Well, it's done.
We very nearly walked out with her because we didn't think we'd be able to do it, but the vet pretty much convinced us it was the right thing to do. The leukemia had not only spread to her bone marrow, but it was in her spleen, too. She was severely anemic and that was what was making it difficult for her to breathe and making her so lethargic. He said even if we continued the prednisone, it would give her a month, tops. He did say that she was in no danger of dying TONIGHT, but that it was inevitable... probably in the next week or two. He made us feel better, too, by saying that most people would have had her put to sleep when she was diagnosed (she was diagnosed in October), so he gave us a lot of credit for caring for her that long. To be honest, it never even crossed my mind 8 months ago to have her put to sleep at that point. He also said that she was a very lucky cat to have been adopted by us in the first place (not trying to blow my own horn here, just trying to justify what we did tonight to myself), because normally if a kitten at a shelter is diagnosed with FeLV, they're put to sleep because they're considered unadoptable. So I guess it was lucky on her part that the shelter screwed up her paperwork and said that she tested negative when she was really positive. At least we were able to give her a good home and lots of love for the 20 months we had her.
When we got her, she was about 14 weeks old, and the shelter told us that she was found abandoned outside the door in a cardboard box all alone (this was October 2004). It was really cold out and she could have frozen to death if she had to spend the night outside, so it was fortunate that the guy closing up the shelter for the night happened to find her before he left.
When I saw her, it was love at first sight. She was so cute, with her goofy little white patch on her mouth and chin and the perpetually surprised expression in her pumpkin eyes. She reached a little white-tipped paw out at me and had THE loudest purr I had ever heard. I picked her up and she nuzzled right into my neck and stayed there, purring away. It was 6:00 PM on a Thursday and they were about to close so Mark and I left and came back first thing Saturday morning... it was so busy that day that I just grabbed her up out of her cage and held on so nobody else could take her. They named her Winifred at the shelter, but somehow she looked more Yogi-ish to us. The shelter volunteer couldn't seem to find her paperwork and kept coming back to the cage to check her name and number to figure out "who" she was (we think this is how they screwed up and didn't know she was FeLV+). We were assured that she was tested and had all her shots (because we had another cat at home), so we took her home.
She was a sweetheart from the very start. Our older cat, Sadie, is very much a loyal one-man-horse type cat, if you know what I mean. She doesn't like to share her people. She's pretty much a b---h to anyone else besides Mark and I, so she was none-too-happy when we brought another kitty home... but we figured it would be good for her because we were about to have a baby. Yogi was the perfect kitten for the job. She never tried to be dominant... she'd just trot all friendly like up to Sadie and ask to be friends. It didn't take long for them to start getting along because, hell, you can't help but like a kitty like her! Sadie would be lying in her perch and Yogi would just trot right up and plop herself down on top of Sadie and start licking her.
She was very social, too. We tried to keep her confined to one room until Sadie got used to her, but Yogi wasn't having it. She'd tear out of that room as soon as the door was open a crack and start purring away with that really loud motor of hers. She was always on your lap, or any lap that was available and slept curled up at my neck when she was small, or on my head when she got older. Even people who hate cats couldn't help but like her.
I used to swear when I was pregnant with Matt that he'd come out purring because Yogi's favorite place was curled up on my belly, purring away. A week after we got her I went on bed-rest for Preterm labor and she was my constant companion.
She LOVED kids! She was always around Matt, letting him pull her tail, ears, whiskers, feet... never once have I seen her bite or scratch or be anything but gentle with him. I'd pull Matt off of her and pick her up to put her out of Matt's reach and she'd jump right back down and lie next to him again. And she'd play fetch with my nephews... they'd throw her a toy and she'd go get it and bring it back.
Yogi had her health problems from the start, though. First she had a tapeworm, which was disgusting, let me tell you, then she came down with Kennel cough... last June she started pulling out her hair on her back (which come to find out was because she was nauseous from the FeLV), but it wasn't until October that it got so bad that the vet tested her for FeLV. I had noticed that she was eating kitty litter and licking the concrete in the basement so I did some research online and they were all signs of anemia (it was Pica, believe it or not... just like pregnant women get when they have an iron deficiency). The vet kept telling me that a false negative on a FeLV was extremely rare, but I pushed it and finally they tested her.
She was the best damned cat on the face of the earth and it's so incredibly unfair that she died so young. The way I feel right now, I'll never be able to love another kitty as much as I loved her.
This pic was taken this afternoon, about 5:00 PM. It's where she spent the whole day.
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