Macky, Mowie, and Sunny

It’s been 2.5 weeks since we had to put Sunny down.

It feels like I haven’t seen him in 2.5 years.

It’s hard to imagine life ever being as good as it was 5 weeks ago before Sunny got sick. Mac and Sunny were together as brothers, Mowie was always screaming, yet enjoying their company. Now it’s like this big, fluffy, orange void. It doesn’t seem like it will ever feel better.

The hardest thing is thinking of how wonderful Sunny was. They say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, but we knew. I never yelled at that cat quite like I yell at Macky or Mowie- he was just too damn sweet and cute. Whenever he jumped on my desk or on the bed, I took the time to hug and kiss him. Even when he scratched the furniture or spilled the water, we just couldn’t yell or stomp our feet at him, he was just too lovable.

It’s getting harder in that we’re back into a normal routine, yet it is still not normal. I no longer look forward to opening the front door and seeing a little orange face hanging down from his sleepy spot above the cabinets. In fact, I don’t get that rush of happiness I used to when approaching the front door.. nothing against Macky and Mowie. I realized a few minutes ago while sitting in the office that someday, I’m not going to find his insanely long orange hairs here and there. It’s been hard for me to sit in this office because Sunny used to lay on my desk with me whenever I did. Now it’s just me and the laptop (sometimes Mowie) but it’s not the same. I looked around my desk for a hair or two and I couldn’t find any. I feel like slowly little pieces of him are going to start to fade away, and I don’t like that.

Macky has been pretty lonely, to the point where we think he’s pulling out some fur out of stress. It got so bad the past few nights with him crying that we talked about getting another cat sooner than we thought. In fact, I’m not sure I want another cat at all. Sunny was perfect… and I’ve owned almost 10 cats in my life. I loved them all and they all have different personalities, like children, but Sunny was special. No cat could ever fill Sunny’s paws, but maybe he could become friends with Macky.

There seems to be a few issues with the bandwidth around here. It appears that it has something to do with the countless spam upon the comments within these entries. To troubleshoot, I’m going to turn off commenting on all entries. We’ll see how it does, and hopefully things will get better around here.

Thanks again for all those who express concern with our Sunny.

These last few days have been the hardest of my, and I’m sure your, life. Nothing is worse than being told that your 2 year old baby might not live… then that he might live…. then he might not…over and over again. At first I was praying that you did not have FIP, which is fatal. Once we heard that the specialists didn’t think you did, I was beyond relieved. I thought that any other illness you had you could fight. All I thought all weekend was God, please let it be anything but FIP.

Though we haven’t done a spinal tap to rule out FIP, the vets know you have pancreatitis and that your digestive system has been paralyzed. You have not eaten since Thursday and as of today you have not gotten any better. I just keep hoping that at any minute your fevers will stop and you will stop throwing up so you will eat. Today it feels like the relief we had from thinking you didn’t have FIP has disappeared in knowing that we can lose you from pancreatitis.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this and it just makes me angry. You are the most wonderful cat, as well as living thing, in the world. How could this happen to you? And to know that pancreatitus could be something ENTIRELY unrelated to your seizures makes me even madder. Haven’t you been through enough the past several months? No 2 year old cat deserves to die, especially not you.

I just hope you know how much we love you and understand that you’re in the hospital to get better. We need you and Macky certainly needs you. I hope you don’t give up on yourself and you keep fighting this. You need to come home, you need to see that life can be good again.

Love,
Momma

Sunny is still in the hospital. We’re told his temperature has returned to normal and has stayed that way all day. We’re also told he hasn’t vomited since early Monday morning. This is a huge step for Sunny, but we still have very far to go. We really need to get him to eat. Sunny hasn’t done so since Thursday night, and by not eating, we’re possibly getting ourselves into more issues. We’re hopeful, though, with these baby steps today (no fever, not throwing up), he’ll make the progression into eating. Sunny eating would be absolutely huge.

It’s been a rough few days for everyone. Rebecca and I took off work today to try to gain some much needed strength. For the most part, it helped, but we’re still very concerned for our Sunny. I cannot even imagine what’s going through Sunny’s mind through all of this. They hospital says he’s not in too much pain, but more like a discomfort. But to be away from home, away from your parents, and your crazy brother and sister? That must be very scary for him. I know he’s in great hands right now, but we still want to try to go visit him either tomorrow or Wednesday.

