Then he came to live with me (and a few other cats that I adopted from the same rescue--his likely littermate, TV; his likely mother, Autumn; and Circe (who passed away 6/28 this year), to live the good life.
All was good for years. Three years ago, when I adopted Jemmy and Leo from outdoors, he was delighted and started playing with them like a cat who was much younger than his actual age (then 8--he acted like he was 3-4 years old). He taught them a lot about how to cat as indoor cats (instead of the ferals they had been born as).
Then after a period of time when he was having rapid weight loss and diarrhea and vomiting, after a number of tests, we learned he had GI lymphoma. At his last vet visit in January this year, this fellow who had been 14.5 pounds in his prime, slimmed to 11 over the years after he turned 8 and upped his activity with the boys had dropped to 6 pounds. We were planning to make the call Monday. Yesterday, though, his hind legs started to collapse under him from time to time. At the evening feeding, when I offered him Pandora's leftover wet food from morning (I always did this--he would finish off whatever she'd left of her wet food from the prior feeding--she also gets dry food and is just seeming to get the idea that wet food is good), he didn't stir and it was like it was too difficult to stand and eat, though he would lick it when I pinched a tiny bit and put it against his lips. So my son and I went to the emergency vet since we were now well after hours on a weekend--son drove, I held Domino the whole way. I just wrapped him in a towel and held him. He always hated the crate, and if he were going to die on the way, I wanted it to be in my arms and not a crate. He was still alive when we reached the vet, and we helped him over the bridge there.
This has just been such a sucky few months. First Circe on 6/28, and in the morning when my son was going to take her body to the vet for cremation, he found that someone had tried to steal his car and wrecked the ignition switch. It took something like 2.5 weeks for him to get the car back. Then on 8/6, my father passed away very suddenly (he'd had a fall 24 hours before his death and hit his head; he was on blood thinners for a-fib, and although he was fine at the time and passed all the assessments by the EMTs and declined to go to the hospital then, 12 hours later, he had the first sign that all wasn't well, and 12 hours after that he was gone--Dad was 79). Then on Labor Day, my son was going to go to the grocery to get some snack foods when he found that locking the car only meant that the people broke out a window and attempted to steal his car again (it's a Kia Soul, although not in the years that that **** TikTok challenge involves). It is still in the shop, although this time the ignition switch wasn't totally wrecked and he was able to drive it to the dealer instead of another tow. And then, even though I knew it was coming, Domino had to go.
Good night, my sweet Domino boy who was so sweet they named a brand of sugar after you.
