Geez Kathy.... What can I say. What a great person you are --
and how wonderful that Legolas had the opportunity to be loved by you.
These last years had to have been by far the best years of his life. May
he rest peacefully. Poor kitty. Big hugs to you.
Goodnight, sweet Legolas.......
=^..^= Terri, Salome', Siggie the Tomato Vampire, Guinevere, Sammi, and 5
furangels: RuthieGirl, Samantha, Arielle, Gareth and Alec =^..^=
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 2:17
PM
Subject: Legolas has gone to Valinor (The
Bridge) - CLS
Belinda, Please add Legolas to the CLS.
Thanks.
"It's normal to want to do everything humanly
possible to save a life, and that's important. Doing everything humanely
possible to ease suffering is much more important, and sometimes, when the
treatment is worse than the disease, and the disease is beyond any chance of a
cure, that means letting go. Knowing when to let go is the most important
thing of all. Give them every good day they have coming, but know when that
last good day has been spent." ~ K.S.
Legolas' last good day was spent over the weekend. Legolas left the Gray
Havens for Valinor (the Bridge) Tues. morning. This is long, but I wanted
to go back through his history here - especially for the folks who don't know
about him. He was a remarkable guy. What happened Tuesday is
at the end, for those who want to skip ahead.
Legolas came here on June 4, 2003 because he tested positive for FeLV
and the ladies who got him off the street couldn't keep him. They had other
cats, a small house and rooms with doors that didn't close tightly. They had
him for a month and got him neutered and vaccinated. He was believed to have
been a grown up kitten from the previous summer - it turned out that he was at
least 5 years old, probably 8-10, and possibly much older. He was
exceptionally affectionate and the ladies who rescued him said that if they
couldn't find a place for him to go he'd have to be put to sleep. Never having
been able to live with myself when I know there's a cat under threat of
euthanasia that I can help, I quickly agreed to give him a home with my other
3 positive cats. I named him Legolas in the hopes that some elvish qualities
would rub off on him - like the whole immortality thing.
He settled in within minutes and in about a 1/2 an hour, he'd found
the toy stash under the bed. He wasn't eating much other than canned food back
then, and I had been having trouble finding something he'd like consistantly,
but for the most part, everything was going well - his weight of about 7 1/2 -
8 pounds concerned me (it was a little on the low side for a cat his size).
But I still had this nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right but I
couldn't put my finger on it. It seemed like there was an inordinant amount of
urine in the litter pans, but then I thought that maybe I was mistaken.
One of my surviving 3 original FeLV kids (from the pre-FeLV days -
there had been 6 - Sam and Slick Willy both died in 2001 from lung cancer
caused by FeLV, then Tina died on 3/11/03), Monty, passed away from severe
anemia on 7/25/03, then I decided that I wanted to know more about Legolas'
health and had some bloodwork done on him. I found out that his blood work
showed that he was anemic, had elevated BUN and creatinine levels, and he had
a significant heart murmur. His red blood cell count was at about 13 or 17%
(the same that Monty's was when he was too weak to stand anymore) yet he would
run into the bathroom when I was in there and clear a jump from the floor 3-4
feet in front of me to my shoulder while I was sitting on the toilet. We
started him on subQ fluids and some medication, and he seemed to improve. I
took him to the internal medicine vet that I take a couple of
my negative guys with HCM to, and found that he didn't have kidney
failure, his kidneys were enlarged and probably had either an infection raging
in them or had cancer. With the fluids, his packed cell volume (PCV) of red
blood cells had increased, and his murmur went away, so we kept on doing what
we could for him, but really didn't expect him to see Sept. 1st.
