If you're someone who keeps up with my Flickr postings, you'll probably be aware that last Saturday (20th September) Mackerel died quite suddenly. She was 14 years old and was being treated for hyperthyroidism.
On Thursday 18th I took her to the vets for a check-up and for blood tests. She's – sorry, keep referring to her in present tense – she was known by the vets for being difficult to get blood from. She would put up a massive fight. The vet said that it would be better to not put her through sedation every month or two because she needed so much to knock her out enough to take blood, and suggested that we left it for a few months and just continued on the medication she was on. There was a vast improvement in her from the medication and she'd gone from being a skinny cat to a less skinny cat who was behaving far more normally than before.
On Friday 19th, Jayney rang me at work because she'd been sick and there was blood in it. Earlier in the treatment she'd had diahorrea with blood in it but that had been cured by medication for her kidneys and the vet said then that there might be bits and bobs coming to light now that the thyroid was being brought under control. I decided we'd keep an eye on her over the next 24 hours to see if it stabilised before dashing to the vets again.
Sadly, between 3:30 and 7am on Saturday 20th, she died.
I'm heartbroken. I've had her – sorry again, I still can't get used to talking about her in the past tense – I'd had her virtually all her life and getting on for half of mine; through shitty houses, a failed relationship, borderline anorexia, the lot. Seven houses, eight cat companions along the way (some she loved, some she hated, some she put up with). Not having her around just feels wrong. As far as Jack's concerned, she's now gone to live with Aubrey, her closest cat friend who we lost two years back, but he wants to see both of them again. We're all heartbroken.
I realised I couldn't continue without a cat in my life. I couldn't even mourn Mackerel properly without having a mewling companion. So, from the Bridgend Cats Protection shelter came Clarissa, a stocky,feisty little thing, in our hour of darkness.
She's lovely and friendly and likes to play; I do so wish we'd met under less fraught circumstances, but there you go. The main thing is she's there for us and we're there for her and, given that she was brought in as a stray with an abscess on her head and hadn't been neutered, she'd been through it all a bit. I can understand how she felt and how she must feel now that there's a bit of stability for her. The sleepy picture sums it up.
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