Tinkerbell has lost her struggle. RIP Tinkerbell.

[eppur_se_muova]

Last edited Thu Jan 4, 2024, 11:15 PM - Edit history (1)

She has been on felimazole for months to treat her hyperthyroidism, but kept losing weight until she was just skin and bones. Then she quit eating her pill pockets, and I kept finding loose pills where she had eaten around them. Then her prescription ran out while a new order took 10 days to arrive. The vet saw her on the 27th and , surprisingly, said her thyroid hormones were at perfectly normal levels. Her kidneys were starting to show signs of trouble, but she was a long way from where her sister Zoey's were a few days before she died. He said she might have a few months, but it couldn't be predicted accurately (of course I understood that already). But she had really stopped eating very suddenly just a few days before -- over the holidays, when the vet's office was closed. The vet gave me a prescription drug to stimulate her appetite and it seemed to be working -- she wasn't eating a whole lot, but she would eat small amounts every few hours, and I had hoped that might be enough for her to recover. But now she is too weak to climb, even into our laps, and can't drink out of the sink, which she has always done. She just will not drink out of a dish. The last time I lifted her into my lap she jumped back down and fell over on her side after landing and just laid there for several minutes. We have moved her bed and her food to the bathroom floor (she used to spend most of her time on the bathroom counter, don't ask why -- she's a cat), but she has yet to show the slightest interest in eating or drinking, even when I've tried to provide her with water by hand. I'm afraid she will die from dehydration if we can't get her on an IV before the 2nd. Possibly tonight, possibly tomorrow night; if she survives I can get her to the vet early and hope for a minor miracle but we know that she is in her end stage -- it is only a question of how soon. We just didn't expect it to happen so fast, with her thyroid apparently being stabilized, and her kidneys only beginning to show problems.

She has been our sweet furbaby for more than 17 years -- don't know the exact date Mother got her, and she was several months old at least then -- but no matter how long we have had her, it is hard to accept losing her. Her life was mostly trouble-free until I moved back in with my own two cats, but she has clearly been the boss of them, so she hasn't been denied much. She lived almost her entire life indoors, in this house, and now she will end her life here. Even with two other cats in the house, we will feel her loss deeply.