BigDaddyCool

The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.

There is a reason why I haven’t written anything in the past couple of weeks since my missive on the Tea Party Movement. Actually there have been several reasons why I haven’t written, so let me tell you what they were.

First off since we live up in the mountains above the treeline now, there are several feral cats that consider this property their home. One of those cats had a litter of kittens about a couple of months ago. I had actually managed to see them once when I was out on the back deck Grilling dinner. Mama had brought the babies out into the open to play, and they were jumping about, frolicking and having a good ol’ time playing in a woodpile. I didn’t think much about them until the following day when Wifey’s Aunt brought over a small, black, mewling bundle of fluff over so that we could meet him. By that time Auntie had not seen Mama for several hours, but we were all hoping that she would turn up later.

"Hey, who invited the other cat?"

As it happened, Mama never did.

Later on I went out to look for something among the boxes that we still had on the front deck, and when I moved a tarp to look for something I found another fuzzy face staring back at me. Apparently Mama had hidden her babies among the boxes and tarps on the front deck, we all thought that she did it to keep them from a predator and then led the predator away herself. We brought the kittens in, gave them food and a warm place to sleep and got them used to human contact. After a month we were able to find a rescue organization that had room enough to take them in and adopt them out to loving homes.

Mittens and her protoge, Dory.

Once that was done then we devoted all of our energies to the other problem we were dealing with – our 17-year-old cat Mittens was ill. A little background into Mittens – she was the Queen of our household and she let everyone know it. In fact whenever we brought a new kitten into the house she would lay down the law to them at their first meeting. The kitten would always bow their heads lower than hers, Mittens would put a paw on their head, meow a few instructions and that would be that – the Hierarchy had been established.

It started happening slowly at first as we noticed that she was not eating as much as she used to, until finally she would get sick to her stomach if we put food in front of her. We took her to the vet where he took blood to run some tests and we found out just how dehydrated she was because she wasn’t drinking anything. When we took her home we started giving her some of the milk that we were giving the rescued kittens and she happily lapped that up – for the first couple of days. The began the saga of having to force feed our fuzzy daughter every few hours because the tests showed that she had liver disease.

The Vet was not hopeful that we would be able to pull her out of it, but we had done some internet research that showed that it was possible. So we started to feed her a little more aggressively in an effort to strengthen her. We fed her Hill’s Prescription Diet a/d canned food mixed with KMR Milk replacer. We gave her as much water as we possibly could. We started making a syrup out of Slippery Elm Bark Powder and began giving that to her for her nausea. We searched for a Milk Thistle extract that we could give her that would help restore some of the damaged cells in her liver. I thought that I had found on online from a company called Animal’s Apawthicary, and I went and ordered it.

Her majesty, in all her glory.

I was so happy when it had arrived because I knew that it would give her a fighting chance to live. When it had arrived I was taking Dad-in-Law down into town for physical therapy, and I left it up to Wifey to give Mittens our newly arrived elixir. While I was out I called the house to see how it was going when Wifey told me that Mittens had had a violent reaction to the new medicine. Mittens only had a couple of drops but she began foaming at the mouth and started shaking her head in an effort to get the medicine out of her mouth. When I got back home I looked at the ingredients on the bottle only to discover that it contained 40% grain alcohol!!!!!!!

So it was back to the drawing board as I looked around for other Milk Thistle extracts that were non-alcoholic that we could use on her, and we found one that was down in town. We found it at a heath food store that we had to do a return at. I had seen a Milk Thistle extract when I was there before, but I had already ordered the other product off of the internet, so I didn’t think much of it. This time Wifey was with me and we both took a look at the ingredients list: Milk Thistle, Glycerin, Purified Water, Honey. BINGO!!!!! We took it home and began giving it to her along with fish oil which we hoped would help.

Mittens and the children who adopted her - Marlin and Dory.

Last night things took a turn for the worse. Mittens had been fighting us at her feedings but there was another complication that was arising – she was unable to have a bowel movement without struggling. Because she had stopped eating she had lost weight, and because of that she lost a lot of the muscle mass and control that she had. She was having trouble walking and being able to balance on her hind legs. In fact the night that she tried to walk off of our bed and fell onto the floor instead was when I knew that she might not live much longer. She took to sleeping on our bedroom floor, under our bed, in the hallway, in the bathroom – anywhere she could stay cool. See the liver disease had caused the liver to become inflamed, so she would pick a cool spot to curl up on – much as we would lay on an icepack for an injury. Anyway, when we saw that we had to literally squeeze the excrement from her anal opening and when we saw the look in her eyes – we knew that she was done.

