Sad Day Here – We said goodbye to our 1 in 2 Million

This is a good bye post and a post just for me to remember the best cat I’ve ever owned — and I add to say ever KNOWN.  Hands Down.  Chloe came into our lives in July 2009 and has been a re-occurring feature here on the blog.

What made her so different from all the other cats?  For one, she was just so sweet.  She loved everyone.  She was never mean, never hissed or swiped her claws at anyone.  She loved to be held and would purr for hours in complete contented bliss.

She loved the dogs.  She tolerated Mike the Dog, raised 2 CCI service pups, slept with them when they weren’t feeling well and even welcomed Holly into the pack.

She would go on walks with us.  People would stop their cars to look, just to make sure they were seeing what they were seeing.  Sometimes asking if that was our cat.  Yes.  That was our cat, just prancing along with her tail high up in the air walking right along with us.  She loved to be around us.

She would climb ladders whenever we were working on and about the house.  She would get up on the roof and meow at the window until I let her in.  When she was younger she would climb on our neighbors roofs, just completely un-aware that she wasn’t supposed to do that!  She was hard to contain as an indoor cat and loved the outdoors.

She was a mouser.  She once took out a squirrel but learned the mice were easier prey.  She made sure the annual field mice invasion was kept in check and brought them to us, a show of complete affection.

A little over a year ago she started having muscle tremors, or what I thought were seizures.  She seemed to pull through them and come around to her usual self.  We went through many tests to find out what was wrong but we never did.

Earlier this month she started having more and more episodes and I took her to the vet on Saturday.  I had video of one of these episodes and the vet felt that there was definitely something going on so we started a new round of tests.  I also asked to get her annual boosters, something that in hind-sight was most likely what put her little body into too much stress.

Cats have a way of hiding their illness and I unwittingly put her in a situation that would cause her to struggle and her underlying illness came to light very quickly and it wasn’t good.

Within 24 hours she was in distress and on Monday morning she couldn’t breathe, just gasping for breath.  She spent 24 hours in an oxygen chamber and this morning she was crashing.

Ultimately, the end results are always the same.  We were so not ready for her time to be up and this was so unexpected but after seeing her gasp for breath and watch as she struggled, basically drowning, it was enough.  We gave her the rest she needed and let her go.

She is buried under a pine tree now and will always be remembered.  I never thought a cat would tug so much at my heart strings, but I guess when you are a 1 in 2 million, there’s going to be a big piece of your heart missing when these special friends leave us and pass over the rainbow bridge. . .

Goodbye sweet Chloe, you’ll always be loved and missed…

~Cathy