RIP White Boy

[blacknstormy]

This is 'White' - it has taken me 1 year to befriend him, and he only let me pat him in the last 2 months. He had been abused, dumped and turned feral - but he wanted affection and love. I just wanted to post this shot of him - he wasn't a pretty cat,
but he was my friend.

He trusted me, and I feel like I've let him down. White was in a cat fight about 1 month ago - it has taken me until now to be able to actually hold him and take him to the vet to see to his wounds, I thought we were just going to get some antibiotics, and all would be fine .... and we found out he had feline aids. The vet convinced me the best thing to do would be to put him down, and with a heavy heart and a lot of tears, I agreed.While he may have lived for a few more years, he is not an 'inside cat', and could/would infect other cats in the area. ..... but that has not helped.

If you own a cat - get them vaccinated for the feline aids virus. it may save their life.

White cat is dead, rest in peace my little friend.


Rel

[Killakoala]

I'm sorry to hear of your loss. It's always painful to lose a loved one.

He looks like a tough cat too.

[Matt. K]

He probably died happy having met you blacknstormy. Nothing can hurt him now.

[Zeeke]

Sorry to hear about your loss Rel, he looks like he's had a hard life, but spent the best of it with you

Tim

[ozczecho]

I am not a cat person yet your story touched me. Atleast White died after feeling some love after such a long time of living without love.

[Alex]

Rel,

I love cats and your story has touched me. I have two cats. About 3 years ago one of the cats we had got run over, it was still alive at a vet and it was a hard decision to put her down. We still can't forget her.

Very good portrait btw.

Alex

[Manta]

Hi Narelle.

Knowing you and Damian as well as I do, I know how tough this would have been for you both. You made the right decision, hard as it was, and White's now free from pain. His legacy may well be that many other cats in the area will now live longer because of your actions.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of cats but an animal is an animal and it's human frailty that causes them to go off the rails. White may have experienced a lot of this frailty in his earlier life but he certainly saw humans at their best during his time of need.

[kipper]

I know your pain Rel....hugs

[blacknstormy]

Thanks everyone - I don't know if I made the right decision - have spent all afternoon balling ... could he have been happy and coped as an inside cat ? He didn't fight much anyway, but was being picked on by some other cats in the neighbourhood - but hasn't fought for around a month - maybe he wouldn't have been in any more fights, so wouldn't infect any other cats, maybe maybe.... but what is done can't be undone.

My 'real' cat who is 10, and was a stray kitten when we got her, has just done the rounds of the boundary of our back yard, meowing and looking for white. I fed her - and she just sat at her feed bowl, and waited for White to turn up.... they usually ate together.

Weird huh - he was one of only 2 cats she has actually liked in the whole time we've had her.

Oh well, she's off to the vet on Monday to have the test - God I hope it comes back negative !!!!!!

Thank you all once again - I keep looking for him at the back door, but I know he's not coming, and I know I'm the reason why.

Make sure you hug whatever/whoever you love, and tell them how much they mean to you.

Rel

[kipper]

You did the right thing Rel, it's hard at first but time will heal the pain and then once the emotions of have gone you will realise what you did was right. I hope your other cat is fine and the tests come back clear.

[Grev]

I love cats, had seen a few die, two disappeared without reasons... I know how you feel...

Be well.

[glamy]

We had a similar decision to take a couple of years ago. We had not noticed the change in attitude in one of our dogs untill too late. She had diabetes and not much we could do. Daily injections were no garantee of wellbeing and she was to a stage where she could not walk... I was unable to take her back to the vet, my wife did, I could not controll my tears.She still was making me cuddles... We both cried even weeks later thinking of her . Even now I have tears in my eyes. I think we did the right thing, but the impression of abandoning her is still there. Sorry to see you are going through a sad time.
Gerard

[the foto fanatic]

I've always been a dog person, until a very tattered, flea-bitten Russian Blue kitten turned up on the doorstep of our flat on the day we were moving into our first house. We fed him (first mistake!) and the rest was history.

