Bullwinkle & Jezebel

Bullwinkle & Jezebel

Today, March 21, is the 5-month anniversary of Jezebel's death, and the 2-month anniversary of Bullwinkle's cancer diagnosis. Jezebel was 19+ years old when she died -- the oldest any cat of mine has ever lived to be. She was a perennial kitten until she was 16, when she got old almost overnight: she got wobbly all of a sudden, and frail, and stopped chasing her tail. From then on, it was a slow, steady decline for her.

She hated Bullwinkle with a passion. And truly, had I not seen Bullwinkle in action with Jezebel, I would have thought Bullwinkle was perfect (as opposed to simply being very close). He was just horrible to her -- he treated her as if she were his prey. We lived for a while in a place with mirrored sliding closet doors; the bed faced the mirror. Jezebel would slink around under the bed, while he would sit on top of it, watching her in the mirror. When she got right beneath him, he'd jump down and ambush her. So I got a bedskirt -- I figured he wouldn't be able to see her under the bed any more. He just changed tactics and started hiding under the bed -- so he could ambush her as she walked by.

He was relentless in his pursuit of her. It didn't help that she was an incredibly shy cat (the apartment manager at that place called her my "imaginary friend" because she'd never seen her -- if I remember correctly, Jez hid in the closet most of the time then). Later, Jezebel became almost totally deaf and stopped being so shy -- I think noises must have been problematic for her. She was much more outgoing in her older years. I know the photo above looks as if they were best friends, but they weren't -- that cozy domestic scene was so unusual that I gave the photo a title of "Miracle." I saw this only 2 or 3 times in the entire 11+ years they lived with each other. (I think they must've just been really cold -- note that their backs are to each other.)

After Jezebel died on October 21, I was shocked to realize that Bullwinkle really missed her -- he seemed somewhat depressed for the rest of his life, actually. I realized I had only ever understood their relationship from her point of view: I had done a lot of maneuvering to protect her from him over the years. For a while, they each even had their own litter box, their own food, their own water. A friend joked that Bullwinkle thought that Jezebel had 5-star cat litter and bottled water -- and that was when they both had exactly the same thing. Later, I gave her canned food because her stomach wasn't doing very well with the dry stuff -- and he was really jealous. (I didn't give Bullwinkle canned food until he started having trouble eating; shortly after, he was diagnosed with cancer. I told him he was finally getting the 5-star stuff and wept to myself -- because he was suddenly as old and infirm as Jezebel had been.)

In retrospect, his depression over Jezebel's death and his illness blended into one another; I'm still not sure where the depression left off (if it did) and where the cancer took over. I do remember giving him some of Jezebel's canned food right after she died -- and him being totally uninterested. Now I wonder if it was because he was depressed, or because it was hard to eat -- once he was in the grip of cancer, it became clear that hard food was actually easier for him because he could use his teeth -- whereas with soft food, he had to use his tongue, which didn't work.

And part of the cruelty of his death was wrapped up with Jezebel's decline -- for months before she died, Bullwinkle and I would have our cuddlefests at the top of the stairs (which Jez couldn't climb by then), and I would hug him and say to him, "There's nobody like you, there's no other cat like you." After she died, our cuddlefests continued and I remember doing the math in my head: "Jezebel was 16 when she got old, but she was probably exceptionally healthy; Bullwinkle probably has at least until he's 14 before he gets old like that, so we have at least three more years...." Bullwinkle was my solace during Jezebel's decline and death.

And now they are both gone, and life continues. Next week Zendi, a beautiful calico, will come to live with me -- I'm looking forward to a new furry companion. The house has been really lonely without any troublemakers in it.

Here's a video of Jez, taken in the fall of 2006. I think it's really funny -- to me, her shyness totally comes through her looks of concern at the camera.:)

Spread Your Wings and Be Free

It was 6 days ago that I put Bullwinkle down. I basically overdosed him at home -- his diagnosing vet had told me how to do it and given me the drugs. I think it was the hardest thing I've ever done -- it took all the courage I had and then some. I don't think I could have done it at all if Bullwinkle hadn't been in such extreme pain.

I doubt that I will ever euthanize an animal in this way again. I gave him the drugs through the feeding tube and it seemed to go OK at first. They took effect quickly and Bullwinkle sort of stumbled over to a box that I'd lined with a towel, and lay down in it and basically went into what looked like a coma. But after a while, he started having convulsions -- his eyes were wide open but I don't think he was there. I really hope he wasn't, because he had many, many convulsions -- far too many to count -- over the next 3 1/2 hours.

