for cat lovers, one positive outcome of Mango's FIP crisis this weekend....
I posted Sunday and yesterday about the death of my neighbor's cat-- previously my cat Mango-- from feline infectious peritonitis. I won't even link that post here. It's in the Lounge if you want to read it, but the raw emotion of that OP is just too much for me today. That chapter is done.
In the mean time, once Mango's passing was eased, we got another of their cats into the vet today. His name is Maxwell and he adopted the neighbors at just about the same time Mango did, presumably for the same reasons. They're genuinely cat lovers and there were simply too many animals under my roof when my partner and I combined households a few years ago. But they're an older couple with limited means and have struggled with the financial burden of caring for aging kitties.
Maxwell is a 12 year old male Siamese/Burmese mix. His Siamese mother Grendel is the grande dame of my house, 14 years old, toothless, but spry and takes shit from nothing and no one. Maxwell was my favorite and the only one we kept from his litter (it was a semi-accidental litter and was never repeated). The last record my vet had for Maxwell listed his weight at 19.7 lbs, and it was not fat. Max is a big, tall kitty, as tall as our Maine coon and much stouter when he's healthy. In April however, the last record the neighbor's vet had for him, his weight was down to 13 lbs, and today he weighed just under 11 lbs at my vet's office. He has lost nearly half his body mass in the last year.
He has major dental problems and oral infection, and will probably lose most of his teeth, something the neighbors could not afford. His mother lost most of her teeth a few years ago, and his one surviving sibling had his pulled last year, so it's evidently a family trait. Maxwell's teeth and gums hurt him so badly that he has pretty much given up eating, and the vet wasn't even able to give him a comprehensive mouth exam today because it was too painful without anesthetic.
Now that the neighbors accepted our help with Mango's vet care, it was easy to simply continue with Maxwell, like "oh and I'll be by tomorrow at noon to pick up Max, just to get him checked out-- he looks a little skinny." No worries, and tomorrow he gets a mouth makeover. Today he got antibiotics and some pain meds to hold him over until the dental surgery.
Sometimes it feels like no good deed goes unpunished. Other times, life serves up shit sandwiches that lead to better times. Today was one of those latter instances. I wanted to post this to bookend the sadness of my last post about Mango. This story will have a far happier outcome.
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