He had a hard time with his appetite, and for a while, Fancy Feast
cat food was all he would eat. Then, he threw up with one flavor and he
wouldn't touch it again, and found another flavor he was willing to try until
he threw up again (his kidney problems made him nautious). Then his appetite
changed and all I could get him to eat was home cooked food - chicken livers,
rice, broth and a little water. He enjoyed his chicken liver soup, until he
threw up after eating it, and I couldn't get him to eat it anymore. By October
('03) I figured out that he adored fast food, and started getting things like
KFC and Burger King for him. I'd get a KFC dinner, give him the meat from the
chicken, and offer him a little of the potatoes and mac & cheese, and
found out that he would eat well if I shared a dinner with him. If I got it
for him, tore up his food, and ate some other kind of food myself, he'd only
pick at his food. If I got a dinner for both of us, tore up his food, and had
some myself, he'd eat an entire chicken breast by himself, along with a
spoonful of mac and cheese and mashed potatoes - and sometimes some of the
biscuit. Because he wasn't eating much else, I made a point of getting fast
food everyday that I could share with him - burgers without onions (he liked
whoppers best), chicken sandwiches, chicken nuggets (I'd take off any
breading).
In the begining of November ('03), I brought home two new FeLV cats,
Althea from Cleveland, OH, and Byron from Andover, NJ. Between 3/11/03 and
10/22/03, we lost 3 of the 4 FeLV kids from the original group (who were here
before they got FeLV in 2000) - and the last of the 3 was a little longhair
calico girl who was born here in '98 (Pasula Sapa - Dale's sister) and who was
heart and soul devoted to Redbud. Redbud is the last of my pre-FeLV kids, and
is an energetic, friendly, extroverted kinda guy who was the head of my
welcoming committee for years. He had a hard time saying goodbye to his old
friends (Tina who had been here since she was 2 days old in Sept, '93, Monty
who was brought here at only a day or two old and was found on a porch in an
eastern neighborhood in Dayton called Belmont - a month or so before Slick
Willy was born in '99, and Pasu - Redbud came here in the fall of '97).
Legolas helped him a lot, but Redbud's a very emotional guy and took Pasu's
passing especially hard. Because Legolas had given me multiple scares already,
I decided to find Redbud a couple new companions who were young, but had been
FeLV+ for over a year (so that their chances of long term survival would be
better). I found those two in Byron & Althea. Legolas accepted the new
guys almost as fast as Redbud - although Leggy was much more reserved in his
greeting them. He gave them a day or two and made a friendly approach. Redbud
was so anxious to make the friendly approach that it took the new guys about
10 minutes to come out of their travel carriers - because Redbud had his head
and shoulders in the door way, eyes open and shining with excitement, ears
forward, tail up, doing the "Hi! I'm Redbud! Who are you? Will you be my
friend?Pleasepleasepleaseplease???" greeting that he's become famous
for. When Byron got here, Redbud looked in the carrier, did a double take
(Byron looks almost exactly like a small version of Redbud) and almost blocked
me from opening the door because he was so anxious to get in and start giving
headbutts. He had poor Byron pushed back in the carrier, giving him headbutts
and washing his face - before they'd even had a chance to get a good sniff at
each other's butts. Luckily, both Byron and Althea realized Redbud meant well,
even if he was a little overly exhuberant, and settled in quickly. Byron was
eating Science Diet dry food, and Legolas decided that he liked it too. I was
thrilled - he had never eaten dry food here before. I hoped that meant that
his condition would continue to improve.
By Christmas 2003, Legolas' weight was up to 12 pounds and he was
gorgeous - and eating nothing but dry Science Diet and the occasional chicken
breast. His fur looked great - soft and shiny, his eyes were bright, and he
looked like he was going to be with me for quite some time. Then, just after
January, his health changed again.
In January, he started losing weight, and I discovered he'd developed
some nasty ulcers on his tongue. We tried a number of antibiotics, vitamins,
nutritional suppliments, and nothing other than depomedrol shots every week
seemed to help. The regular vet said he thought it was oral cancer - a nasty,
fast growing cancer that causes drooling, horrible odor, and an inability to
eat and drink. The internal medicine vet and I were unable to see any sign of
a tumor where the regular vet said he saw something suspicious, but since
Leggy was painful to have his mouth opened wide or for long, the IM vet and I
acknowleged the possibility that we just didn't happen to see it, but we tried
to remain hopeful that the regular vet was mistaken.
Legolas's weight began to drop, and dropped to about 7 pounds, meandered
back up to 8 pounds and declined again - he was just skin and bones now, but
he'd been looking happy and doing things that told me he was still enjoying a
decent quality of life. He couldn't groom himself, so when he got dirty and
wanted to get clean, he'd jump up on the top of the shower door and climb down
into my arms. When he wanted a shower, "no" was not an option.
