Tag Archives: cats

enjoying a sunbeam

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in animals & pets, cats, death & dying, home, hope

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Here is the best cat in the world enjoying a sunbeam this morning. To be honest, I thought Azar wasn’t going to still be alive when I woke up today (not that I slept much!). In fact, the past two nights I’ve barely slept because he’s been tossing and turning and sometimes crying out, totally breaking my heart. I would have taken him to the vet’s yesterday but I had my own hospital day, plus a tapas tour in the evening. So today I brought him in to see Eva just to get another opinion on whether it was time to let Azar go, though when I saw him looking so content in that sunbeam I hoped there was still more I could do.

Well, the sad thing is that Eva does think that Azar is probably on his way out. Since the trauma of his exploding tumour, about ten days ago, he’s stopped eating on his own and has to be fed using a syringe. And then on Sunday he stopped drinking on his own, which was the thing he always used to do no matter what. Eva said cats with kidney problems go through a lot of low periods, but then rally again. The thing that’s hard to know now is whether this is a low time because of the whole tumour thing, which has left his only good front leg too weak to walk on, not to mention the pain involved, or whether he’s just had enough.

The good thing about taking him in this morning is that I now have a time-frame and treatment regimen to work with. I still need to keep changing the bandages 2-3 times a day – the wound is almost completely healed, which Eva still can’t believe – and I was told to keep feeding him the same amount of food I’ve been giving him (was very glad to hear I’d been giving him the right amount!). Now I also have to start giving him 20 mls of water a day, in 5 ml doses. If I do all that and by Friday there is no improvement then it will be time to say goodbye.

I did wonder if it was time to say goodbye this morning, until I saw him in the sunbeam and thought “not just yet”.

keeping azar company

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in animals & pets, cancer, cats, health & happiness, home, hope

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As much as possible I try not to leave Azar on his own, but sometimes both Peter and I have to be out and so I put him in my room to keep the other two from pestering him. He seems to like being under things a lot, like my bed or the tv table, and so when I see him looking restless I help him down from the sofa or bed so he can go where he wants. This morning I found Loki keeping Azar company under the table and it really made me smile.

In other news… just got a call from the hospital and my PET scan will be next Monday at 11.15 (!!!). Wow, that was fast. Scanxiety is already setting in…

between cancer and cats…

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in animals & pets, cancer, cats, friends, home, hope, hospitals

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. . . and cats with cancer, it’s been quite an exhausting week.

Since Azar’s tumour explosion last Friday he seems to be slowly on the mend, though he gets “moments” when I can see he is in distress and probably in serious pain, and I don’t know what to do other than stroke him and talk a mile a minute in my softest lovey-dovey voice… he really does like to hear me talk. Anyhow, he and I are just taking things one day at a time (as if there were any other way).

You may recall that last Friday was, along with the exploding tumour incident, also the day for my monthly chemo port cleaning, which I almost put off until today (when I had an oncology appointment) so I didn’t have to make two hospital taxi trips in one week. But I decided not to leave things to chance (would be ironic for me to die of a blood clot after all this) and did a record there-and-back-again in less than an hour, basically taking taxis from door-to-door, so I wouldn’t have to leave Azar for long. I usually walk up to the main road and save myself a couple of euros in each direction. But I digress…

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lumpy

01 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in animals & pets, cats, death & dying, health & happiness

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[click to enlarge]

What’s so weird is that on Thursday afternoon (the day before the tumour burst!) I’d sent these two photos by email to Sledpress to show her just how damn BIG the thing had become, and express my worry about it. Then yesterday – blam! You can read the gory details here.

Since then Azar has been looking much perkier. The best thing being that he has regained the use of his one good front leg and can comfortably sit up again and even walk around much easier. I’m not exaggerating when I say the lump was the size of a baseball – poor Azar couldn’t even straighten out his leg anymore and was in a permanent crouched position. The reason he was sometimes peeing on the sofa was that, once there, he didn’t want to have to jump down to get to the box because it hurt too much. I had started carrying him to the box at regular intervals but couldn’t always be there, but when he was left overnight this week he had no problem as he stayed on a blanket under my bed with the litter box nearby.

The wound still looks messy, but Azar is a good healer. And he so intensely loves being alive. I am starting to wonder if his tumour is even malignant, because something that big should have killed him by now if it was. Could it just be a nasty cyst? Anyhow, he has been snatched back from the brink and is now happily snoozing away. I’ll be taking him to the vet’s this morning because I think the wound needs to be properly dressed and he may need to take antibiotics to stave off infection.

One thing is for sure. If this had happened while I was away in Córdoba, or even just away for the afternoon, he probably would have died. He was in such a panic and hyperventilating that without me there to clean him up and calm him down I don’t think he’d still be here. So lucky! But hey, that’s his name. Azar.