Last Friday I had to help my Mom take her and my Dad's cat Izzy to the vet. She was 17, diabetic and had not eaten much if anything for about a week. Her temperature was a little low, but her pulse was normal. The Dr. noticed she wasn't breathing very well, and wanted to do an x-ray to see what was going on. When he came back he explained that they could not see her heart at all because it was surrounded by fluid. She was dehydrated and her kidneys were borderline failing. He asked if my parents would like an ultrasound done to determine what was going on. He gave three guesses as to what it could be, but said any would require time spent at the vet and probably take a lot of time and money. Izzy has had a lot of things go on in her life, and my parents had spent a lot of money on her. They would have spent the money because they loved her so. It was agreed though, that that just didn't want her to have to go through any more stressful vet stays and treatment that may not work anyways. You could see she was very tired. I sat stroking her, telling her what a pretty and good girl she had been and that I was very sorry she had to go, as the vet helped her to the rainbow bridge.
I'm actually going to start with a cat my parents had before Izzy. His name was Thomas. It was 1994, I was 16 and my family lived on an small Army depot. We had just moved there and we had not had a cat for several years. I noticed there were cats living behind a restaurant, and would go visit them with my brother. There was a litter of kittens who were so cute. Unbeknownst to my parents, I took a can of tuna over to lure one home. I didn't really know which one I wanted, there were tabbies and siamese mixes. The bravest one was a boy lynx point. He gladly followed me as I gave him tuna all the way home. My parents, though exasperated, said ok and my sister named him Thomas.
After 2 years we moved to the nearest Air Force base because they closed the depot. It was a lot busier. Thomas was an inside/outside cat. On the small depot he could sit in the middle of the road because there wasn't much traffic. There was a lot more traffic including on of the busiest roads on base very close to our house. He was hit by a car not too long after moving.
My Dad was devastated. He would call out Thomas's name and then remember he was gone. I told my sister, who had moved out before we had moved to the Air Force base, how sad my Dad was. At first she would bring her two kittens over to visit. Then she found a gray tabby and cared for it for a little while, but decided to bring her over for my Dad. Her name was Ozzy. She did not like men though(at that time anyways).
A few weeks later my sister came over with a kitten that I thought at first was her little tuxedo boy, but it was way too small. It was a little girl tuxedo that my sister had gotten from a lady standing outside a grocery store with a box full of tuxedo kittens. I got to name her. Since it was 1996, I named her Izzy after the mascot from the Olympic games that year. Later I sort of regretted the choice since I didn't realize people would call her a "him" because of the name.
She spent her first few nights batting my brothers eyelids as he tried to sleep. I took her into my room, and she slept with me most of the time until I moved out for awhile. After that she took to sleeping with my Mom and Dad and her sisfur Ozzy.
Ozzy and Izzy were sometimes really good friends and sometimes not. They went through 2 moves together, from Salt Lake City, Utah to St. Louis, Missouri and back. They tag teamed chasing off a neighbor cat by breaking though a window screen at 2 or 3 in the morning. They were not outside cats, but would go outside supervised every once in awhile.
My parents lost Ozzy in 2008 when she was 12 years old. She seemed to have had a stroke. She wouldn't eat and lost function on one side of her body. She was helped to the rainbow bridge in June of that year.
Izzy seemed to take well to becoming the only cat. She didn't seem to want to venture outside anymore for supervised outside time though.
Izzy had two big health scares in her lifetime before the end. She seemed to get loose stools a lot. She was semi long haired, so it meant a lot of baths. My parents had their grandchildren for a few weeks to visit. Izzy hid a lot during that time. They knew she was getting loose stools a lot, but could not get her to give her a bath. After the grandkids left, I helped my Dad to bathe her. She had a lot of matts around her hind end. We decided to try cutting them off. As my Dad held her and I cut into the matts, maggots started to come out of the matts. She was rushed to the emergency vet, where the cleaned all the maggots out. They were not in to deep. It was after this point it was determined that she couldn't eat any food with shellfish, as that caused the loose stools. And she got shaved every summer afterwards to prevent bad matts. The second scare was when she was 15. She started to have loose stools all the time, would eat very little, and would just hide in a closet. She was taken to the vet where they figured out she was diabetic. She did very well, even being off insulin for a few months.
Lily met her, as my husband and I lived in my parents' basement at the time we adopted Lily. Izzy did not take to Lily at all. They would play smacky paws quite a bit. Lily just wanted to play, but Izzy wanted nothing to do with Lily. They lived together for about 8 months.
Izzy was a big girl. She was overweight at times, with the most she weighed being 18 pounds. Her paws were huge though. She had a cute yin yang on the underside of her chin. She loved to play with milk rings or rubber o rings. She would play fetch or tennis with anyone who would throw her rings. When she was a kitten she made nests with whatever she could find. Most of the time it was tissues. She once smacked a bunny she saw outside. She brought several live birds into my parents house then would release them and leave them for my parents to deal with. She loved belly, nose and chin rubs. She would only lay on my lap. She loved to sleep up against peoples feet. The past few years she had her Daddy wrapped around her paw, and loved to have him just lay on his bed and give her love for as long as she allowed it. She loved to be called pretty, and knew it meant something good. She hissed at anyone she didn't know or didn't like. She was all hiss and no bite though.
Goodbye my sweet pretty Izzy girl.
