About My Ocean the Wiggle Cat

I had last posted how my wiggle kitteh was getting thinner and not as active, that Ocean was having trouble jumping onto the furniture like usual. So I took her in to the vet.

...They found a mass near her stomach. They took more ultrasounds and found two lumps, one on her large intestine and on her liver. They also spotted enlarged lymph nodes, which told them she had lymphoma and the aggressive untreatable kind.

(small "no").

She wasn't in any outward pain, but she was clearly uncomfortable, and I didn't want Ocean to struggle for another month or so before the pain got too much. It's hard, really hard for a person to take a pet companion - a fur baby - to the vet one last time.

It wasn't easy back in 2013 when I had to let Tehya the Pretty Kitty go to rest, and it wasn't easy today for Ocean.

Ocean was the kitten who came to me a week after Tehya died, on Halloween night meowing for trick or treat at the apartment stairwell. She was so fearless, happy to run up the stairs to my doorway to greet me going out and okay with coming inside my apartment to check it out. I called her Wiggles for how she'd roll around on her back when I got close. When I took her in for good a few weeks after Halloween and took her to the vet, the nurses there said "Wiggles" wasn't a proper name so I named her Ocean (for a then-recent Gaiman novel). But she was always Wiggles to me.

And then she had her babies on Super Bowl eve as the Broncos got blown out by the Seahawks. I hope the five kittehs I gave up for adoption - River, Simon, Inara, Zoey, Jayne - went to good homes and hopefully staying healthy. I kept Mal, and you all know how much of a handful he's been.

I wonder how confused Mal is going to be tonight, the first night without mama cat. :(

These are among the last photos I've taken of Ocean. I may upload a video or two of her purring later. I never videorecorded Tehya or Page when I should have, because today I can barely remember how they purred or meowed at me. :( 

This is Ocean just before the vet
came in. They let me hold her
to my side as they performed the
injections. It's so heartbreaking
how she stopped moving.

I am so sorry I wasn't able to take better care of you, my kittehs. /cries

A Note About Ocean the Wiggle Cat

Well, Ocean hasn't been doing so well the past couple weeks.

She's been getting thinner, and she hasn't been able to jump onto the sofa where she likes to rest half the time. I took her to the vet, where they noted she's lost 5 pounds since her last weigh-in this December.

Her bloodwork came back okay, but her urine showed a UTI, so I'm giving her antibiotics for that.

She came to me back on Halloween night 2013 and when I brought her in she was this tiny thing. She got big in a hurry - and then had six kittehs - and she'd been this active wiggly cat ever since.

But that's 12 years ago, and she was at least six months, maybe a year old when she showed at the base of the apartment steps. She's already in the 'senior' category for cats, and I'm worried this is not a good turn for her.

May have to take her in for x-rays to make sure it's not cancer - the thing that took Tehya, poor kitteh - or anything just as serious.

Pray for my mama cat, please.