This is going to be a kind of depressing post with a few swear words so feel free to just pass it by...
Well, a month ago I lost one of my dearest friends. My 16 year old cat.
Its really hard right now as I type this because usually he'd be sitting in the computer chair right behind me... trying to work his way to the entire chair if you gave him an inch. My chair feels to big and empty now... no purring fuzzy pillow against my back.
He'd been such an integral part of my daily life. My almost constant companion. In over 16 years I think I spent less than two months away from him total... part of that was when he went missing for 5+ weeks during the Winter of 2000 when I was in Dallas. He survived three different snow storms outside during that time. He was such a fighter. He was a tough cat.
He even started life on the rough side. Which makes it so hard that he just gave up this last time.
Hubby and I "acquired" him together when we first started dating. He had picked me up from work (after 11:30pm) and I was hungry for some sour cream potato chips. Someone at work had a small bag and I'd had one so I was suddenly wanting more. And of course Hubby wanted a Coke. First grocery store we went to only had HUGE bags of sour cream potato chips... I didn't want that many. Just a small bag. So we went down the street to this funky grocery store. There were like 3 cars in the parking lot. A little boy (about 4 yr old) was playing with this little grubby grey kitten... his parent was near by but it still blows me away when I think about that little boy out that late at night. Honestly it was almost midnight!
So we went inside. I got my smaller bag of sour cream & chive chips and DH got a coke. We came back out and all the other cars in the parking lot were gone. The little boy was gone. The little grubby grey kitten was still there.
Hubby being the big tough guy that he is... said, "I can't just leave him there." Yeah he's a
*really* tough guy. So we grabbed a towel out of the back of the car, wrapped him up and took him home. I swear we weren't in the car a minute before this LOUD rumbling purr started and he totally passed out. I mean practically dead to the world asleep. Guess he knew he was safe and loved.
We took him to the vet the next morning. He figured the kitten was about maybe 8 weeks old. He had worms... the kind only birds get which means he'd eaten a bird within the last 12 hours. Yeah he was a tough little thing that knew how to survive. Once we got him home and washed him up becuase he had bits of tar stuck to him from the parking lot being resurfaced we discovered that he was a pure white cat... with a couple of little bitty skid marks on the top of his head which did eventually fade away as he got older.
We originally named him Furrocious as a joke because he would stalk into a room like he was all bad ass and then suddenly vaporize back out as fast as he could. Eventually Furrocious turned into Furro which then turned into Furro-bot and then finally Bot-bot. He also responded to Shmoo... because he looked like that big ole blob of white from the cartoon.
He was such a wonderful part of our family. He was an incredibly cool cat. He was the kind of cat that people who don't like cats liked. He loved to be roughly pet... we use to call it making bread dough because he loved for you to practically rub him into the carpet. The harder you loved on him the harder he purred and wanted more. He loved to play fetch when he was young cat. Seriously, he would fetch this fuzzy soft ball if you threw it, or he would play handball and hit it back to you if you threw it. He was more dog than cat at times. He liked his space but really hated to be alone, he was always close by. Usually right next to me.
When I was pregnant with our oldest daughter, I was working up in Dallas helping to set up and open a new bookstore. I took Botbot with me. He slept ON me every night. Right across my body pillow and my belly. It was like he wanted to help protect the baby. Anytime she would move around or kick he would start to purr. I was scheduled to go to Houston for a couple of days over Christmas. The night before I left I was packing up my car, Botbot got out and I couldn't find him. I searched for the next day trying to find him. It snowed and froze at least 3 different times over the next 5 weeks. I looked everywhere for him but couldn't find him. At the end of January I was moving back to Houston. I'd posted flyers at the office of the apartment complex and everytime I turned around they would be gone. WTF? The babysitting flies for New Years were still up but someone kept taking my lost cat flyer down. I finally posted on with "Reward". The next day someone called and left a message on my answering machine saying he'd seen a large white cat over near building 8-9 (which was on the other side of the huge complex) and he hoped it was my cat. He didn't leave his name or anything. So I drive over there (it was raining of course). I searched and searched and couldn't find him. I went back to my car and was sitting there crying when I suddenly saw a splotch of white moving in the bushes at the other end of the building. I got out and ran towards it. Saw it was a cat moving through the bushes. Called his name and he turned around. I called his name again and he came bolting towards me meowing the whole time. Before he'd disappears he'd been a 20+ pound cat, my big ole fat cat when I found him he barely weighted 10 pounds. He was sooooo skinny. I'd finally found Botbot about a week before I was suppose to leave Dallas. How he survived those freezing temperatures and at least 3 different snow storms I'll never know. He was like that though. A fighter.
