#tw: euthenasia mention

[sumi-sprite]

RIP Macchi - FIP Awareness

Yesterday around 4pm, I had to say goodbye to Macchiato "Macchi", my newest cat. She was barely a year old.

Over the past two weeks or so, she had been rapidly losing weight, but sported a potbelly. She was withrdrawn and exhausted, hid in my closet and slept all day, and was very warm to the touch. She only ate and drank periodically. I finally mangaed to get her in the same day I called. I initially thought - hoped - it was perhaps worms or a parasite since she was eating but not gaining weight. I hoped it was something treatable. I was even hoping it would be a tumor. Anything would have been better than FIP. The night prior, I had tried to look up her symptoms, and I ran across FIP numerous times.

No, can't be that, that happens to OTHER people. The odds are so low. It CAN'T be FIP. Famous last words.

The vet was very worried because all of her symptoms lined up. She had a fever of 105 F (normal temps for cats is roughly between 100 and 102 F). The vet said she was extremely sure it's FIP, and offered to run a blood test and test the fluid building up in Macchi's abdomen. There is no direct FIP test, but getting an idea of her hemoglobin levels would give us - give me - a slightly more solid confirmation. My nightmare was confirmed after it was shown that the hemoglobin in her blood were identical to that of the fluid in her abdomen, which is NOT normal.

"FIP is a serious disease caused by a feline coronavirus variant, though not the one that causes COVID-19. The virus will spread through a cat's body causing systemic inflammation. Up to 95% of cats diagnosed with FIP die without treatment."

It is caused by a mutation of the Coronovirus in cats, and generally afflicts kittens or young cats between three weeks to two years of age. Macchi may have been carrying the mutated variety for any length of time, possibly since we adopted her. It's thankfully not contagious after its mutation, so our other cat, Jade, is not at risk. It generally spreads through fecal contact, which, in a multi-cat home is nearly impossible to avoid if the cats share litterboxes.

There is no cure and no treatment.

The vet was tentative in explaining that there is an experimental drug in Europe that has shown incredible results. But here's the catch: It's not legal, it's not approved for commercial use, it's not available in the US, and tests plus administration would cost more than my university semester tuition. There have been people smuggling the drug to the US, and many cats have recovered beautifully - but only when FIP was caught in time.

I could never afford the treatment, and Macchi clearly did not have long to live. She would not make it to treatment after waiting so many weeks to get the drug to her. And besides that, the vet and I both agreed she was too far gone for it to help either way.

I took too long to get her help. I thought she was stressed from our move and being in a less than ideal living space. But even if I got her in sooner, I wouldn't have been able to even afford getting her help.

Wanna know what the odds are of a cat contracting FIP are? According to VCA: 

"The incidence of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) disease is low (only 5 to 10% of infected cats and less than 1% of cats admitted to veterinary hospitals)." 

Yep. Roughly 5-10% of cats who caught Corona will experience the mutation, and less than 1% - 1 fucking percent - get to a pet hospital. Most cats develop the immunity to fight FIP and can go on perfectly healthy. Not Macchi though. Macchi was part of that 1%. One. Fucking. Percent.

This disease has NO treatment, NO cure, and it is VERY hard to diagnose. It is almost always 100% fatal in cases where a cat isn't able to fight off the mutated strain. It progresses rapidly and often without warning. Some cats may not display any symptoms for weeks, and then it all comes down full force all at once. My cat was perfectly fine up until two weeks ago, then she lost almost half her body weight, her muscles attrofied, and she lost the strength to fight it off. Her tests showed she was in the beginnings of multi organ failure. Less than two weeks, and she didn't have a snowballs chance in hell.

Please, PLEASE. For the love of god, keep an eye on your young cats and kittens - even your adult and senior cats. If any of them display symptoms, GET THEM TO A VET. There is a "dry" and "wet" variety to FIP. Macchi had the "wet" variety - where her intestines (primarily the stomach, large and small intenstines, etc) were shedding massive amounts of fluid. It can occure in the respiratory systems too. The "dry" variety presents as horrible multi or singular organ inflamation, with common locations being the liver, eyes, and even the brain.

