Friday night our cat was suddenly paralyzed from behind, probably due to the tumor on her back. Sheba passed away at the emergency vet.
Sheba history
Sheba came to visit my parents-in-law around 2010. She just stayed in the backyard for a whole year, even in winter. At one point my father-in-law placed a garbage can on its side with a blanket in it. She came from a family with many children and other animals, where the dog had eaten her kittens. She was truly a predator, as she even caught ducks. Eventually she was allowed to sleep in the garage. This was really not possible in the house, because there was a dog and my mother-in-law is allergic. When the dog died, she came in more and more often. She wanted love and attention so badly.
New house
She came to us in January 2020. She really reclaimed all the love and attention she had been missing all these years. When the corona era started, we of course ended up at home and she was very happy about that. We worked alone at the dining table and she was always there. When we played a game, she would lie on the cards. When I read the newspaper, she was lying on the newspaper. She also always slept in my daughter Nikki’s bed. Those two were so crazy about each other. Every morning Nikki would pull up her covers and crawl into her hole, so cute. She could purr so terribly loudly. And she could also snore incredibly loudly. I don’t know what she had, but she definitely had a problem with her nose, because she would sometimes snore when she was awake. But at night I really couldn’t sleep in Nikki’s bed because of Sheba’s snoring. And every evening she stood by the couch and shouted very loudly for my husband to sit down quickly, because she wanted to sit on my lap.
Illnesses
In the last year she became less and less active, but of course she was already an elderly lady, even though we don’t know exactly how old she was. At one point she had super large pupils every time and bumped into everything. At the vet I took blood tests and felt them, but they couldn’t find anything except that she was almost blind. We went back a week later, because she wasn’t eating anymore either. Then they did a blood pressure test and discovered that she had sky-high blood pressure. Only there was nothing else to be found, but they already said that there could be a tumor somewhere. We were given mega expensive pills to take home, which Sheba had to take every day. After measuring her blood pressure a few times, her blood pressure was stable and she was doing well again. Nice and cheerful kitten, except that she couldn’t see much. In December there was suddenly a lump on her back. I knew immediately it was a tumor. So back to the vet, who had only felt and thought so. We were allowed to take her home and indicated that we had to come back a week later to give her an injection. Only she was so cheerful, she ate well and purred on our lap for hours, so we thought it was still too early to give her an injection. We kept a close eye on her every day, and we even let the ladies help decide whether it was time yet.
The time
And then the time had come. Friday night at 2:00 am I heard a racket and couldn’t place the sound, so I went to check it out. Sheba was lying on the stairs trying with all her might to get up, using only her front legs. As she lay in the hallway, she dragged her back body behind her. She had to get on my daughter’s bed, because she even tried to climb on the bed. We lay alone on the bed for a while to figure out what to do. I knew she would die soon and thought that if I just lay next to her, she would surrender. But Nikki didn’t want to stay and lay down in the attic, she couldn’t stand it. This made Sheba want to get off the bed again, because she wanted to go to Nikki, so she half fell on the floor. Fortunately, Remco was able to break her fall, but that was the moment when we thought: we are now going to put her out of her misery. We found the animal ambulance on Google, but they said we had to call our own animal practice for the telephone number of the doctor on duty. So that’s how we came across the telephone number of the emergency post in Amsterdam and of course we were allowed to come straight away. We put her on a beautiful heart blanket in the crate and she was completely at peace with that. We also left her in the crate at the vet, because we didn’t want to lug her around unnecessarily. She first received an injection with a painkiller. After this she was almost gone. She lay so beautifully, completely satisfied. It seemed like she didn’t want it anymore. The doctor was allowed to do whatever she wanted with her. When she started an IV, her blood pressure was so low that no blood came out at all. So a second IV in her other leg and luckily something came out of that. I cuddled with her for a while and then the euthanasia was initiated and Sheba passed away. Wow, we are going to miss this sweet little cat, like crazy. ?