We called him Woodstock because he had uncontrollable bits of hair that stuck up from his head, like the bird in the Peanuts cartoons.

Like Rel's White Boy, he was not fond of people other than the two of us, and even with us he didn't show a lot of spontaneous affection until he got to about 8 or 9 years old.

Woody lived to be 17, but we had to put him down too, as he was growing a tumour in his jaw that stopped him from eating.

I held him when the vet gave him the needle, and cried like a baby.

I still miss him, and every time I see a picture of a Russian Blue, I see him.

I understand that many people don't like cat pix, but for any cat lovers, here he is in his prime:

http://newms.smugmug.com/photos/59907393-M.jpg

[SteveGriffin]

Oh Rel that is so sad. I know how much you adore puttys. Let hope that everthing is OK on Monday

Our grey boy still looks at me as if to ask when that nice lady who patted him all afternoon is coming back.

[meicw]

Rel, My heart goes out to you. I had to have a dog put down because he had lost the use of his back legs. It is not an easy decision to make. Pets become a part of you.

Kindest regards
meicw

[Andyt]

Narrelle,

I sympathise with you, last Oct' I had to put my cat down, she was left as a kitten by the owners of a house I bought 9 yrs ago and been with me since.
When I moved up here from Perth I took her to the Vet for a check up prior to travel, was a shock to be told she had an untreatable nerve disorder caused most probably by being starved as a kitten when still growing.

All these years she would only come to and be fed by me and keep me company, would go away when visitors arrived. At least she had 9 "good" years.

Andyt

[moggy]

So sorry to hear of your loss, Rel, it's like losing a close friend. We had a cat from a kitten through to the age of 16 when his kidneys packed up. I too cried when we had to put him down.

Bob.

.

[blacknstormy]

Monday afternoon, and my little girl has come back HIV negative thank God !!!- she is now in the middle of the aids vaccination (3 shots).

But I still feel like complete shit - I should never have put him down, I should have given him a chance.... he may well have come to like being a 'kept cat', he may not, but he may have. I know that what I've done is the 'right' thing, because he may have infected someone elses cat, but you know what, that doesn't help at all.

I still get up and expect to see him at the backdoor, or waiting at the front door for breakfast. Storm keeps running from door to door looking for him, and wouldn't eat last night for an hour, waiting to eat with her friend. I know I'll 'get over it', but I miss him so much. I swear he was here last night - I woke up at 2am, went out the front, and saw a white cat with a ginger spot on his bum slowly crossing the street.... it turned around, looked at me, and carried on. Maybe it was him, come to say goodbye?

Thank you all so much for your comments, it has helped a lot. I'm sorry that this is such a gloomy post, but somehow, writing it down helps.

Hugs to all of you - you are all very special people.

Rel

[SteveGriffin]

Rel,
that is good news. Time will ease your pain. Take solice in the fact that only one of your babies was infected.

[kipper]

Rel, sounds like the agony we went through for a month or so. We kept thinking perhaps we should of tried something different.

[DaveB]

You have my sympathy: we lost two of our cats last year. Four Paws in August, and Georgie in the lead up to Christmas. Georgie was ~15.5 years old, and had been FIV-positive for at least 5 years. But that doesn't mean you did the wrong thing!

FIV is like HIV: having HIV does not necessarily mean you have AIDS, but it does mean you're likely to develop it. We found that Georgie had FIV during a routine test, not because she was having a problem. Thereafter whenever there was any hint of an infection/whatever she was rushed off to the vets.
If White was having trouble with month-old wounds his FIV may have been much more advanced than Georgie's, and you probably did the right thing. Letting them go can be better than dragging them through more pain (that doesn't make you feel much better at the time though). And taking care of an FIV+ animal is a significant undertaking, both for you and for the cat. I readily accept that not everyone will go to the lengths we will...