Early on, before the convulsions started I think, a very clear image -- of a pure white bird flying straight up into a blue sky -- came into my mind. I was pretty sure the image was of a card in the Osho Zen Tarot deck, so I got the book out and looked it up. To my surprise, the card was similar to what I'd imagined but definitely not the same -- the white & blue were different, there was more than one bird on the card, and the wings were in a different position than what I'd seen. I read the meaning of the card anyway (it was the page of water). The very last sentence said, "Spread your wings and be free," and that seemed topical. So that phrase became kind of a mantra for me as Bullwinkle convulsed over and over again.

I like to think that Bullwinkle left his body around the time that image came to me -- that his little soul flew away like a beautiful white bird into the sky -- but in all honesty, I had no sense of it then. My main perception was that his body was going through something very terrible and violent -- and that this home euthanasia wasn't going nearly the way I'd hoped it would. (I really hoped he would just go to sleep and never wake up. In a way that did happen, but it sure didn't seem peaceful.)

Somewhere in there, Martha called and offered to come over -- I accepted, and she & Lina arrived about 45 minutes later. After a while, I carried Bullwinkle's convulsing body up to the top of the stairs -- since that was our special place, I thought maybe he would feel more comfortable (in some subconscious way) about dying there. He just kept having convulsions though.

Martha came up and the two of us sat on the floor at the top of the steps, and passed Bullwinkle back and forth to each other -- and his convulsions continued. The two of us wept and talked about what a great cat he was, and how we couldn't remember other cat deaths being this difficult. Finally we went back downstairs and put him back in his towel-lined box. And still he convulsed.

At one point, Lina asked if she could hold Bullwinkle and I handed her the box. I was really hungry and had a roaring headache -- I hadn't eaten anything for hours, since before I started giving him the drugs -- and I went into the kitchen to try to find something to eat. While I was there, Lina called in and said, "I think he's gone." I went back into the living room and he had finally stopped breathing -- and convulsing. I was almost overwhelmingly relieved that he'd finally died.

The last six days have been a little foggy -- and very sad. But then again, most of the days since he was diagnosed on January 21st have been foggy and sad. I can hardly bear the thought that I'll never kiss his furry little head again, never hug his round tummy again, and never feel him draped across my shoulders again. At the same time, I very much feel ready to move on. I'm grateful that his death was more or less concurrent with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time and the warmer spring weather -- in my inner world, his illness was in the winter, his release (and mine) in the spring.

And I'm hanging onto the thought that he did finally spread his wings and become free as he flew up into that blue, blue sky I imagined. Maybe he even got to chase a few birds along the way.:)

Good Night, Baby

Bullwinkle's last morning in the sun

I said my last good night to Bullwinkle yesterday. There were so many ups and downs throughout his illness that I sometimes felt as though I were watching a ping pong game -- he's winning! he's losing! he's holding his own!

And he did indeed seem to be holding his own earlier this week. But his last descent was sudden and steep: from trying to eat shrimp Wednesday night to a bleeding mouth that was starting to smell bad again on Thursday evening, to what appeared to be unbearable pain last night, even after pain meds.

I will write more -- but not right now. Thank you all so much for your support for both of us -- it has meant more than I could ever express.

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

I've had this song ("And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda") running through my head all day. I'm guessing the first time I ever heard it was in Cambridge, MA, probably in the early 80s. One of the radio stations (WERS) put on a folk festival each year, and the concerts ran to 4 or 5 hours each night -- not a moment of which was dull. I heard a lot of really fine musicians at those concerts (including Nanci Griffith, Pierre Bensusan, and Malcolm Dalglish) -- and I think I must've heard Eric Bogle sing this song one of those times. (It's a gorgeous song, very sad, and is the ultimate anti-war song, in my opinion.) In any case, the line that's been most prominent in my mind today is: "I never knew there was worse things than dyin'."

Bullwinkle was in terrible shape when I got home this evening. We ran out of buprenex -- his pain meds -- yesterday, and he was without any at all for about 24 hours (I got some tramadol for him today). He was in a lot of pain this afternoon and quite miserable -- it was obvious his mouth was really bothering him. I got some of the tramadol into him almost immediately, and it started working within half an hour -- blessedly. Had I needed an illustration of the value of ongoing, consistent pain control, his experience today would've been more than enough to convince me.

The other evening, a neighbor stopped over to meet Bullwinkle (I think she's a regular reader of this blog but hadn't met him personally). She said, "He doesn't have that I-wanna-die look in his eyes." Well ... this evening he did. It's gone now ... but I'm keeping a close eye on him. This cancer has been a terribly long road for him and I think he might be running out of steam.

