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walbournIn 1997, a small gray cat showed up at the back door of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
appleang's and I house in Austin. Angela had been wanting a cat. As a stray, we couldn't really be sure of her age or health, but she had been declawed at some point so it was clear she wasn't feral. We figured that if we lost a cat, we'd want someone to tell us she had been found so we put up "Found" signs and waiting a while. Nobody answered the advertisements, so we contacted our landlord and got permission to kept a pet--the house management company was a bit snotty about the request, but as we had direct contact with the homeowner we were able to get his permission. That September we took her to the vet for the first time, and they estimated she was between 2 and 4 years old.
Whenappleang and I separated in 1999, I took Koshka with me. Her living situation at the time wasn't a good place for a solitary cat, and it was easy enough for me to get a pet addendum on my apartment. I had always considered the cat to be "shared custody", but over the years Angela's housing options didn't suit Koshka, and eventually, as Angela put it at the time, I kept "making the payments"--like $600 month of bills when she got a bad abscess and needed a visit to the cat ER. So when it came time for me to move to Seattle, there wasn't any real question about if she was coming with me or not.
So in 2001, I flew up to Seattle with Koshka in tow. I had some drugs to try to keep her sedated, but she spent some of the flight on my shoulder. I got a rental car and drove to Redmond, where I had an apartment waiting for me. I then had to ask around to find the nearest grocery store, as I had a very frustrated cat that wanted a cat liter box ASAP. I ended up at the Fred Meyer on 148th Ave which today is very familiar territory. So I got a few basic groceries, a foam pad, and a light sleeping bag liner and took her home. She paced and cried the whole night, and I think I managed about an hour of sleep. She did not like a totally empty apartment one bit, and by the time the movers arrived the next day in the early hours, she had buried herself down at the bottom of the sleeping bag liner and hid until there were things to hide under in place.
Because of that abscess event back in Texas, and the fact that the Pacific Northwest had much different critters about the greenbelt, I made her an indoor only cat. She protested for many weeks making it very hard to sleep, but eventually she learned to live with an open window and the smells coming through the window screen. She made various attempts to run out at times, but usually was stopped by mud and her somewhat prissy nature so I could catch her before she got completely away. When my parents came to visit, she successfully used the Jedi Mind Trick on my mom to get let out, but thankfully it was raining at the time.
For many years, she was really my only constant companion. In that time I went through a divorce from Angela, shutting down my game company, my relationships ending with Kim and then Andrea, wrapping up graduate school, six months of unemployment, a few rounds of layoffs, several years of depression, and my entire time here in Seattle. Some days I felt like she was the only sign of life in my apartment, and without her I might have suffered even more isolation and sadness in a very difficult transition. When I showed up in Seattle, I had no job, no friends, and that first night not even my stuff beyond a suitcase, but she was with me and gave me something to focus on besides myself.
As chronicled here, her health has been deteriorating the past few years. She had a heart murmur, kidney problems, and was losing weight starting about 2 years ago. We never found out what exactly was wrong with her back then, but it's been touch & go ever since and I thought she was close to dying on me a few times. I flewappleang up a few years back to visit her because I knew her 9 lives were ticking by. She had been suffering the indignity of incontinence for a while, and she railed against having oral medicine shoved into her mouth, batting at my hand furiously twice a day. Her breathing was labored and we had to have fluid drained from her chest due to a pleural effusion twice. We could no longer leave her home alone on trips and had to board her instead to make sure she got her four different medicines a day, but at least she seemed reasonably comfortable as a result.
The past few days she had started to lose the use of her hind legs, and wasn't able to move around much. Her breathing was labored again so we knew the fluid build-up had come back. We took her to the vet this morning, a nice young doctor who had been taking care of her for a few years know. He said that the unknown lump he had felt in her belly was clearly a tumor, and it was cancer that was the root cause of her problems. There was nothing we could do. Even trying to give her anti-inflammatory drugs to ease the pain of her hips was likely to kill her. It was time to let her go, so this morning that is what we did... Even the doctor was teary about it.
When I came home, we brought with us a gray bin from Target. Into it we put her carrier that I used to bring her on the plane to Seattle, her heated bed purchased to try to ease her stiffness we thought might be arthritis, her long-term feeders, the pet water fountain we kept in the bathroom, and various other bowls. We will store the bin the attic for the day we get another cat. I put all her left over food and medicines into a bag, and I hope to find a shelter or somewhere to donate them.
The house feels incredibly empty and quiet without her presence, really quieter than it has ever been... Still, I am lucky she made it as many years as she did and I no longer live quite so alone, or so depressed. Still, I miss her terribly.