We couldn’t put her through it anymore – it would be torture. So we made the decision last night to take her down the hill to the Vet’s office so that they could help her cross over to the other side. When we put her down in front of the litter box where she had been laying all day, we said what we thought were our final goodbyes because we didn’t think she would live through the night. We were wrong however as she was still with us when we woke up this morning. We prepared a carrier for her final journey by placing a pillow and the blanket she had been laying on inside. Then we brought in our other cats to say their final goodbyes to their Matriarch.

We brought in Marlin and Dory – the kittens we rescued from Idaho Humane Society a couple of months after Wifey had her hysterectomy, who had adopted Mittens as their Mommie whether she liked it or not. Xander – the 30lb Maine Coon we adopted two days before Tiger, Mittens brother died of a massive stroke right in front of us. Xena – the fierce warrior kitten who was rescued from a materials yard at a fencing contractor that Wifey used to work for a week after we lost another kitten, B’Elanna  – who ate a spider that had gotten into the house. They all said their goodbyes and then it was our turn.

I picked her up and cuddled her to my chest, stroked her head, told her I loved her and that it was almost over. Then Wifey came over and took Mittens face in her hands, kissed her, and told her that she loved her. Mittens meowed to Wifey one last time, stretched out all of her limbs – and crossed over in my arms. It was over – she had made the decision for us. She waited to go until we could finally let go of her, and she went the way that I always thought that she would – peacefully, and at home. I just thought that it wouldn’t happen for another ten years, at least.

Since Mittens was the Queen of the household I decided to treat this final journey as the funeral procession for a head of state and give her that respect. I had cleared out the back of our Saturn Station Wagon so that I could put her in the back hatch instead of the back seat. In previous trips down the hill to the vet Wifey had sat with her in the back seat like it was an ambulance ride – today it served as a hearse. I took very slow, deliberate steps as I brought her out from our bedroom and as soon as I was able I put the carrier up onto my shoulder as a pallbearer would. I then placed her into the back of the wagon and we began the long journey downhill. I treated her with the same respect at the vet’s office for which Wifey thanked me saying that it was very sweet. We made the final arrangements for her cremation, keeping the promise that we made to her when Tiger died that she would someday be reunited with him. After that we went outside, Wifey broke down on my shoulder, we got in the car and began the long, slow ride up the mountain home.

Right now Wifey is a wreck. Mittens had a connection to her that I had never seen before. Mittens was able to warn Wifey whenever she was going to have an asthma attack. Mittens stayed by Wifey’s side whenever she was sick and acted as her “guard kitty”. Now that force of nature is gone from our lives – but she is not gone from our hearts. Even the heavens seem to be in mourning as it has been raining here all day long since Mittens crossed over to the other side at 9:40 this morning.

So, how am I doing? Well I’m coping by making myself busy. I’m updating the blog, I’m letting all of our friends know what has happened on Twitter and facebook, and I’m keeping an eye on not only Wifey, but also on Dad-in-law since Wifey is trying to get some sleep. I disposed of all of the medications that the vet gave us for Mittens – the liver pills that originally made her nauseous but that we put her back on since we found Slippery Elm Bark, the B-Vitamins that she hated taking that smelled like Beef broth to me, and the Pain Medication that we put on her gums two drops at a time to relieve the pain in her liver. I mixed it all in with a good quantity of Cat Litter, tied it in a plastic bag and literally threw it into the trash bin. I then slammed the lid down and stood there fuming for a few minutes thinking about how unfair it all was.

It is going to take us a while for us to recover from this, but two of our cats are looking to fill the gap. Marlin and Dory, the kittens who adopted Mittens as their mother after they had lost their own mother, have been sleeping with Wifey all afternoon – much in the same way that Mittens used to. Mommy Mittens taught her babies well. I will however find solice in the fact that for 17 years she gave us unconditional love and an immense amount of joy. I will remember the time she spewed pink anti-biotics all over our kitchen and us when we tried to medicate her as a kitten. I will remember all the times she would meet us at the door whenever we would come home late and chew us out for not feeding them on time. I will remember all of the times she would climb up onto our pillows and stroke our faces as we tried to go to sleep. I will remember the sound she would make whenever she would carry her favorite toy – a mini-Christmas Stocking – throughout the house.

And I will remember her with a smile on my face and joy in my heart.

Thank you Mittens. Thank you for staying with us for as long as you did. Say hello to Tiger for us, and to all of the kitties that have passed through our lives. Say hello to Slinky and B’Elanna, to Charlie and Sylvester – and say a special hello to Squeaker, and tell him that I miss him.

I expect to see all of you one day at the Rainbow Bridge, as well as all of the kitties left to come, and Wifey – and if there is no room in heaven for all of us then I don’t want to go there. I would rather go where we can all be together.

We love you Mittens.

Mittens 1993-2010

Goodbye.