We took Talia to the vet today for a scan for her GI lymphoma which is still in remission (yay). She also had some sort of nasal congestion, which made her breathing and eating very noisy. The vet took some x-rays – and found that she had a healed broken sternum (!) that was pushing on her lungs, causing a minor chronic partial collapsed lung(!). However, that’s probably not the problem; it’s probably been there for quite a while. Her nasal cavities definitely seem blocked, though, as evidenced by no fogging of a mirror. We’re hoping it’s a viral thing – swabs are being sent out for tests. If it’s something worse – a tumor comes to mind, especially since she also has some shading in her head on x-ray which may or may not indicate that – then biopsies will have to taken. I.e., needles shoved into her nasal passages to get samples. Gad.
Damn it, we just lost a pet. I don’t think I could take losing another, at least so soon. And I hate subjecting pets to painful medical procedures. They have no clue what’s going on. Maybe they can sedate her if the needle biopsies are required. But with the lung problem, they may not want to risk it.
awwww, she looks like our Nora, except Nora has a small white triangle bib in the middle of her chest, like a wee dainty bib. i hope she gets through the medical stuff all right, if she ends up needing it. i’m with you – i hate stressing the out with procedures when they don’t understand what’s going on.
Thanks so much for your support. Actually Talia has a white “locket” on her upper chest, a little triangle. Just doesn’t show in this photo. Wouldn’t work as a bib.
it’s funny you should say that. it’s a bit of a running joke with us, because i think she’s part russian blue, and my husband isn’t so sure. so whenever i point out her coloring, he says to me in an incredulous tone, “…is that a russian BLUE?”
he’s just teasing, of course. but i’m sure she’s part (if not mostly) russian blue – she looks exactly like their mother, too. i don’t think her mother has the white though. she lives next door. i need to ask our neighbor!
Well, between ourselves, I suppose the fur is really a kind of medium gray, but calling it blue sounds fancier. Besides, her puddy paw pads are a nice mauve.
So we just had one BAF thunderstorm and just about ten minutes ago, I heard Sugarplum mewing through my west kitchen window.
She’d brought me a baby bird (robin, more than likely, but sparrow maybe) - and you know what THAT means. Anyhow, she dropped it, and gave me a really sad look after I told her to let it go. I chased it down - both bird and cat were soaked to the skin - and took it to the outside cubby at the NW corner of the garage and set it on a small table back there. Oh yeah, all this in the dark in swampy long grass. In slides.
So, I don’t know where SP is, and I decide to check on the bird and I scare it off of the little table, then go back to get a flashlight, with the intention of putting it on a small shelf where SP can’t get it. It ended up landing on a little decorative birdhouse with a hole in front and no bottom, but it was on its back so the chick couldn’t get caught in it. So, I just took the birdhouse with the lil bird on it, and set IT up on the shelf.
And I got Sugarplum to come into the back porch so she could eat, but she doesn’t like being towel-dried; I daresay a blow dryer would provoke a more violent reaction.
The bird appeared unharmed, but since SP has no bottom front teeth, I’m not surprised.
UPDATE: Sugarplum came back with either the same bird or another one; it went behind our compost/recycling/trash bins, and I yelled like a D.I. at her to get away. She ran down the driveway till all I could see were two gold discs levitating over the driveway, lol. I’m hoping birdie got through the cyclone fence on the south side of the driveway. If it was the same bird, at least I helped it do dry off, 'cause it was able to flutter. Both it and SP were DRENCHED.
We lost Talia last night. She’d stopped eating and wasn’t moving much. We took her to our vet of 28 years, whom we trust completely. Basically the combination of negative tests for viruses and the shading in the x-ray of her head convinced the vet (and us) that Talia had a nasal adenocarcinoma, which was blocking ability to breath through her nose. Maybe secondary to her GI lymphoma; maybe primary. With the sense smell cut off, she couldn’t smell her food. She may have been in pain; we don’t know. She certainly wasn’t her old self.
The vet could have done needle biopsies – but we didn’t want her to undergo that. Too traumatic, and she’s been through enough medical stuff, with hyperthyroid a number of years ago and with the lymphoma. And there’s no treatment anyway. So we made the decision to let her go. She went peacefully, laying between us on a couch the vet has in a back room.
Awww. It always hurts to lose a pet. You take them to the vet hoping it will be a just quick in-and-out visit with everybody getting to go home, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.
Still, you were able to share her journey and give her a good home, family life, and comfort in the time you had with her.
i’m so touched! i was just telling my husband about Talia, and he agrees she looked very much like our Nora. to have to lose two in such a short amount of time is so awful. we took a break for a year or two before getting Nick & Nora, because we lost our two previous kitties so close together, too. Not sure why it happens that way, but i feel your loss.
I didn’t know you also lost two close together. It’s so sad! The house gets really empty.
I guess it’s just random acts of . . . something. In our case one was pretty old and the other had serious health problems. But thanks for your support. And thanks to everyone else here too – @Nonentity, @noahdjango, @chgoliz, @CleverEmi, @howaboutthis, @AndyHilmer – and the rest of you too.
There’s something very calming about knowing there are non-monkey animals around. Creeping through the forest jungle of our homes. It sucks not being able to have them.