There are worse things than dying -- and extreme, ongoing pain is one of them.

More Bad Luck

Bullwinkle's been taking a med called Buprenex for pain. I won't go into a lot of detail but I kind of upped his dose over the past week (on the advice of not one but two vets) and I think he's done really well with it. Today he ran out of it -- and I learned there's a shortage of it, maybe even nationwide? I know there must be some other kind of pain meds he can take -- but I need to find out what they are.

In other news, he tried very hard to eat some shrimp tonight -- but wasn't able to. He sure was interested though.:)

Cheese

I opened a can of chicken tonight and Bullwinkle started yelling at me. He was very excited about how it smelled, so I poured some of the juice into a dish and encouraged him to try it. But he knew that his tongue wouldn't work -- so he didn't even try. A little later, I opened a bag of shredded cheese and let him sniff it (this was all in the process of trying to prepare some food for myself). He seemed really interested so I pulled out a sticky little clump of cheese and put it on the stool next to him -- and he picked it up with his teeth and ate it!!!! It turned out not to be a very good experience, 'cause I think it got really sticky in his mouth and he wasn't able to use his tongue to unstick it (he was even trying to use his paws to get everything unstuck) -- but it was so cool that he tried to eat something. I guess next time I'll have to give him the actual bits of chicken -- it does seem he can use his teeth fairly well. (Probably just a clever ploy on his part to get me to finally give him the human food which he feels he's deserved all along.)

Otherwise, Bullwinkle seems fairly stable right now -- he doesn't feel great, but he doesn't seem to feel awful either. And we've had some lovely cuddlefests the last few days. :-)

Brave Troopers

Bullwinkle and Auntie Martha:

Is that her left shoulder?

(We were all younger then.)

Bullwinkle seemed very anxious this weekend every time I left the house, and he spent as much time with me as he possibly could while I was home. Today was another 13-14 hour day for me, and even though Aunties Martha and Lina came over to feed him dinner, Bullwinkle seemed very disgruntled by the time I got home: he was crying piteously and wouldn't come over to see me. I picked him up and he climbed onto my shoulder (the left one of course) where he has stayed ever since. I am actually flushing his feeding tube as I write because he will not be dislodged.

He really doesn't feel very good -- yet, it still doesn't seem to me as if he's ready to give it up. He's been a very brave, stoic, and heroic trooper; if I'm ever in his situation, I hope I behave even half as well as he has.

Auntie Martha (photo above) is quite the brave trooper herself: she gave away one of her kidneys to a perfect stranger, in an historic 3-way "paired donation" a couple of years ago -- and KRQE aired a show about her experience this morning. You can see it here. Bullwinkle & I are very proud that she's our friend.

Back to Bullwinkle: I'm worn out worrying about him and grieving for him. When I woke up this morning, he was curled up in a tiny, tight little ball and was very still. For a moment I thought he had died in his sleep -- and then I saw him breathing and realized he was still alive. The relief I felt for that short moment made me understand that what bothers me more than anything is the prospect of actually putting him down. I so wish he would die peacefully in his sleep....

Chemo Fur

Happier, healthier days.

Some of my students have told me they have "chemo brain," which I take to mean they feel foggy and forgetful (although it's worth noting that they have been some of the most engaged of my students). I think Bullwinkle must have chemo fur: his fur is wayyyy softer than it's ever been. Very silky and smooth.

Every night, for most of the time we've lived here, we've sat together at the top of the stairs and had a big cuddlefest. Part of the cuddlefest has often involved him sitting in the skirt of whatever mumu or nightgown I happened to be wearing, as if it were a pouch (I often called him my little marsupial). He stopped being so interested in the cuddlefest a little while before he was diagnosed though -- I didn't know he was sick, and just thought its charms had worn off for him. We still had our little ritual, but not every night.

After the first chemo treatment (two weeks ago), he was really freaked out about upstairs. He had spent a lot of time at the top of the stairs through most of his illness (I had put some blankets on the floor up there for him) and I guessed that he must have had some hallucinatory-type dreams about the top of the stairs while he was under anesthesia. So that was yet another loss -- no nightly cuddlefest any more.

But something happened this week. My theory (which may have no basis in actual fact) is that Bullwinkle really doesn't handle anesthesia very well. With hindsight (which in my case, still isn't 20/20), I think he spent the better part of three days this past week just recovering from the anesthesia on Monday. This is why I won't take him back for more chemo -- he was too sick just from the anesthesia. But it seems as if the effects of the chemo kicked in at the end of the week -- and he's felt much, much better. And, best of all from my point of view -- we've gone back to our nightly cuddlefests at the top of the stairs (he beat me up the stairs last night).

