Bad,Bad News

I'm sitting here in my living room looking over in the corner at a beautiful white cat whose turned nearly lifeless over the last 10 days or so. Snowy is laying on her favorite blanket – in a spot that she has recently adopted that was under the Christmas Tree until yesterday – when Jan took the tree down. She’s staring off into space and breathing more heavily than normal.

A little before Christmas, Snowy was not acting normal and so I took her to the vet who ran some tests on her. The next day he called me and said that it looked like she was having liver problems.

We gave her medicine a couple of times a day, but she didn't really improve much (except maybe for one day).

Jan called the doctor's office yesterday to take her back in, but the doctor was on vacation and we were referred to another doctor who Jan took snowy to this morning.

The latest tests show severely elevated white cell count in her blood - her body is fighting something very hard - maybe a bad infection, tumor or other cancer.

When I got home from work this evening, I called the doctor to talk to him and asked him to tell me exactly what he would do if he were in our shoes (knowing Snowy's strong position in our family).

He said that she's not likely to recover from this due to her age. There's a specialist in Orlando that he could refer us to for MRIs and all kinds of tests which he said would probably produce no other outcome. Snowy would not like riding all the way to Orlando and back and she certainly would not like the tests. I’m not sure it would be worth putting her through the stress with what all the doctor told me tonight.

Jan's working until 10pm and I've been sitting here crying my eyes out for the last hour - just me and Snowy. I can't believe how hard this has hit me. I knew I loved this cat, but I can't believe how much. I never talk to Jan on the phone when I’m away without asking about Snowy and what’s she’s been doing. Many nights, Jan will have her ‘talk to me’ in the phone. If you’ve met Snowy, you know that she’s a talker. Jan has lengthy conversations with her and I joke that Snowy wins most of their arguments.

We first met Snowy in the summer of 1992 when we rented part of a house in Los Angeles. The former owner of Snowy had to move to a place where he couldn't take cats, so he left here there with the promise that she'd be looked after. Right after we moved in, she adopted us quickly and shadowed our every move in that house. She was an adult at that time and had already been fixed, but we weren't sure how old she was.

When we decided to move back to the Outer Banks, it didn't take long for us to decide Snowy would be coming with us. We packed up our 1979 chevy van and got in. My good friend Joe Greblo handed us Snowy through the window (she doesn't like car rides - so we had to trick her) and off we went to the east.

She got car sick in Arizona and I thought I had lost her in Lubbock, TX when she slipped out of her harness I'd put on her for walking her.

She then took to our new rental house between the highways on the outer banks quite well. Our bedroom there had a deck outside the door that was 1 floor up above the ground. There were no steps that led down to ground level. We used to let snowy out at night - through that door and she would claw her way down the 4x4 support that held the deck up and then later, she would scratch at the door and we'd let her back in. She was quite an 'able' cat back then.

When we built the house in Colington Harbour, I put in 2 'cat doors' - one that went from the deck into the screened-in room. That one was a 'critter proof' door - where she had to be wearing a special magnet on her color for the door to open. I did this to keep other cats and racoons out of the house. The other door, went right through the wall from the porch and into the house. It's funny, when I look back on it, I didn't hesitate to build the house around that little door so she could come and go as she wanted.

Snowy RULED that house. It was certainly hers. She had all her spots all over the house that she would visit during the day. Many of her spots were of course determined by the daily sun positions. I remember a nightly ritual where Snowy would go down to her food dish on the bottom floor, then come back up to the living room – on the 2nd floor – head over to the bottom of the steps that went up to the bedroom and then just meow at us as we sat there watching TV. There was no doubt what she was saying – she was saying “hey, let’s go to bed”. She would sit there until Jan would say “go on, you go to bed and we’ll come up later”. She would then bound up the steps to the top landing and look back down and meow a couple more times before heading to the bed.

When we moved to Florida, she seemed more stressed than back in NC. She pulled her hair out for over a year until the doctor gave her shots to get her to stop. We think she has liked it here too though. She’s got the special places around that house that we know she’s likely to be. In the mornings, she lays on the couch with us while we’re having coffee, then after we get up, she heads for the big window on the east side of the house and lays in the super wide window sill there and sleeps the morning away. After the morning sun is gone, she’ll either move back down on the couch or sometimes back to our bed. When the temperature is right, she likes laying out on the lounge by the pool. It was ‘her spot’ the moment Jan brought the green cushion home for it. She’s also enjoyed chasing, catching and eating the tails of the geckos that live inside the pool enclosure.

Snowy and I have developed our own rituals over the years. Since the first house on the Outer Banks, where I had my first “in home” office, she’s spent the mid afternoons with me – laying beside my desk as I worked. It was very ‘Irish Setter’ like of her, but she seemed content to come keep me company through the many hours, days and years I worked at home - in every house since then. That was always very special to me. Jan would come into the office and say “are you keeping your daddy company?” and I would always make like it was no big deal by saying she was just hoping I would get her food, but she and I knew that even after I’d get her food, she’d come back in and lay down by the desk and go to sleep. It sure made me feel important that this cat wanted to hang out with me. When I'm out of town, Jan says she goes into my office and meows for me.

At night, we ALWAYS go to sleep with Snowy’s head on my hand while I gently move one or two fingers to scratch her head around her ears. After I go to sleep, she moves over to‘spoon’ with Jan the rest of the night, but she’d always hang with me until I was asleep. She’s not done this but once in the last 10 days. There’s no doubt something’s really wrong. Maybe she'll sleep with her head on my hand tonight. I pray so. It may be her last night with us.

I think it’s probably good that I have these 5 hours tonight between when I returned from the Orange Bowl and when Jan gets home – to grieve and spend some time with Snowy – just me and her. Jan is going to be a wreck as we make the decision tonight and I can’t be a wreck as well. Who knows, we may decide to give her another day to see if she gets better, but she’s obviously not a well or even comfortable kitty.

This cat has been Jan’s CONSTANT companion for 14+ years. It’s going to be SO hard.

For now, I’m going to annoy Snowy by paying too much attention to her. She looks so frail and you can tell it’s hard for her to even get up and change positions. She’s gone from a 10 pound cat to an 8 pound cat in less than 2 weeks.

We knew this day would come – but that certainly hasn’t made it any easier.

UPDATE: We've decided to give it another day. We're so conflicted - afraid that possibly we're acting too early and also worried that we're being selfish and just wanting to keep Snowy around. Jan said that she can take the day off on friday and if snowy isn't better during today (thursday) we'll have the doctor come here to the house - so we don't upset Snowy more by taking her for a car ride. This is just so sad and so hard.