Goodbye New Friend

Yesterday was a tough day.

When we first got Ellie she was sick with an upper respiratory infection. This wasn't terribly surprising to us since the shelter has a lot of cats in a fairly small area, which makes it very easy for things to get passed around between them all. After a day or two she started doing nothing but sleeping and wasn't her playful self. So, we took her to the vet, got her some medicine, and within a week she was perfectly fine.

Bernard was, as far as we could tell, going through the same thing as Ellie. We brought him home and he was all kinds of curious and excited to be in a new home. Then, after a day or two, we noticed that he wasn't as energetic and seemed to have the sniffles. So, like with Ellie, we took him to the vet and they gave us some medicine to give to him and said he would be better soon. Well, he wasn't. We took him back in to the vet after a week and a half of basically no improvement. They checked him out and found that he had worms, which they figured was the reason he wasn't getting better - he was probably just too weak from the worms to fight off the infection. This also wasn't much of a surprise since he was brought in off the streets before we got him. They gave him a pill for the worms, different medicine for us to give to him, and set up another appointment for a week and a half later. He continued to remain basically the same, with nothing but a few days of being energetic enough to get up and walk around the house. He wasn't eating much, but was at least eating. This was all troubling, but we just figured that, because he was so young, his little body was simply having a hard time getting over the upper respiratory infection and worms. Until yesterday.

Leslie came home and found him seeming weaker than normal, even though by now "normal" was pretty bad. He stood up and started walking, then staggered and fell over. We rushed him off to an emergency animal care center, since it was too late in the evening to take him to our vet. They took his vitals and asked us some questions. Turns out he had lost a quarter of a pound since the last time he had been weighed - down to 1.75 lbs from 2 lbs. His temperature was way below what it should  have been and his heartbeat was irregular.

The next step was to take x-rays of his chest. The vet came back to us, showed us the pictures, and explained what was going on. There was a lot of fluid in his chest, he was septic, and obviously very weak. He explained that the chances of Bernard making it, even with treatment, were very slim. About 5% slim. He could go at any time. It was also probable that there was some underlying condition, and that all these things were being caused by something more serious. So, we had a decision to make: try to treat him overnight and hope that he somehow bounced back, or to put him to sleep via intravenous anesthetic. We didn't like either option. In the end we decided that it would be best to put him down. We took some time to say goodbye - hold him, pet him, kiss him. Then one of the technicians came in and gently ended his pain as we held him.

We only had him for a month, but he was part of the family. He loved to curl up on us, usually climbing to the highest point he could before settling down. Ellie wasn't a fan of him right away but they became buddies before long. Even as weak as he was he would always try to be near her. We just hope he was happy and that the short time he spent with us was good. We were glad to have him and will miss him.