Current Events > damn... a feral cat we had been feeding who we thought died showed up again

(+) Yeah! (+)

he disappeared about a week and a half ago. he likes to hang out in our back yard sometimes, and last year we started feeding him and trying to gain his trust so we could get him into a pet carrier and get him to the vet, cuz he had these sores on his ears that were bleeding all the time and needed to be looked at. after awhile of getting him to cozy up to us, we were finally able to do that, and turns out it was cancer, a specific type of cancer that white cats who are mostly outdoors have a tendency to get because of exposure to the sun on their white fur. so, the vet then was able to take care of all of it on the one ear, but the other ear which was worse was pretty much impossible to take care of completely, and it looked mostly better for a month or two, but then it started getting raw and bloody again. the vet warned us that it would come back and there wouldn't be much that could be done about it.

so after that we kinda just would feed him when he showed, and sometimes he would let us coax him into our back porch laundry room and he would stay there at night. but something must have happened about a week and a half ago and he stopped coming around. my mom would go out in the backyard and try to call him when it was feeding time, but there was nothing. we thought he had probably died of a heart attack or gotten eating by a coyote or possum or something. we were pretty sad about that.

so when we saw him pop up out of nowhere earlier today, we were ecstatic at first, but that quickly faded because when he got closer you could see that his ear was worse than it has ever been, and even more than that he looked severely malnourished and mangy. we don't know where he has been or what he has been doing, but it looks like he probably wasn't eating much, or anything, during the time he was missing. he let me pet him briefly and he was just skin and bones.

the neighbor who takes in sick and injured cats took one look at him and said we gotta just get him to the vet to get put down asap, he's just suffering at this point. it sucks. i wish there was something else we could do for him, but i don't think there is. she lent us one of her pet carriers and he let my mom just pick him right up and put him in, there was no fight in him whatsoever. we have an appointment at 10 tomorrow morning to get him looked at and most likely put down. we're gonna miss him.

Ah shit that sucks. Sorry for your loss. But your family offered him comfort in his final days which I'm sure he appreciated.

SpiritSephiroth posted...

Ah shit that sucks. Sorry for your loss. But your family offered him comfort in his final days which I'm sure he appreciated.

yeah. i still feel bad that we didn't do more. we could have tried to get him into a pet carrier and to the vet again sooner, when his ear started getting worse again. but we had a lot of stuff going on, going through a lot of financial difficulties, my grandfather dying of COVID and us traveling halfway across state twice to clear out his house and go to his memorial service, the property manager having a breakdown over something and getting testy with us and threatening to evict us cuz of my parents' hoarder shit in the back yard and my car which had been nonoperational for awhile and technically according to the lease was not allowed to be parked on the property.

luckily we were able to get my car and most of the junk taken care of, and the property manager has been nice lately, but still, among all that, my mom was really stressed out and we just didn't have the time or wherewithal to try to wrangle him and get him seen again. also there was the question of whether it would even do any good, according to what the vet told us before that the cancer would come back pretty much whatever we do.

and we don't even know why he disappeared and stopped eating or if it had anything to do with the cancer, or if it was something else entirely. we do know something similar happened to a cat we were pretty sure was his littermate cuz they had almost the same coloring, a few years back, he started getting thin and stopped coming around to eat when he normally would, and then one day he was just gone. we figured it was some kind of wasting disease. we saw it happen to a dog we used to own.

Homeless cats make me sad. I wish it was possible to give them all help

Zikten posted...

Homeless cats make me sad. I wish it was possible to give them all help

same

well, it's done. RIP Frick.

RIP. Thanks for making his life better than it would have been without your family.

Master_Bass posted...

RIP. Thanks for making his life better than it would have been without your family.

thank you. yeah, it was really heartwarming seeing him finally warm up to us after so many years of him and his littermate just never letting anyone near them at all. and we were so worried after we got him into the pet carrier and took him to the vet the first time to get his ears looked at, that he was gonna come back feeling betrayed and not like us anymore and leave. and he was gone for about a day. but he came back, and i think the surgery must have done him a lot of good initially, because not only did he seem to like us and want us to visit with him more, he seemed to be happier and less cautious.

but unfortunately the ear did just get worse again from there, and there apparently wasn't anything more we could have done about that. i'm just really glad that he came back again after disappearing, that we got to pet him and comfort him one last time before his suffering was ended, and that he didn't die out there alone like we thought.

I'm sorry he couldn't be healed. At least he was more comfortable this way

Zikten posted...

I'm sorry he couldn't be healed. At least he was more comfortable this way

yeah. thank you.