Trixie - Over the Rainbow Bridge

We’re home now, and totally broken. I’m just crying all the time. We brought Trixie home 1 week ago from her boyfriend, and she has been very healthy and happy during this time. Well, except that Zoe has been very aggressive towards her. Zoe has risen in rank with her pregnancy and has always let Trixie know that now it is her (Zoe) who is #1. Except for having to keep an eye out that Zoe doesn’t hit her, Trixie has been a healthy and reasonably happy cat. She still always whines when you pick her up, but we have been giving her lots of Nutrical and love. I was so much looking forward to seeing her change as her pregnancy got more obvious – I wanted so much to see her grow in rank and be a truly happy cat.

This was such a shock! It came from nowhere! One in a million chance. Daniel and I had been up very late last night so we got up only at lunch today. Daniel walked through the living room and petted all the cats, and tells me Trixie was lying on her favorite pillow in the sofa. A couple of minutes later I walk out into the living room and see Trixie lying on the floor, and Zoe sitting only about 10 cm from her. I remember thinking “How good, They are close and not fighting!” until I saw Trixie was lying much to still. When I came closer to her I could see that she had vomited, peed heself (She was lying in a puddle of pee) and also pooped herself. I run to her and scream for Daniel. I lift her up and I can see that she is still alive, but her eyes have no reaction to light, her head is lolling and her legs are cramping (looks like she is trying to ride a bicycle).

Daniel comes out, sees her and runs to get a big towel and call Taxi. We wrap her in the towel and rush to the veterinary. At this tiome I was just so happy I was home so we could help her right away!

We get to the vet and are admitted right away. They take her temperature and it is only 36,7 – 2 degrees lower than it should be. She is obviously in shock. The Vet asks for a blood test. It takes us almost 5 minutes to fill a very small vial of blood – her blood pressure was so low we could almost not get any blood out. Her gums and tongue were white. Not even pink, but WHITE. Once we have pulled the blood she is put on a drip (saline) and on a heating pad – to treat the shock.

The blood test came back about 15 minutes later. Nothing was wrong. Her red and white bloodcount was good, her liver and kidneys are working fine. So there is nothing in the organs and also no infection. We try to think if she could have been poisoned in any way, but there is NOTHING in out home that is poisonous to cats, that isn’t locked away. After some time on drip and heating pad she vomits again. The vet then says, because there are no signs of poisoning, that the treatment for the shock is probably causing her to feel worse, because as we increase fluids in her the preassure on the brain increases. He also say that it is not epilepsy, because she is not recovering at ALL! She is clearly blind, has blinking reflex on touch but not for light. Her pulse is 180/150. She breathes very shallow. Now and then, maybe once every 2 minutes, she takes a deeper breath and cries – softly. She is obviously almost comatose and what little feeling she has is terrible. She is in pain, or at least in very much discomfort. All the tests are contraindicative of anything we can do. No infection, no epilepsy, nothing wrong with her organs, no poisoning. The vet tells us that if we REALLY want to we can take her to a bigger hospital and put her into intensive care, but that we would do this more for us. He says to us that he believes that if we do not take the decision, she will die within one or 2 hours anyway, in pain. Trixie is in pain and her prognosis is VERY VERY bad, he is as sure as he can be that she has had a stroke. We ask for a few minutes to think and he leaves the room. While we talk and wait she is becoming worse. Her breathing is more shallow. Her back legs become paralyzed. One of her pupils contract but not the other. All of these are strong signs for a stroke.

With every cell of my body I wanted to try to save her. But by the time the vet came back she had become so much worse, there was only one decision we could take. We had to be strong and think of her, not of ourselves. She was asking us, every time she cried, to please let her go. So we did…

I held her in my arms and cradled her like a baby, blowing air into her face and speaking softly to her and Daniel stroked her whole body and spoke to her softly while the vet gave her the injection. She died in my arms. I am crying so much when I write this that I think my keyboard will break. We loved Trixie, even when we laughingly complained that she was our “little bitch” we both actually enjoyed that she had so strong a personality. I hope that she felt our love when we let her go. I know we felt it...