Moo

I'm not linking because most of the post is old news, but thankfully the first line says it all.

A few weeks after this picture was taken, Moo got sick.  She vomited everything she managed to choke down and eventually refused to eat at all.  Apart from a malformed heart, arthritic hips, and the withered lungs of a cat twice her age, the vet found nothing wrong with her.  She advised me to make her comfortable and wait.

Bullshit.  With that giant knot of arthritis around her hips, she was probably just miserable in the cold.  As I blogged about, that was the coldest winter of my life.  My arthritis made me miserable, too.  MiniMooMooMaMaMe just needed a reason to live, that's all.

If there's one substance guaranteed to changed Moo Cat from a house pet into a safari savage, it's turkey.  It looks something like what happens to Bruce, the shark from Finding Nemo, when he smells Dori's blood (:33).  I bought two pounds of Boar's Head Mesquite Wood Smoked Turkey and fed it to her gradually over two days, switching to regular food when she ate several slices in one sitting and kept it down.

She stuck around the Treehouse, helped Becky and I move in, and terrorized poor Dylan non-stop.  I assumed that's were our relationship would settle.  She'd be boney and fat-bellied at the same time, we'd play Spot the Vomit when we got home and when we woke up, and she'd purr in bed all night long.  I mean, she was an indoor cat.  We had at least another decade, right?

Then, she started peeing.  As anyone who knows anything about cats will tell you, when an adult cat starts peeing outside her litter box it means something is wrong.  We assumed it was the fleas, which were especially bad this year.  We bathed, we Advantaged, we bathed, we Frontlined.  We made a healthy dent but never managed to erase them.

Moo stopped peeing in the bathroom and started peeing in the hallway instead.  And the living room.  And my closet.  She barely ate.  She became skin and bones.  She developed a weird walk.

She also started being super-affectionate, even with Dylan.  That should have been the big red flag; she was a little snurtbag, and only gave affection grudgingly, but that was her charm.

Two days before we took her to the vet, I dropped her from my arms and she fell instead of landing on her feet.  I thought it was the arthritis, and being underfed.  I started gently placing her on her feet when I put her down.

The day before we brought her to the vet, Moo tried to eat and fell over.  Becky put her foot and water on a stool so she wouldn't have to bend over, and fed her a package of treats by hand.

But she was still pooping, still jumping (albeit to lower heights), still lovey-dovey.  I fooled myself that they'd give her pills for arthritis and she'd bounce back.  Still, I'm not a complete fool.  Before I went to work and Becky and Dylan brought her to the vet, I said goodbye.

I wish I'd gone with them.  I wish I'd taken Moo to the vet sooner, even though they can't do much for kidney failure (at least not much that we can afford).  I wish I never lost my patience and forced her outside when I found pee on the floor.  I wish I'd done better.

Goodbye, Moo.  I hope where you are the beds are cushy, your body is healthy, and they serve turkey three meals a day.