He was always so amazing with the kids too. He never swatted or purposely scratched the kids. The only time he ever scratched anyone when he was trying to get away and that wasn't in a malicious way... just trying to move. He would lay there and let the kids roll on him and rough him up. Whenever he'd finally had enough he would just get up and leave. No hissing or growling. Never a harsh sound from him like that.
He really loved the kids. Even when he'd finally have enough of them and would leave... he'd only be gone for a short time. He'd usually end up right back in the middle of the room they were playing it. He'd just stretch out on the carpet right in the center of everything.
He never really gave up his habit of sleeping on me at night. Which sometimes sucked with a big heavy cat would lay on you... many a sore morning.
Bot's health hadn't been fabulous for a while. Last fall he was "attacked" by a dog in the neighborhood. The dog didn't cause any external damage but he banged up his hip pretty good and he never did recover his previous spunk and vigor. Then about two months ago after we got back from our camping trip, he climbed into my lap and I noticed he had a lump on his side near his spine. Next thing I know he's licked all the fur off of it and it started to ooze. Ick. Nice little abscess. I took him to the Emergency Clinic because our vet was "closing for the day". WTF?? Well almost $300 (ouch!) later he was much better. They cleaned up the abscess and gave me some meds to give him. He was doing pretty good considering. Thankfully this was all while the kids were in Houston so the house was nice and calm and quiet for him to recover. He slept most of the time on my computer chair. We figured it was a tooth bite from one of the other cats Albert (who was always trying to assert his authority, he couldn't quite understand that Botbot was the alpha male). It was almost 3 weeks later, it looked like the bite was healing up nicely. Bamm! Overnight it started to swell again. I tried to clean in out but it wasn't getting much better. So I took him to the vet and they cleaned it all out and put a drain tube in. We also put him on a stronger antibiotic. Boy was that FUN to try to force pills into him. He sooooo didn't like it. So over the next week I fought with Bot to take his pill every night. A couple of days later he stopped eating and I couldn't get him to eat anything. Not even his favorites like pieces of chicken, cream, salmon... He NEVER turned down real smoked salmon before. Then he stopped drinking water and I was trying to force fed him water. The wound seemed fine, it wasn't swollen or infected. He just seemed to have given up.
It still hurts so much.
I'm dealing with the guilt. Maybe I should have taken him into the vet sooner instead of waiting that extra day until his "appointment". Maybe I should have taken him to the Emergency Clinic that last night even though I couldn't afford to pay almost $100 before they even DO anything. Honestly that is sooo fucked up. They charge $85 before they even do a damn thing. And we are soooo fuckin' broke right now that I just didn't have the extra money. He had kind of a rough patch late last night and I thought he was about to die on me, then a little while later he seemed to rally. He was up and moving around (admittedly he couldn't walk very well but he hadn't been walking well all week since the drain tube went right across his spine) and he seemed to be doing better. So now I feel extra guilty about not taking better care of him.
That last morning when I woke up, he was really doing bad. Like he wouldn't hold his head up or really respond to my voice. So I rushed him over to the vet's office less than 5 minute away. I love the Vet but I really don't like his front staff that much. They are always so dismissive and you can't ever get an "appointment" the same day but when I've gone in there it isn't that busy. She told me that there was only the one DR working today and he was really swamped so I'd have to just leave Botbot and he'd look at him when he got a chance and would call me.
Against my better judgment I left him.
The Vet called me less than an hour later. He's just gone to take Botbot out of the carrier to check him out and he'd already died.
He'd died less than 45 minutes later. Alone. In that fucking carrier that he hated so much. Now I feel so guilty that I even bothered to take him in. Maybe I should have just kept him home and held him until he died. Instead he was alone.
Botbot was truly my first child. I loved him so much and he was such a wonderful and affectionate cat.
I still miss him.