And he is still a night person, I mean, cat. He sort of hangs out all day looking a bit iffy (happily, the Dick Cheney look he had earlier today is mostly gone) and then wakes up when it gets dark. Which means it's really hard to feed him through his feeding tube at night lately. Last night he ran up to the top of the cat tree (this is with a syringe of food hanging from his feeding tube) and stayed there. So there I was, standing next to the cat tree, reaching way up over my head to feed him. I don't think I imagined the wacky grin on his face. :-)

Still, he's a very sick cat, and definitely getting weaker. Today I could tell he really wanted to jump up to a stool, but didn't think he could make it -- so I picked him up and put him there. :-(

The Worst Indignity Yet

The tumor must be growing, and quickly, because now Bullwinkle's mouth looks like Dick Cheney's -- one side turned up and the other side turned down. Poor Bullwinkle -- nobody deserves that!

The Wheel of Fortune

Snoozing on the sofa in healthier times.

Around and around it goes. Bullwinkle felt great yesterday. This morning he felt awful and I started wondering if I should call Dr. Blackshear. Tonight he stalked and pounced on a black thing on the wall (his own fur, but he thought maybe at some time it might move). Oh, and did I mention he totally unwrapped the bandage keeping his feeding tube in place -- about 15 minutes after I changed it? Yet he's super skinny and is having trouble jumping; he has to make many more intermediate jumps to get to places that used to be a single jump for him.

He's sitting on my shoulder as I write. He's spent a lot of time on my shoulder today -- not to mention throughout his life. Sometimes he perches on my shoulder so long that my back begins to ache. But I will really miss that warm fur-body on my shoulder when he's gone. :-(

The Comeback Cat

Snoozing in the sun this morning.

Bullwinkle's amazing. He feels much, much better tonight than he has for weeks. It was quite difficult to feed him through the feeding tube tonight -- he kept wanting to run around. He rode around on my shoulder most of the evening, sniffing (in a very engaged way, I might add) at every bit of food I tried to eat. So I opened a can of Fancy Feast for him (salmon) and he practically buried his head in it. (He did try to eat some but wailed while he was trying -- I think it must really hurt to try to use his tongue.)

My coworker John, who hates cats (and who therefore can't be trusted, so he's probably wrong), claims that Bullwinkle has no intention of ever dying, because he finally has me right where he wants me -- wrapped right around his little claw. :-)

I took a short video of Bullwinkle while he was purring and kneading on my shoulder; you can see it here.

I really want to thank you all for your sympathy, support, and encouragement. They've meant so much to me, and I really do think they've meant a lot to Bullwinkle too (in some way that's impossible to understand or gauge).

Reprieve!

Dr. Blackshear came and spent quite a bit of time with Bullwinkle & me this afternoon. The short form of the story is that, while she said it wouldn't be premature to put him down today, she also said that if it were her cat, she wouldn't do it yet. Plus she said she has known -- it's been real clear -- when it was time to put down her own pets. Since it was certainly clear to me when it was time to put Jezebel down, I'm going to try to trust myself and wait for that time with Bullwinkle too. Not to mention that Dr. Blackshear doesn't seem to think he's suffering terribly at this point (and he does seem quieter and more peaceful than he has since before the last chemo treatment).

So that's the story in a nutshell; I cried all day long and am exhausted. But I do feel privileged and relieved to be able to spend more time with my baby kitty-boy.

Bullwinkle snoozing on my shoulder this morning.

Frustration

Bullwinkle is feeling somewhat better tonight. I have an appointment with Dr. Blackshear tomorrow afternoon and we will talk about whether we should do hospice care with him or put him down -- it feels to me as if it could go either way. I do think that finally, tonight, he's starting to realize some benefit from the most recent chemo treatment. He's alert and has acted more like his old self than he has for a couple of weeks. But regardless of what my decision is for him tomorrow, we are not going back to chemo.

When I got Bullwinkle home from the cancer clinic on Monday, I could see he had some tape wound pretty tightly around his right forefoot. I figured that's where they'd drawn blood from, so I left it on that night -- but it was bugging him so much yesterday that I decided to take it off. After I'd gotten most of it off, I realized it was holding what looked like a catheter in place. I called the cancer place last night and basically said I would have appreciated being told that they were leaving a catheter in his arm, and could they please call me and let me know how to deal with it since I'd already taken most of the tape holding it in place off. I asked them to call me at home if they returned my call at night, but if they called during the day to please call me at work. I gave them both numbers. Naturally they called me this morning at home -- while I was at work (that was frustrating).

