#all the food that's left uneaten could feed an entire town

[donnovien]

[intosnarkness]

So my cat died today.

(tw:pet illness, death)

idk I might try and write the whole story later, but 15 years is a lot to try and boil down. (NB, I got him when he was 2, which you might have figured out because he was 17.)

But long story short, in February of 22 I was in Florida setting up an expo for work when the vet called me. Nat had taken the boys for a dental cleaning, and Peri lost like, a pound in a few weeks.

I was 900 miles away and could do nothing as they did scans and blood tests and I hid behind a shipping crate and cried.

They found a mass in his stomach and he's been on steroids since. We didn't know what it was, because I didn't want to do the exploratory on a cat his age. The vet agreed. I thought at the time that I had 3 months left. I got 18.

Recently Pman has had less appetite. This came to a head on Wednesday when I got home from work to feed the cats and he didn't come when I opened the can. He was also leaving more and more food uneaten.

I called the vet yesterday but it didn't feel emergent so when i got voicemail I gave up. Called again around 11 this morning and they asked me to bring him in ASAP. I had a Feeling then that today was going to end with a cremation.

Nat was headed home early from work because they're doing construction on his building and he was Done so I called and asked him to take Peri in. He agreed.

When he got to the house, Peri had found a bobbin for embroidery floss at some point between when I left at 7:45am and when he got home at 11:45am and eaten the thread off of it.

Nat called me and I just.. left. I just got up and left work and called the people I needed to call from the car to tell them I had a pet emergency and was leaving for the day. Nat and I met at the vet.

The issues came down to this:

When a cat eats string, your concern is it being in the intestine. If you pull on the string you can tear the intestine with the pressure. If you don't know how long it's been, you need to scope the cat or do exploratory surgery.

Our vet did not have anyone to scope the cat. They called every other vet in town, apparently. Time ticked by. They found one about 40 minutes away.

At this point it was close to 1:30. In the best scenario, it had been at least 2 hours since the thread entered his system. It would be another hour before we could get the scope in him. I kept saying to Nat, as we sat and waited, that there was no world where it wasn't in the intestine by the time we got him there. This is when I started to really fucking lose it.

If the string was in the intestine, they were going to have to do exploratory abdominal surgery on a 17-year-old cat to get it out. I remember what his recovery was like when he was 3 and did this. I was not sure it was fair to do that to a cat as old as him. I was pretty sure I had murdered my best friend with embroidery floss, which is going to be funny in retrospect but right now it isn't.

I know Peri has eaten string before. I remember the night he did it in the Laurel apartment like it was yesterday. I was usually vigilant about not leaving shit around for him to eat. The number of times I nagged Nat about spools of thread, or shoelaces, or twist ties. I looked at that bobbin yesterday and thought "I should put that away before Peri gets at it." I did not put it away. I was starting to convince myself that I killed my cat. That this whole thing was my fault. Poor Nat sitting next to me in this vet room. He is not an affectionate person. He does not touch. I doubt we have ever hugged. Here we are, and I'm holding my cat and crying. He mustered up all his courage and touched my shoulder. We stan one emotionally unavailable roommate.

As it turned out, it didn't matter. The x-ray revealed that the mass in his stomach had moved to his chest. His lungs were scalloped around the edges and there was fluid around his heart.

Nat and I both cried and killed an entire box of tissues. Peri let me hold him and he even gave us some moops. The vet told me to just keep talking. And the only thing I remember saying was that he had been such a good mommy to those ferals we fostered because he did such a good job of raising me, first.

So best boy, lover of Popsicle sticks, Wrong Tail haver, spottiest cat and cattiest spot, Peri Pants McGee, the Periman, Pman, Mr. Mooperman, and any other name I called him over the last 15 years was the best cat that most of you never got to meet.

His favorite thing in the world was when I put a blanket over my legs and then he laid on the blanket. He liked to lick my toes and ankles, which was the worst. He was a very good reason to stay alive on certain days when that didn't seem to be a priority. He was my best friend, and I love him.