Astra's in kidney failure.
It feels so unfair. We did everything wrong with Cole the first 5+ years of her life and she made it to 21.5 years.
And we tried to everything right with our next 2, and Astra is only 5.
She's staying at the vet today and tomorrow on continuous IV fluids and if her kidney levels improve after that she may have a chance for a little longer but if not I guess it will be very soon she will go.
And of course I am freaking out about how much this will cost but what else can we do? (my sister said she will empty her savings if she has to but how long will that last if this is going to be a chronic thing?)
None of us are ready to just throw in the towel and say goodbye to one of the best cats to have ever existed.
She's always been so adventurous, no fear at all, so friendly and loving and playful and clever, and to watch her suddenly just rapidly decline at just 5 years old is killing me.
I didn't want to go through all this again so soon, and at such a young age too.
With Cole she didn't start having any real issues until she was almost 20 and it was so so hard with her final 2 years of needing constant care but it felt worth it because she was my world, and she went I felt like I couldn't make it but I knew she had a nice long life and we gave her our all.
But with Astra, she's so young, I thought I'd have at least 8-10 more years before I would even have to think about going through all this hard health stuff again. I'm still not over Cole. I miss her every day and now I will have to add Astra onto that pain.
Everyone else keeps saying we should have never gotten cats again but we did so how is saying we shouldn't have going to help anything?
We love her and her sister and have given them really good lives and they know it and love us for us for it.
If we didn't take them who knows what would have happened to them. They needed people who had a great understanding of manx cats and their specific needs and issues. I know a lot of people wouldn't be as patient and understanding about the butt/poop issues that come up with rumpies like Cole and Astra. So it had to be us. We were meant for Astra even it ends up only being 5 years. I just wish it could be longer.
I hate how unfair it all is.
We were just kids when we got Cole, we weren't supposed to have a pet ever. My dad was very against it, especially cats. But our neighbor friend begged and pleaded with us to take her so we begged and pleaded with our dad. Her mom was going to "drop her off in the country" like she did with all the other litters their cat had before. And we already loved her because we would play with her ever since she was born. She came over to our house all the time and when she was tiny she even threw up on my bed before we ever knew she would be ours. She came to live officially with us at 3 months old. My dad relented so long as she would be outdoors only.
We had to pay for her food ourselves so we got the cheapest food there was $1.87 for a 5lb bag. I still remember that so well.
She started being indoor/outdoor pretty quickly though after some dogs tried to steal her one night.
She existed amongst our huge day lily patches all over our property.
We let her eat whatever she wanted and she became a sweets fiend. She loved ice cream, cotton candy, chocolate and cake and cookies, and sweet cereal milk. Ice cream was her favorite though. I know she had things that had onion in it too. We never took her to the vet.
We were kids, we didn't have internet. We didn't know so we just happily shared with her whatever we had.
She was so tiny but so healthy all her life. When she got to be about 10 we figured out a lot of the stuff we were doing was wrong and by then she wormed her way into my dad's heart too. So we started feeding her better foods and made sure she didn't eat things with the most dangerous foods but we couldn't take her beloved outdoors from her ever. We still let her have nibbles and licks of sweets so long as there was no chocolate or other dangerous ingredients and she still lived until 21.5 when her congestive heart failure and failing kidney's finally gave out. But that was all due to age.
We were never going to get another cat but then the pandemic hit, my dad was bored and lonely and missing a cat on his lap. He searched the internet for manx cats nearby every day. Then these 2 sisters popped up. The shelter had a 2 for 1 sale going on. He really really wanted them. We all finally relented because we thought maybe it would be nice to have some cat companions while we were shut in for who knew how long.
And before you know it they wormed their way into our hearts.
We did everything right with them. Everything by the book. We wanted them to be healthy and last a long time. But it didn't work out that way. No matter how hard we tried it still came to this after only 5 short years.
The vet said it's a congenital thing cats get sometimes and doesn't usually show itself until they are a few years old.
So I think it's ok that she was with us for this time. I think we definitely SHOULD have gotten her so that we could love her and give her the best life she could have for the time she is here.
It's just horrible we have to go through so much pain at the same time. The amount of joy she's given us is the amount of sorrow this is giving us, and that is a lot, a whole lot.
If you read this, thank you. It helps me to write about things sometimes. I'm sorry I haven't been around for others as much while going through this.
