Hello everyone. New member here. I've been reading through some of your posts and would like to offer my support to you all for the devastating losses you've had to face. I'd like to sometime in the (hopefully) near future be able to reply to as many of your posts as I can to offer my condolences and well wishes but I need to share my story with you first:
I lost my best friend of almost 12 years (and a big piece of me, along with it) about 3 weeks ago and I've been heartbroken ever since. The name she came with was Fatsy but my family and I nicknamed her Fancy and she was an adorable black Angora cat (possibly mixed) with big yellow-green eyes full of affection, eagerness and curiosity. People say I adopted her and that she was my sidekick but really it was more a case of her choosing me as her person and me feeling privileged to have been her "chosen one" and, if anything, I was HER sidekick lol. I've been totally lost without her. She went on road trips with me to my parents and slept with me every night. Her purr was so loud and relaxing, it helped put me to sleep. We were totally inseparable.
I had been taking her to an animal hospital vet every 2-3 months for the past year and a half because she became an insulin-dependent diabetic and towards the beginning of last Fall she started breathing heavily, as though she were congested or asthmatic. I brought this to the vet's attention and he blew it off as just the sort of thing that senior cats sometimes develop, reassuring me that he had a cat who had the same loud breathing. At the next appointment I pushed for something to be done, not satisfied with his explanation that her breathing was a normal symptom of aging in cats and he said the only thing he could do would be to perform a scope to see what the cause was but he strongly advised against it, saying it would be risky to put a senior cat under anesthesia and that it was a costly procedure. Not being content with him telling me that there wasn't a less invasive and cheaper alternative, I called a private vet for a second opinion but they said they didn't do any kind of breathing treatments or testing. That left me and my best friend stuck. Around April 5th her breathing had gotten so bad that we couldn't wait for her next appointment and so we made a trip to our vet's clinic's ER. Our vet agreed to do the scope and of all things it turned out to be cancer on my poor baby girl's larynx. The room flipped upside down when I heard the devastating news- I never anticipated that the diagnosis could be so horrible. Since every avenue of hope for treatment was a dead end I had to make the impossible decision to say good bye to my best friend. The day I found out she had cancer was the same day I had to say goodbye, and what made it even worse was that my Fancy was under anesthesia from the scope when the euthanasia was performed, so I didn't feel like it was a proper goodbye or the type of farewell I badly wish I had with her. I talked to her and kissed her and held her paws but she wasn't awake to be receptive to our last moments together. I'm still in utter disbelief over it. It was just so cruelly abrupt with no time to prepare for such an overwhelming and tragic loss.
There have been many moments since of not only deep grief but complete despair when I feel almost out of my mind with heartache. It's been even hard to breathe at times. I just don't understand why our vet didn't take my companion's breathing issues more seriously when they first started, or why she had to get cancer. People have been trying to reassure me that my Fancy had a good and long life but I keep asking, why couldn't it have been longer? Why couldn't she have lived out a full, natural life instead of ending up with something so terrible? Why couldn't she have been with me for a few more years? It just doesn't feel right not seeing her laying contentedly in one of her cat beds or sitting next to me in the car on one of our many road trips or her eagerly following me into the kitchen for a treat or her grooming one of my other cats before sending them on their way. I miss her so desperately, as do my 3 other fur babies. Seeing them grieve has made this time all the more unmanageable. I've written so much already and it's still not even close to half of the sadness, pain and confusion I'm feeling.
I apologize for my long-winded post but I just needed to get my thoughts out. I've talked with family and friends about missing my Fancy but I don't want to constantly burden them with the weight of my grief. So here I am. I'd greatly appreciate any responses; coping tips, similar experiences with a negligent vet- anything at all. I'm looking for anything that might help me navigate this painful journey through grief.
RIP My Fancy Girl. You were, and always will be, loved.
