Some bad news

Content Warning: Pet Loss

What Happened

Ever since I moved out of home, I have had a cat with me. Her name is Arya, and she is the best pet I’ve ever met.

Arya was born on April 12th 2014, and she passed away yesterday April 14th 2024 at about 2.45AM.

Two days prior she was the same as ever; slowed a little bit with age but still active and happy. It was a colder evening so she spent it watching a movie with me from a comfortable blanket on my lap. She was alternating between napping, and purring.

On the morning of the 13th I woke up around 5AM to the sound of her being sick - not unusual, but something sounded off this time. I got out of bed and saw she had thrown up white foam, and her food from the night before (including 3 of her favourite treats) had not been touched. Something seemed very off to me, and I began to get worried very quickly.

She was sick every 20 minutes or so, and refused water. Each time she looked more and more exhausted. When the sun came up she climbed into the nearest window to catch some of it, and at that point I realised her ears and mouth were cold. I started getting worried, and called the nearest vet who told me to bring her in as soon as possible.

We got to the vet, who confirmed she was dehydrated, with a low temperature. They suspected an obstruction or pancreatitis but nothing obvious appeared on the ultrasound, so they administered anti nausea medication, anti biotics, pain killers, and a B12 shot to try and get her feeling well enough to drink. A blood test showed no impairments with her liver, or kidneys and the white cell count appeared normal.

I took her home and set up and nest for her in front of a heater; a puppy pad on her favourite blanket, and an old dressing down she liked to sleep under. One possibility was that she had eaten something she shouldn’t have, so I tore the house apart looking for any signs but found nothing - all the cupboards were still locked and nothing had been nibbled on.

An hour passed, and she was resting quietly. The medication had plenty of time to kick in so I woke her to try and get her to drink some water. At this point I began to panic; she got up, leaned over the bowl like she was about to drink and then froze with her eyes glazed over and a small amount of dribble coming from her mouth. Something was very very wrong here, if nothing else the B12 shot should have had her up and about but instead she was a zombie. Nothing I could do got her to drink, and she spat out any water I gave her via syringe. She couldn’t walk more than a few steps, and she winced when I touched her stomach.

I felt as if I was going to either burst into tears, or just simply have a heart attack right then and there as the reality of the situation began to set in; this was very very bad. In the space of a few hours we’d gone from a sick cat, to a full blown emergency.

We rushed to SASH, Small Animal Specialist Hospital. They’re obscenely expensive as it’s a 24/7 emergency hospital staffed predominantly by specialists but they have the best equipment and the best vets in the entire country by a wide margin. If anyone could help her it was them.

The staff at reception were lovely, and absolutely smitten with Arya. They saw she was in a bad way and we were rushed into triage. We saw a triage nurse who was incredibly kind and gentle with Arya, he took her temperature and other vitals and quickly saw that she needed immediate care.

I was sent back to the waiting room while she was put in an incubator normally reserved for premature kittens, and hooked up to an IV for fluids. The nurse came out shortly after to show me some photos he had taken on his phone to reassure me that Arya was being looked after; she looked warm and comfortable and was resting on a blanket she has slept on since she was a kitten.

I don’t know how much time passed, but after a while one of the vets came out to talk to me. The news wasn’t good but we had options. An obsctruction was most likely but again an ultrasound hadn’t found anything so we needed to perform more scans with better equipment and bring in a radiography specialist to interpret them. In the meantime they began pain management and started treating for infections.

The plan was to leave her overnight where she would receive 24/7 monitoring, as well as the scans and treatment. I signed the form to authorise immediate surgery if they found an obstruction. The vet would keep me posted, and I requested they call at any time regardless of how late it was.

I went home and waited. I didn’t really eat or sleep, just waited first on the couch then in bed until a call came just before midnight.

Typing this now is almost as hard as reliving the moment; she had worsened significantly, the scans showed nothing, her kidneys were on the verge of shutting down, her abdomen was filling with fluid and she could go septic at any moment. Even if the scans showed something she wouldn’t have survived surgery in her condition, and she was not responding to any treatments. They were unable to stablise her at all, and her condition was deteriorating rapidly.

Some time before 1AM I was there at SASH again. They set up a private room for me and our vet, and the triage nurse from earlier wheeled in the incubator with Arya inside. It was the most heartbreaking thing I had ever seen. I can’t and really don’t want to describe it, but I hope the picture below tells the story.

She had been made comfortable with a maximum dose of pain killers, but her abdomen was still causing a significant amount of pain and she cried out miserably when the vet gently placed a stethoscope on her.

The vet spent over an hour with me, talking through the situation, everything they had done, and what our options were. She was one of the kindest, compassionate, and most patient people I’ve ever met. But our only option really was a week long hail mary of intensive treatments that had a very very small chance of succeeding, and a 100% chance of making poor Arya’s last days terrifying and miserable.

I sat with her for a while, I don’t know how long, gently stroking her head and talking to her. I don’t know how lucid she was but while it was just me in the room her breathing slowed to a more relaxed pace, and her eyes followed me everywhere. I’m telling myself that me being there brought her some comfort, and I really really hope that’s true.

I signed the consent form to put her to sleep. The vet gave me some more time alone with her. Then she came back, administer a sedative so Arya wouldn’t be aware of what was happening, then administered the final shot to stop her tiny little heart. Arya stopped breathing half way through the second syringe.

Afterwards I don’t really remember what happened. I was allowed to stay with Arya for as long as I needed, it might have been 5 minutes or an hour I have no idea. The whole time I felt like I was at the bottom of a well, looking up and seeing her lying there in the incubator still. As I left, she was cold and still.

As I walked out back to the reception area, I must have looked bad because the receptionist began tearing up a bit when she caught sight of me. She quietly picked up the phone and let the vet know that I was done. I made arrangements for a local animal charity to collect her remains, and later this week she’ll be back in my living room in a tiny little heart shaped metal urn with her name engraved on it.

And that was that. 10 years to the day was all she got.

What next

I’m still in shock, the speed that this all happened at has floored me. Her toys, bowls, beds and cat towers are still scattered around the house. I can’t bring myself to move them, it feels like I’d be erasing memories of her.

She was the sweetest cat I’ve ever met, she deserved so much more than what she got. But I can take some small comfort in knowing that I gave her the best 10 years I could. She lived a comfortable life, and was loved by everyone that met her.

Writing this has probably helped, but I can’t bring myself to write any more at the moment. So I’m just going to leave this little gallery here. These are some photos of Arya at her best - being sweet, being weird, being glamorous. I hope that anyone who reads this thinks of her as she is in these pictures, just as I do.