Read up more information HERE

You're probably thinking that this can't happen to your cat. Like I said, Macchi just sadly fell into that 1% fatality. I thought that same thing, and yet here I am. Barely a year after losing my oldest cat, Max, and I had to say goodbye to another cat when she was barely a year old. Everything was fine, she was healthy and her usual, hamburger-faced self. Two weeks changed that. I had only a few minutes to come to terms with the fact that she was suffering, there was nothing I could do, and the most humane thing I could do was let her go. It takes roughly thirty seconds for euthenasia to stop a cat's heart.

Two weeks, a few minutes, thirty seconds. That's all she got.

I miss her, and I hope if just ONE person reads this, and it motivates them in someway to be more watchful of their cat; if I can make just one person aware, then I won't consider her loss meaningless. Maybe it's out of guilt. I don't know and I don't care, I just need people to know how serious this is and how quickly it can take a cat's life.

Please be safe, and keep your cats safe. Again, read up on FIP HERE

I love you and miss you, Macchi.

[raygender]

Hot take but the "uwu precious angel pupper who can do no wrong" idea of dogs that I've seen on the internet lately is dangerous. It's why you have people insisting that dangerous dogs can't be put down because "they'll get better if you just love them enough". I've seen what those dogs can do and I've seen people bend over backwards to blame the people that get mauled or killed. Semi-related, cops also use this ideology to justify use of K-9 units to attack people because juries will and have immediately sided with the dog in cases of police brutality because "it's a puppy".

[theramseyloft]

Escher’s final update

Escher was put to sleep at south Pointe Animal Hospital this past Friday.

Because of their small size, the hospital has had to employ a curb side only service model, so I was expecting to have to hand my little girl out the car window and wait for her sad little body to be brought back to me, so that I could perform her necropsy at home.

when I opened the window, instead of reaching to take her from me, Dr. Mayer simply stood at the prescribed 6 foot distance and asked “I assume you’d like to be with her?”

When I asked if it was ok for us to, she solemnly informed me that the surgical suite was being prepped for us, and we could bring her once we were ready.

Highland would have put her to sleep for free, but I so firmly prefer the way South Pointe handles euthanasia that I am happy to financially support them.

On the surgical table sat the little 5 gallon glass tank with a fluffy towel folded at the bottom.

It’s fitted with a glass plane for a lid that has two holes in it for the anesthetic tubes.

Escher was nestled onto the towel and covered with a fleece baby blanket to keep her relaxed and comfortable while she drifted off to sleep.

Dr. Mayer and her staff took the time to make sure she was soundly asleep before lifting her out, and covered her head with a mask made for small animals both to remove the risk of a return to consciousness and to allow us to hold her.

The entire process took nearly an hour.

All to make absolutely certain that she would never feel the needle, or any other pain, in her last moments.

I cannot express the comfort that their compassion brought me in those terrible moments that twisted my gut with doubt.

The night before this, her jaw had started to lock and any attempt to take a step threw her into a 15-40 second fit of disoriented flailing.

Her pain was so obvious that I lamented having brought her home instead of ending her suffering at the end of her appointment.

But that morning, as she sat still, she looked so much like any curious little bird that I was in agony wondering if I was acting too early.

If I was about to just kill her just for having balance issues...

I agonized over whether or not I had made the right decision until I actually sat down to perform the necropsy.

I’ll spare you all the literally gory details.

Cancer was confirmed.

Peritoneal cancer is insanely rare.

The Peritoneum consists of the lining of the abdominal wall and the web of connective tissue suspending the abdominal organs.

Along with physically holding up the abdominal organs, it produces the fluid that supports them and allows for comfortable movement with in the abdominal cavity.

Escher’s Peritoneum was so obscenely thickened that its overgrowth was both engulfing and constricting her organs.

The overproduction of fluid filled her abdominal cavity like a water balloon, putting so much pressure on her chest cavity that her heart and liver were being deprived of oxygen.

This is why I perform necropsies on every bird that dies or needs to be put to sleep.

If the condition turns out to have been treatable, and the decision to euthanize was the wrong one, I will recognize those symptoms if I see them again, and know at least one treatment to try that might save that individual.

And in a situation like Escher’s, it’s confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt that what I did was free her from terrible pain and ease what would have been an inevitable, hideous death into drifting off to sleep and just not waking back up.

Peritoneal cancer is unspeakably rare.

I could only find human specific studies on it and like two on rodents.

From what we could find, it’s largely genetic, and effects individuals with ovaries the vast majority of the time.

Symptoms are nearly identical to ovarian cancer, and the survival rate in humans is 47%, with intensive chemotherapy, IF it’s caught early enough.

