Callie Cat, ~2004-1/5/14

[amethyst73]

About a year after we moved into our current home, three feral kittens showed up in the neighborhood, often hanging out in our yard and driveway.  The next-door neighbors assured us that they would take care of the kittens, and we thought no more about it.  Callie and her several siblings, who came along about a year later, introduced us to the feral cat population problem in California.

Callie was a pretty little calico, mostly white with harlequin patches of black and orange here and there.  The coloration around her right eye was quite striking: surrounded by an orange patch, she had a thin outline of black right around the eye that looked exactly like eyeliner.  Her fur was fairly soft, somewhere between the wiry stiffness of Mouse and the velvet of Billie.  Her skull had a prominent ridge at the back which always surprised me when I petted her.

But it took a while to learn the softness of her fur and the shape of her skull, because she was even shyer than the other kittens in the litter. We barely knew she existed for a few months after we first saw her siblings; I suppose she might have belonged to some other feral group. After some work, our backside neighbor L managed to catch her and get her spayed.  For some time after this traumatic experience, Callie refused to let any of us come near her, though she happily ate the kibble we left outside for her.

After a few years, Callie gradually lost her fear of humans.  She regularly came in to both our and L’s house.  If it was particularly cold, we’d sometimes let her spend the night, though she often yowled to be let out at five in the morning.  Over the last few months, she became quite social, demanding to be petted and jumping up onto the futon and next to or onto our laps if we were sitting there.  She was really quite affectionate if given the chance, and was even willing to approach strangers to be petted.

She was an excellent hunter and would announce her latest kill on our back porch.  After the first time that she brought her prey inside for our approval, we learned to step outside to praise her instead… and then go inside while she completed the messy business of playing with and eating her kill.  (There was one episode when she hadn’t done in her catch quite as thoroughly as one might like, and the squeak that the poor injured mouse made as it tried - and failed - to escape subsequent capture sounded _exactly_ like a squeaky cat toy.)  Despite her being fed by two households and supplementing her own diet occasionally, she never gained much weight.

When L called us Friday last week to let us know that Callie was not feeling well, I wondered if perhaps she’d caught and eaten something she shouldn’t have.  According to L, Callie was lethargic and wobbly on her feet.  After taking Callie to the local vet, L let us know that Callie’s white blood cell count was high, indicating she most likely had a bad infection.  I hadn’t seen any sign of injury, so assumed she’d eaten something.

Callie was given some fluids and a shot of antibiotics and was sent home.  L let her out when Callie asked, and Callie came over to our house for the night.  She ate some canned food, and as far as we know hung out on the living room carpet overnight.  She was in the same spot the next morning, and was still moving slowly and wobble-y, so she clearly was still not feeling at her best.  She gave me a kitty bonk that morning, and slowly consumed about half a can of food before using the litter box and retiring back to the living room.  We called L to let her know that Callie was still at our house and that she seemed about the same as L had told us the previous morning.  We went out for the day, figuring Callie was probably at least stable, even if she wasn’t feeling great.

We came back some hours later to a stinky house: Callie had pooped on the rug, presumably unable to get to the litter box in time.  She’d retreated to behind the futon sometime during the day, and after coming out briefly for petting from my husband, she returned to her hideout.  When she came out awhile later, I wondered aloud if she needed to be taken to the emergency vet, as she was clearly worse.  She was moving a lot more slowly, leaned against furniture and walls for stability, and though she investigated bowls with water, chicken broth, and diluted canned food, she wasn’t interested in actually consuming any of it.  We elected to wait and see.  About an hour later, she was resting in a sort of unnatural position across the wheels of my husband’s office chair. She tried to raise herself up - and fainted. I immediately called L, who came and took her to the emergency vet.

The vet put Callie back on fluids, and took an X-ray, which showed a bunch of little bones in her stomach.  We’re still not sure what they are or what they’re from, but processing was clearly incomplete.  (I don’t know how quickly cats digest or hack up bones/fur/etc, but given that she hadn’t been outside in 24 hours and was probably unable to hunt for a while before then, something was probably not working right.)  The vet also did an ultrasound, which L got the results from later that night.  Callie’s intestinal walls were thickened, which the vet said was typical of intestinal lymphoma, the most common intestinal cancer in cats.  L decided, reasonably enough, that we didn’t need to do a biopsy at this point, but might later depending on how Callie did once she was home. The vet said that Callie was awake and comfortable and seemed to like her little cage, and suggested that L leave Callie there till later that evening, since a 24-hour stay was already in the fees that had been paid.  The vet planned to send Callie home with prednisone to reduce the inflammation and a low-level chemo drug.

Sadly, it turned out to be a good thing that Callie stayed at the vet those additional hours.  Around 6PM on Sunday, 1/5/14, Callie had a seizure that caused brain death.  The vet believes that the seizure was probably caused by the lymphoma entering her brain, but we all agreed that doing biopsy or autopsy was pointless.  The emergency vet group gave Callie her final rest, and from our own experiences with them, I’m sure they gave her comfort, compassion, and dignity.  They’re a really good group and really care about all animals entrusted to them.

L came over shortly after calling us with the news, and we all comforted each other, reminding each other that we’d all done what had seemed reasonable at the time, and that sometimes things are out of our control.  Callie had had the mercy of a quite short period of suffering, and had chosen to be with the humans she considered family when she wasn’t feeling well.  She loved us, and we loved her too.

May you romp in fields filled with fat mice, kitty buddies, and loving humans.  We’ll miss you, Callie.