Macky has missed his brother big time. I don’t want to say he’s depressed, but he definitely looks for his brother from time to time. He’ll just walk around the place meowing over and over again. Macky knows his brother’s missing; he knows there’s something wrong. Macky slept with me on the couch today, as in actually fell asleep in my lap. This is something he NEVER does. It made me really happy, almost like he was comforting me. He was purring up a storm, too, so I’m sure he felt comfort as well. I cannot wait to reunite the both of them; they’re going to be so incredibly happy.

Thanks for everyone’s concern these last few days — all of your thoughts and prayers do mean a lot to us.

I had to delete a ton of comments from the database this evening. We were overflowed with spam in the comments and I believe it was causing the error messages as of late. I apologize to those who left legitimate comments.

On our way home from Ohio on Sunday, we picked up our three kids (cats for those who don’t appreciate pets as your own kids) from my parents. We had dropped them off on Thursday night to stay the weekend. The boys didn’t really socialize and seemed a bit puzzled by their new, but temporary, surroundings. Mowie, on the other hand, acted like she was there all along.

When we got home and began to carry the kids up the stairs in their carriers, Sunny began to have a seizure. I quickly opened the carrier, at which point Macky went flying out. Poor little Sunny came slowly out of the carrier; shaking and paddling like crazy. He quickly found a corner in the hallway and shoved his head in there (he does this whenever he has a seizure). Within a couple seconds, his breathing turned somewhat normal and his body stopped shaking. But with a blink of an eye, Sunny went right back into another seizure.

We brought him immediately upstairs to our place to make sure he was okay. Unfortunately, he bit his tongue pretty badly again, so we opted to rush him to the emergency room. It turned out that the poor guy actually punctured his tongue and his tooth was sticking right through it. He’s now on antibiotics to help with the healing and making sure it doesn’t become infected.

The emergency vet kept him overnight to run a few tests that we haven’t done yet. We’re still waiting on those results. However, they did start him on seizure medication — something he’ll have to possibly take for the rest of his life.

We’re planning on taking Sunny to see a neurologist one of these days. Hopefully with the results of these new tests, and a few tests from the neurologist, we’ll be able to pinpoint why this all occurring.

Sunny is pretty much back to his normal self. He’s still a little confused and clumsy due to the medication, but that will fade away in a few weeks time. It’s so sad that this happens to our Sunny, but it’s certainly good to see that he bounces back relatively quickly.

Macky, on the other hand, is still a bit scared of his brother since the seizure (Macky was in the same carrier as him). He’ll growl and hiss whenever Sunny comes near, which is incredibly sad as parents. But his fear seems to be decreasing a bit and tonight was a huge improvement from last night. I’m sure after a couple days Macky will realize that Sunny is no threat and they’ll go back to being best buds.

Sunny suffered another seizure last night. It comes just about 6 weeks after his last episode.

We were able to grab him rather quickly as he dashed under the bed with his little paws shaking all over the place. I locked him within my arms rather tight trying to comfort him as much as possible. Almost immediately his little body began to calm down — I could tell having him in my arms definitely helped. A few seconds later, his normal breathing took over and the episode was over. Unfortunately, Sunny bit his tongue in the process and was now bleeding quite heavily. He began to lick the blood coming from his mouth. In a way, it was reassuring — I knew our poor little Sunny was back to his normal self (a clean freak).

We decided to rush him to the emergency room because we didn’t know the severity of his cut. Sunny was such a trooper. As soon as Rebecca got the cat carrier, he went right in it. He didn’t even put up a fight — he went to the back and proceeded to lay down.

The vet at the emergency room was able to clean him up. His tongue was fine, it didn’t require stitches or anything like that. They checked his vitals, and everything turned up fine, again. They didn’t really tell us anything knew. Perhaps we do need to take him for further tests, though.

By the time we got home, 4am, he was back to his normal self. He did his little famous trot out of the carrier, and then climbed on the bed and proceeded to fall asleep. Sunny woke up this morning as if nothing happened. He ate his entire breakfast, and then proceeded to go back to sleep.

It’s incredible how his seizures don’t really affect him. His personality is the same — he still wants to clean, still wants to play, and still enjoys eating. He’s the sweetest thing in the world.

We took Sunny to see the cardiologist yesterday morning. They ran some tests, and his results came back within the hour. It turns out that his health is perfectly healthy, and there’s nothing wrong with his blood flow or anything like that. So that’s certainly great news.

However, we’re still unsure as to what is causing Sunny’s episodes. The cardiologist recommended taking him to see a neurologist if the episodes occur again.

We’ll see how this all goes. He was very nervous at the cardiologist, but he came back home and was his normal self.