melredcap | RIP Thang.

Thang is dead. Long live his memory.

I don't think I've mentioned Thang here before, but anyone who's chatted with me in the past has a good chance of remembering him. He was our fourth cat, the huge ginger-and-white fluffy tom who decided all on his own that the life of a stray wasn't for him; he wanted to live with us, where he'd get food and worm pills and medical attention when he needed it. A lot of medical attention, as it turned out; in the approximately three years we had him, he cost us more than the other three cats and the dog put together, and we had to BUY them.

Thang first turned up as a fairly plump-looking fluffy stray, with a squeaky voice and a habit of leaving his mouth open after he meowed, hanging around our street. We fed him occasionally, trying not to be suckers... but he got thinner, and less fluffy, and we told ourselves that we were just going to feed him up while we looked for a different home for him. So he got fed more often, and wormed, and given vitamins, and we brushed him - something he LOVED - but he didn't come inside.

Then he vanished.

When he showed up again, about three weeks later, he was skin and bones, with a big gangrenous mess of a wound on his head. Gah. Well, there was no way we could let that go, could we? We had to take him to the vet, and of course we were going to have to keep him inside during his convalescence, so really he was going to be our cat, so he had to be neutered...

He got better.

Then he got sick again.

He stopped eating. Turned out he had ulcers on his lips and in his mouth; I forget the name of it, but he had an immune system problem. His own white blood cells were attacking the cells that made up the lining of his mouth and the thin skin over his sinuses. Poor baby... he went on steroids, etc etc.

He started to get better.

Then he tried to drown himself in the bathtub.

Once he was over the pneumonia his little near-death experience caused (hey! the antibiotics for that cleared up his chronic bronchitis!), he decided that this was all WAY too stressful... so he started washing and pulling his fur off. Plus his immune system thing flared up. For a while there, we had a rail-thin half-bald cat, with sores on his bald spots. More steroids, tranquillisers, etc etc.

He started to get better.

Then he got out the door and vanished for nine days.

We found him when a piteous meow came out of a storm drain. He'd gone down to hide in the cool dark place until he felt better, and then he couldn't get out; he nearly starved. Back to rail-thin again. More vet visits, more careful feeding, more fur-pulling and obsessive washing, more steroids... the bald areas gradually moved 'south', with him washing new areas raw while the old ones healed. Eventually, the problem reached his rear, and gradually faded away.

His fur grew back. He put on weight. He was a happy, sooky, affectionate cat; heck, he'd been happy and affectionate through all his problems. As long as he had humans looking after him, willing to let him cuddle on their chests and sleep on their beds, it seemed, everything was OK as far as he was concerned. (We'll pass over the issue of litter-training, which he never quite got the hang of; at least he always had his little 'accidents' on the tiles or the cork floor, never the carpet or the furniture. He tried to be a good cat.)

Tonight, he died.

He was curled up in his favourite spot in front of our biggest fish tank, belly up, with a sappy look on his face. He got up and came over to me to get a smooch, then walked out the back to where the cat dishes are; he ate, he drank, he threw up, and he collapsed.

Eleven o'clock at night, our normal vet is closed, the emergency vet is a pretty long drive away. We rushed him there; he was basically paralysed from the middle of his back down, legs and tail limp and getting colder, no bladder control, still throwing up. The vet thinks he got blood clots in his femoral arteries and spine, affecting his gut as well as his limbs; if he'd had any movement or warmth in his rear there would have been hope for recovery, but as it was... He was hurting. She couldn't say he had any chance of ever being able to walk again.

We said goodbye. Christy couldn't watch; I held him for the needle and stroked him while he went to sleep. We're going to bury him in the morning, under the wisteria, next to where one of my previous cats lies.

RIP Thang. We'll miss you. We would have happily paid one heck of a lot more to keep you.