So... after being gone for the better part of 14 hours, wondering why I hadn't heard from them, I returned home at 9:30 p.m. to hear their message, which was something like: "We understand that a catheter was inadvertently left in Bullwinkle and we really apologize; all you have to do is pull it out and put pressure on it for 45 minutes and everything will be just fine." Wow. I'd call that another frustration (although that may be an understatement). I hate how cynical I feel right now -- but they were quite deliberate Monday about making sure they got paid before I took Bullwinkle home. Too bad they couldn't have been as meticulous about removing the catheter.

As if that weren't enough, I checked Bullwinkle's feeding tube tonight (I could tell it was bothering him) and the stitches holding it in are really tight and are pulling his skin up -- and his skin is very warm around there. Chalk up yet another frustration -- to say the least.

My poor little kitty-boy has had such a rough time -- and I'm really starting to feel that part of that tough time has been inflicted on him by the very people I've paid (and paid well) to take care of him.

The whole thing just sucks.:(

Loop the Loop

Bullwinkle's better -- but not a lot. He did briefly bat at his Mr. Moose toy (the one that at some time -- long, long ago -- had stuffing and catnip but is now flattened and beat up). I think the anesthesia has been very, very debilitating for him -- and the boost from the chemo isn't offsetting how tough the anesthesia has been -- so I don't think we're going to go back. But I hope to be able to talk to Dr. Blackshear about that some time this week.

Here's a video from happier times (although I was just as goofy then, maybe even worse than recently):

Roller Coaster

Bullwinkle is in pretty bad shape this morning. He cried last night and today in a very plaintive way, a way I hadn't heard before. And when I was feeding him thru his feeding tube, on a blanket on the washer (the approved feeding place), he cried a bunch of times as if he was in pain and then peed all over the blanket. That's a big deal because he's always been a very meticulous cat and even last week, when I was feeding him and he had to pee, he just jumped down and went to the litterbox (with me crawling along on hands & knees behind him). He also has a swollen chin from the chemo yesterday -- it looks like a little white goatee. He seems quite miserable all around.

Bullwinkle when he was young.

He'd go out looking for trouble if none was handy.

To make matters worse, I saw Bullwinkle's diagnosing vet briefly yesterday. She asked how he was doing and I said I didn't think I'd gotten him to the cancer place in time for a remission to be a possibility. She bristled and said something along the lines of time not being the reason remission won't be a possibility. I really didn't have it in me to argue -- but I also didn't have it in me to lie -- so I just said, "I wish I'd gotten him there earlier." Her response: "I sense a subtext here." I decided to be a little clearer and said, "I wish you'd referred him." (I don't remember feeling angry at that point, just really sad.) She really bristled then and said now wasn't the time or place to talk about it, and she walked away.

This vet is the only person Bullwinkle has ever growled or hissed at. I wish I'd listened to him earlier -- I'm now thinking he was onto something. And in my small world, she's the vet who said nothing could be done, while two other vets (Drs. Blackshear and Kelly) are saying they've had cats go into remission from this kind of cancer -- sublingual squamous cell carcinoma. Part of the reason I decided to go ahead with the chemo was that I hoped that perhaps this would be an experience the diagnosing vet could learn from -- sadly, it was ultra-clear yesterday that that won't happen.

March

March: the month of Sandia hairstreaks, the vernal equinox -- and the second month I was sure Bullwinkle wouldn't live to see. For some reason, when he was diagnosed in January -- and in pretty bad shape -- it really bugged me that he wouldn't see the second month of 2010. So I'm surprised (and pleased) that he's made it into the third one.

We just returned from the cancer clinic. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that he definitely responded well to last week's chemo treatment -- the tumor got smaller. More good news is that the tumor hasn't grown into his jawbone at all, as they often do. The bad news is that the tumor has grown into his tongue -- and some of his tongue is necrotic (dead) and will fall off. On the plus side is the knowledge that kitties' tongues can get stronger with use, even if they have only partial tongues; on the minus side, though, is that most of his tongue is affected. He may never eat on his own again (however motivated he is). Dr. Kelly now guesses he has a 10% chance of remission -- down from 50% last week.

Bullwinkle definitely felt much better over the past week, so she's suggested chemo as palliative care for now. And my overriding goal is for him to be relatively happy and pain-free while he's alive -- so I consented to a second chemo treatment today. (I've now spent 1 1/2 months of my take-home pay just at the cancer clinic.)

But... Dr. Kelly said that when she saw him last week, Bullwinkle "was a dying kitty." She said he was so hypothermic then that his temperature didn't even register on the thermometer.