Koshka
circa 1993 - 2010
R.I.P.
appleang's and I house in Austin. Angela had been wanting a cat. As a stray, we couldn't really be sure of her age or health, but she had been declawed at some point so it was clear she wasn't feral. We figured that if we lost a cat, we'd want someone to tell us she had been found so we put up "Found" signs and waiting a while. Nobody answered the advertisements, so we contacted our landlord and got permission to kept a pet--the house management company was a bit snotty about the request, but as we had direct contact with the homeowner we were able to get his permission. That September we took her to the vet for the first time, and they estimated she was between 2 and 4 years old.When
appleang and I separated in 1999, I took Koshka with me. Her living situation at the time wasn't a good place for a solitary cat, and it was easy enough for me to get a pet addendum on my apartment. I had always considered the cat to be "shared custody", but over the years Angela's housing options didn't suit Koshka, and eventually, as Angela put it at the time, I kept "making the payments"--like $600 month of bills when she got a bad abscess and needed a visit to the cat ER. So when it came time for me to move to Seattle, there wasn't any real question about if she was coming with me or not.So in 2001, I flew up to Seattle with Koshka in tow. I had some drugs to try to keep her sedated, but she spent some of the flight on my shoulder. I got a rental car and drove to Redmond, where I had an apartment waiting for me. I then had to ask around to find the nearest grocery store, as I had a very frustrated cat that wanted a cat liter box ASAP. I ended up at the Fred Meyer on 148th Ave which today is very familiar territory. So I got a few basic groceries, a foam pad, and a light sleeping bag liner and took her home. She paced and cried the whole night, and I think I managed about an hour of sleep. She did not like a totally empty apartment one bit, and by the time the movers arrived the next day in the early hours, she had buried herself down at the bottom of the sleeping bag liner and hid until there were things to hide under in place.
Because of that abscess event back in Texas, and the fact that the Pacific Northwest had much different critters about the greenbelt, I made her an indoor only cat. She protested for many weeks making it very hard to sleep, but eventually she learned to live with an open window and the smells coming through the window screen. She made various attempts to run out at times, but usually was stopped by mud and her somewhat prissy nature so I could catch her before she got completely away. When my parents came to visit, she successfully used the Jedi Mind Trick on my mom to get let out, but thankfully it was raining at the time.
For many years, she was really my only constant companion. In that time I went through a divorce from Angela, shutting down my game company, my relationships ending with Kim and then Andrea, wrapping up graduate school, six months of unemployment, a few rounds of layoffs, several years of depression, and my entire time here in Seattle. Some days I felt like she was the only sign of life in my apartment, and without her I might have suffered even more isolation and sadness in a very difficult transition. When I showed up in Seattle, I had no job, no friends, and that first night not even my stuff beyond a suitcase, but she was with me and gave me something to focus on besides myself.
As chronicled here, her health has been deteriorating the past few years. She had a heart murmur, kidney problems, and was losing weight starting about 2 years ago. We never found out what exactly was wrong with her back then, but it's been touch & go ever since and I thought she was close to dying on me a few times. I flew
appleang up a few years back to visit her because I knew her 9 lives were ticking by. She had been suffering the indignity of incontinence for a while, and she railed against having oral medicine shoved into her mouth, batting at my hand furiously twice a day. Her breathing was labored and we had to have fluid drained from her chest due to a pleural effusion twice. We could no longer leave her home alone on trips and had to board her instead to make sure she got her four different medicines a day, but at least she seemed reasonably comfortable as a result.The past few days she had started to lose the use of her hind legs, and wasn't able to move around much. Her breathing was labored again so we knew the fluid build-up had come back. We took her to the vet this morning, a nice young doctor who had been taking care of her for a few years know. He said that the unknown lump he had felt in her belly was clearly a tumor, and it was cancer that was the root cause of her problems. There was nothing we could do. Even trying to give her anti-inflammatory drugs to ease the pain of her hips was likely to kill her. It was time to let her go, so this morning that is what we did... Even the doctor was teary about it.
When I came home, we brought with us a gray bin from Target. Into it we put her carrier that I used to bring her on the plane to Seattle, her heated bed purchased to try to ease her stiffness we thought might be arthritis, her long-term feeders, the pet water fountain we kept in the bathroom, and various other bowls. We will store the bin the attic for the day we get another cat. I put all her left over food and medicines into a bag, and I hope to find a shelter or somewhere to donate them.
The house feels incredibly empty and quiet without her presence, really quieter than it has ever been... Still, I am lucky she made it as many years as she did and I no longer live quite so alone, or so depressed. Still, I miss her terribly.
Koshka
circa 1993 - 2010
R.I.P.
