Your Pet Loss Stories

by Alix
(North Carolina)

Pumpkin found us 3 years ago in the Spring. We immediatly fell in love with him and he became our second cat. Pumpkin was my cat, and he still holds a very special place in my heart. Pumpkin was an orange long haired tabby. He was beautiful. He was a very playful cat, there is a river down by my house and he would always walk down there with me in the summer. He loved to try and chase the geese away but somehow it never worked.

In October of 2009 I came home one day and all of my cats were here, except him. At first I wasn't alarmed but by the 3rd day I was worried sick. We called the local shelters and we called all of our neighbors but noone had seen him. I was heart broken, I didn't know what happened to him he never ran away like that. So in a way I lost him then too. One morning my mom woke me up and she greeted me with Pumpkin, he showed back up 17 day later as if he had never even left. He was very skinny and we came to the conclusion that he may have gotten stuck in someones garage or house or somewhere, But our vet said unless he was acting strange there wasn't any reason to bring him to the vet.

Pumpkin seemed fine from then on. He was eating and drinkng normally but still wasn't gaining much weight. So we bought worming medicine to see if that would help and it did for a while, I don't know if it was just a fluke that the worming medicine helped a bit but who knows. In February we had a huge snow storm and we got out of school early. When I got home all of my other cats were running around and Pumpkin was lying in front of the door covered in snow, I guess he was too weak to move, so I took him inside and tried feeding him he wouldn't eat his canned food or drink anything so my mom and I made a vet appointment for him. We had made it for 2 days later but ended up having to go the next morning because he was only getting worse.

When we got to the vet he saw us immediately pulling Pumpkin out he weighed him, and he only weighed 6 1/2 pounds and his temperature was low. He diagnosed him with Anaemia and dehydration which was causing the early stages of liver failure. I was so upset, but he said we may be able to save him if we were able to force feed him until he was able to eat and drink on his own again. They gave him liquids and electrolytes at the vet and we began trying to save him.

When we got home that day he began drinking some of the chicken broth on his own, but I didn't want to get my hopes up on anything. We force fed him through the weekend and we had a follow up appt with the vet that next Monday. The vet said he was showing signs of improvment but he was still not out of the woods yet. It was so hard for me to force feed him and look at him because he was my baby and he was so pitiful looking. The next week was going by and honestly he wasn't improving, but I was telling myself he was when he wasn't.

On friday March 5th 2010 I came home from a friends house and began walking upstairs to get pumpkin some water to force feed him, when my mom pulled in behind me. When she came up the stairs she had this face on her I just knew what had happened. My sister came home from school and Pumpkin was in my brothers room trying to walk, But everytime he tried he fell down, he was shaking and having convulsions. My mom took him to the vet and the vet said it was his time to go, and they ended up putting him to sleep.

In a way I feel like I was only thinking of myself. I didn't want to let him go because of the pain I was going to go through, but he was miserable and weak, and sometimes there comes a point were you have to push all that aside and let them go. As hard as it is, they know you still love them, and they are looking down upon us, waiting for the day they get to see us again. I love Pumpkin so much and I know he is in a much better place.