I find myself at 37 a childless suburbanite; so of course I'm way more attached to my pets then I should be. This past Friday it became clear that there was something seriously wrong with Maxx, our male Bombay cat. He was breathing in a very labored fashion, and as my wife and I compared notes we realized that he'd stopped grooming himself earlier in the week and hadn't been eating as much as usual for about a month.
A month ago, that had been a welcome change. Maxx is a rescued cat, and he'd had some food issues since we'd adopted him at 8 weeks old in 1996. He's a gobbler; Jazzmine (our other cat) can be free-fed, but Maxx will eat and eat and eat until all the food is gone, whether that's good for him or not. So when he stopped gobbling, Tina and I just took it as a normal sign of aging and rejoiced a bit that he could be free-fed now. Doors that used to be opened and shut on a strict schedule could now remain open; Jazzmine's food supply was no longer in danger from our ravenous dog-like cat.
But Friday all of that changed. His breaths were short and labored, and I didn't like the whooshing sound I could hear when I listened to his chest. He was clearly unhappy, and I don't think he slept at all that night. On Saturday morning, I whisked him to the vet as soon as they opened. They X-rayed him, and the news wasn't good -- his pleural cavity was filling up with fluid, restricting the space in which his lungs needed to inflate. Worse, the vet told me this was usually the sign of a very serious problem that might be manageable, but would probably not be curable. Maxx was probably on his way out.
They gave me the address for the local animal emergency hospital; they had the tools to make a more definite diagnosis and to drain the fluid from his chest. I took him there on Saturday morning, and we just got him back last night (Monday).
The doctor at the hospital has a great bedside manner, and broke to us gently that Maxx has congestive heart failure, specifically, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. This is caused by a common genetic flaw in Bombay cats, and can hit them in middle age; Maxx is 10. We can manage this with Lasix and a beta-blocker, and that can give him a happy life at home for anywhere from three to eighteen months, but that's about all we can expect. Maxx is dying.
He's feeling better now that he's home and breathing better, but he's clearly a very tired cat. I'm hoping some of that is just stress from the hospitalization, and that he'll feel better after he gets some sleep. We let him sleep in the bedroom last night (usually he doesn't, because that's where Jazzmine's food is -- see gobbling, above) and he spent some time happily purring at the foot of the bed. He hates taking the pills (feeding a cat pills is much much harder than feeding them to a dog) but he's going to have to get used to it.
So why am I writing about this here? I don't know. Maybe I'm working out my thoughts to prepare myself for the day Maxx isn't here anymore. We got both of these cats during a very difficult period in my life. In the mid-90s I was starting to realize that, contrary to my expectations, my career would always be a very very difficult part of my life, and sometimes a source of failure. Having pets again helped me deal with that, calmed me down, gave me an arena in which I could accomplish things (training, cat care) that had positive results and that I could control. Plus, he's just such a fantastic cat; he's easily the most friendly and outgoing animal I've ever seen.
Strangely, it's been only a week since Tina and I had read and discussed at length this article on Salon, about the struggle to find the proper balance between love and practical concerns at the end of a pet's life. I'm glad we had that conversation, and I think both we and Maxx will be better off for it. I just wish it hadn't been needed so soon.
UPDATE: He's grooming himself again!
Posted by Brian at February 19, 2008 10:59 AM