may day. houston we have a problem
amanda brought home bear, a kitten from my brother’s litter. a tailless wonder who got sick every time she ate when we got her home.
we tried smaller doses, different food, softening it up, mixing it with different things, no success. about two weeks into it, she was losing energy and weight so we went to the vet who found nothing wrong. the vet gave us meds and feeding suggestions. still no success.
amanda took bear to another vet for the scheduled kitten shots appointment; that vet didn’t find anything but gave us some different food and scheduled her for some x-rays.
x-rays would reveal whether or not the hernia was causing her stomach problems. a barium exam (upper-GI for us humans,) would reveal any problems with her stomach or esophagus. the former exam and resulting surgery would have been cheaper, especially when performed by MSU’s vet school. the latter would have been obnoxiously prohibitively expensive for both.
food we got from the vet was a huge success. bear would eat it up and not get sick. she gained weight and her attitude improved. she acted like a kitten again!
today’s x-rays were inconclusive. the vet also said the openings in her stomach may have been too small and would only get worse as time went on.
in spite of seemingly getting better, she wasn’t. if she ate too much or we gave her too much, she would get sick. she has to be fed every hour or so, a teaspoon at a time.
i hadn’t left for work yet when amanda called me with the results. i met her at the vet because we knew what needed to be done. bear needed to be put to sleep. the vet said he would probably do the same thing.
euthanasia is a three-part process; first they give the animal an anesthetic to knock them out, followed by a stronger anesthetic, followed by a lethal dose of a barbiturate to stop their heart.
we stayed for the first shot; bear fell asleep in amanda’s arms, we put her on the examining table and walked out of the room.
it didn’t take long to get attached to the little furry bastard. rest in peace. 😥
over the past few years, i’ve gotten letters from a company called equisearch, asking me to verify my contact information. i was thinking, “they got the letter to me, their search must be working!” equisearch claimed that a company i was invested in was trying to get a hold of me. i brushed it off, until friday. i phoned them to find out why.