His canned
food had to be cold (I'm thinking it felt good on his tongue that way), and
piled into a mound on a plate - so he could pick up bites rather than lap it
up. For the most part, when I give him something like KFC, he'd come up, sniff
the food I'd prepared for him, come up to me and put his front paws around my
neck and give me a face rub, then go and eat.
Over the last few months, I
noticed a pointy growth in the back of his mouth - back near the joint of his
jaw on the right side of his mouth, by the lower jaw, between his cheek and
teeth. It never got any bigger, but he'd started to have long strings of very
thick clear to yellow drool dangling from his mouth almost constantly. I
brushed his teeth and used his toothbrush to gently swab the wads of thick
slobber out of his mouth. Depomedrol stopped the drooling for most of a week
at a time, but because of the side effects of Depo - mainly diabetes - we
couldn't give it more often than once a week - and that was pushing our luck,
but it was helping him so it was worth the risk of giving it to
him.
He always looked at me with an _expression_ that said "I've looked for
you my whole life, now that I'm here, I'm not going anywhere." and that kept
me fighting for him. His eyes have been clouding over for the last few months
- nothing unusual for a cat with FeLV - but this weekend, one eye suddenly
became opaque from an ulcer caused by his eye lashes rubbing his cornea and
he's become nearly if not totally blind (As his weight dropped, his eyes sank
in, and his eye lids rolled inward). He'd been becoming more unsteady on his
feet over the last week, and Tuesday morning it was all he could do to
make his back legs work. The last few days, he urinated wherever he could get
to - sometimes it was on a towel on the floor in the bathroom, a couple times
it was on the bed (if anyone ever has to sleep with a cat with a bladder
control issue, be sure to get at least two fitted waterproof mattress
pads), and more than once it was on me (extra night shirts are helpful too).
His heart rate was very slow and irregular, and he'd developed his anemic
murmur again. I would've liked to have known what his PCV was now, but knowing
wouldn't change anything, and I wasn't going to put him through having blood
drawn without good reason.
I took him to the vet one last time Tuesday morning. It
was the first and only time Legolas didn't go into his carrier as soon as I
set it down on the bed with the door open in all the time he's been
here. Normally, I'd have brought him home and let the others he lived
with see him, and then bury him, but because of the snow from last Wednesday's
storm still being over a foot deep, the vet's office is holding him in their
freezer until the weather breaks enough to dig a grave - then I'll take him
out to my parent's house to bury him with the rest of my grown ups who've
passed.
I'm really going to miss Legolas. I even found myself appreciating
having his slimy, smelly, drool covered snout being pushed into my face at
night. He did his best to live up to his namesake's lifespan - his blood work
always showed his RBC count and a couple other things to be too low to support
any activity, yet he was running, jumping, & playing up until just the
last few weeks. He enjoyed the Christmas treats and played with a couple of
the toys our friends from the cats forum at about.com sent to us (they
conspired in secret and sent it as a surprise - because I'd had a very bad
year. They sent a huge rubbermaid tote of cat treats & toys and
Mommy treats and toys that arrived on Wednesday as the snow was just starting
to get really deep. We didn't get any more mail until Tuesday of this
week). Leggy has been snuggling on my pillow next to my face for the
last week or two and sleeping under the covers with me - which he never used
to do. I suspect his not having much other than skin covering his joints made
him pretty cold most of the time and he probably needed the extra cushioning
to be able to sleep comfortably. Tuesday morning, we snuggled together in a
sunny spot on the bed for a while and I hand fed him over 1/2 a slice of honey
ham lunch meat - he still enjoyed his munchies - but age and disease finally
caught up with him.
The one thing I think of when I think about him is the same thing
I've thought ever since I brought him home and found out about problem after
problem after problem that's turned up with him - He's Perfect.
I can almost see Legolas, trotting off to the Bridge, humming a little
tune....
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door
where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I
can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger
way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot
say.
(J.R.R. Tolkien - from LOTR)
Goodbye, my old friend - until we meet again....
Where there's life, there's
hope.
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then...find
the way ~ Abraham Lincoln
Kathy