Georgie was an adoptee (her previous owner moved to Darwin and left her behind at some flats we know someone in) and when she came to live with us she had a lot of trouble coming to terms with being shut in at night. It was ~6 years later that we found she had FIV: no idea how long she'd had it. At least after that she got to go out at night, because we enclosed the entire back yard (including areas such as the garage roof) with cat netting, and the back yard and the house became her entire world. She was protected from fights with other cats, and they were protected from her (it also curtailed her turtledove diet ). When we moved house last year we built a different but similar system, with the back yard open to the sky (no more blowing leaves off the top). In the end it was complications related to FIV that finished her off (cancer being one of them) but she led a very sheltered life.

My first cat Richie became insulin-dependent diabetic and eventually succumbed to perinephric psuedo-cysts (a kidney problem): we gave him his insulin injection twice a day (getting import permits and regularly shipping special insulin from the UK for him) testing his blood sugar levels, etc. It may have helped that I'm also insulin-dependent... He was another adoptee (his first owners [in Bendigo] moved away and left Richie and his sister behind: she didn't survive).

Four Paws was another Bendigo adoptee: her owners didn't bother getting her medical attention and because she had diarrohea/etc decided she could be an outside cat. When Jane's mum adopted her, Four Paws was diagnosed as hyper-thyroid and started on oral medication. Then when Jane's mum passed away she came to us, and got the radiotherapy which brought her thyroid under control. Eventually (years later) her kidneys started to fail (presumably stressed from those initial years of undiagnosed hyper-thyroidism).

In January we adopted Monty (I suppose it's debatable as to who adopted who). He'd been a stray in the area ever since we moved in last June, and had had some horrible wounds (but we hadn't been able to get near him to inspect them). This story sounds similar to yours. After months we managed to get his trust, and had to decide what we were going to do: he was having a hard life, he would have been hard on the local wildlife, etc. In the end we adopted him, and his world has shrunk to our house and yard. But in his first vet visit (when he got "fixed up" - we have a vet relative who uses the terrible phrase "got his pockets picked") one of the barrage of tests he got was for FIV. I really don't want to think what we would have done if he came back positive, but luckily (and amazingly!) he didn't. He does have some amazing chest scars though.

Again, you have our deepest sympathy for your pain!
And that's a beautiful portrait of White!

P.S. Monty seems to think he's in heaven! Regular food, warm dry beds, and a decent garden to "own"... Turns out he was a year old: probably a Christmas 2004 present gone wrong.

[blacknstormy]

Steve & Kipper - thanks .... sounds lame, but boy you guys help. Steve, tell that beautiful little dog of yours that sooner or later I'll come back over for an afternoon of patting. Kipper - I know you did the right thing - and I know that I probably did the right thing (well, maybe), but am having a hard time convincing myself of it at the moment.

Dave - just when I stopped crying - thank you so much for telling me about your bubs. White's bite wounds were pretty nasty - and if you can't catch a cat, you can't take him to the vet She looked at them, nasty nasty bite wounds that wouldn't heal and in conjunction with being pretty 'lack lustre', very sore, sorry and having a high temp, immediately said 'we're testing for FIV'. Apparantly it was one of the strongest 'positives' she'd seen. But I had already said, we are going to fix it, and he had a antibiotic injection, and she was getting the oral antibiotics ready when she came back. I was getting all ready to leave when she stongly suggested euthansia. She wasn't sure he'd respond to the treatment, and in her words said 'it would be fairer to the cat as it is a horrible way to die, fairer to the cats in the neighbourhood that he may infect, and he isn't going to cope as a house cat'. I shouldn't have listened, well should have listened, but should have gone home and thought about it. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing - now I don't think so - I should have given him the chance, and have been beating myself up about it ever since.

Thank you Dave - you are a very very special person to take on the little beings you have - Monty is a very lucky cat

Rel