When it shows up in the even more infinitesimally rare cases involving those born with out ovaries, it spreads there from some place else.

It doesn’t start there.

Since both Ferdi and Astrid have had fatal health issues crop up in the hens of their lines, and this type of cancer has such a strong genetic component, we will be reshuffling the retirement priorities a bit.

Birds with both Ferdi and Astrid’s blood in them will be most strongly favored for retirement.

Followed by those with high percentages of Astrid’s blood

Then those with high percentages of Ferdi’s.

We are already making arrangements for new blood to add to our program in their place.

And we have let clients with related birds know what we found as soon as we found it, and how it could potentially effect their birds or their progeny.

I still want Old German Owls and Old Dutch Capuchine blood incorporated into the Ami project.

I’ve found unrelated Old German Owls, and am on the waiting list for offspring.

Now I just need to find an unrelated fit line of ODC.

It’s been a hellish, agonizingly painful week...

Hopefully, tomorrow will bring some much needed rest.

[theramseyloft]

There are people who believe that euthanasia for any reason is inhumane. I'm sorry this person is harassing you for not allowing Jeff to suffer further. My deepest condolences for your loss.

I know, but having worked in rescue for a decade and a half and seen so many animals of so many species suffering from injuries, disease, or age related deterioration with no medical chance of recovery left to slowly, painfully die by people who think that way makes me see those people as short sighted and myopic at best.

Quality of life should ALWAYS come before quantity.

Story time.

I have a much more intimate relationship with death than the average person.

My father died very suddenly from what amounted to being accidentally poisoned by an antibiotic.

My mother died of a very unusual variation of Alzheimers.

It took seven years, during which, I was her primary physical care taker until she had to be placed in a nursing home.

She was otherwise an extremely physically fit woman in her early fifties.

For definitely the last two years, possibly the last three, Barbara Smith, the thinking, feeling person, no longer existed. 

Her body just zombied on with out her.

No one could keep her, the person alive. 

Just her body.

She got to where she couldn’t work out the mechanics of chewing and swallowing food anymore.

And still, her body’s existence was dragged on.

For almost half a year.

Slowly wasting away, unable to even chew.

To prevent her choking, she eventually just didn’t get food.

She was just allowed to rot where she lay until her heart finally squeezed its last beat. 

Because dying humans don’t have the option of euthenasia.

Lemme tell ya, loves, I don’t want to go like that. I would literally rather you shoot me.

I can’t stand the idea of leaving an animal with no hope of recovery to die the way my mother did for something so petty as “But that’s the more natural way.”

Fuck “the natural way”.

Nature can be unspeakably cruel.

We have the power to ease the pain and shorten a prolonged passing. 

How dare we see an animal pass the point of having any hope of recovery and deny that kindness to them.

[raygender]

Bringing this back because my parents' neighbors adopted a dog with a known bite history, then refused to put it down when it sent my mother to the hospital. They tried to rehome it without mentioning the multiple bites (2 that I know of) and ended up keeping it. It's since attempted at least 1 more bite and shattered a plate glass window. They have a preteen in the house. Euthanizing dangerous dogs is the most humane option for everybody involved.

Hot take but the "uwu precious angel pupper who can do no wrong" idea of dogs that I've seen on the internet lately is dangerous. It's why you have people insisting that dangerous dogs can't be put down because "they'll get better if you just love them enough". I've seen what those dogs can do and I've seen people bend over backwards to blame the people that get mauled or killed. Semi-related, cops also use this ideology to justify use of K-9 units to attack people because juries will and have immediately sided with the dog in cases of police brutality because "it's a puppy".

[raygender]

Re: your tags, this was started by somebody on another person's post insisting that a visibly (as in, on video) vicious dog shouldn't be put down because "if you just love it enough it won't be like that". I have no idea who these two youtubers are.

Hot take but the “uwu precious angel pupper who can do no wrong” idea of dogs that I’ve seen on the internet lately is dangerous. It’s why you have people insisting that dangerous dogs can’t be put down because “they’ll get better if you just love them enough”. I’ve seen what those dogs can do and I’ve seen people bend over backwards to blame the people that get mauled or killed. Semi-related, cops also use this ideology to justify use of K-9 units to attack people because juries will and have immediately sided with the dog in cases of police brutality because “it’s a puppy”.