A rough weekend

This is an extremely long post for me, but I felt the need to explain stuff.


As most of you know I have two cats, Tinker Bell and Flower. I got Tinker Bell as a kitten from a girl at work in April 2004. About a month later another co-worker of mine was going through a rough patch in her personal life and I offered to take the kitten she had too. I named her Kitty Kitty and she remained an outside cat. At the time I was living with Hardy and his parents in the boonies of Gillsville, GA.

About 10mos later I noticed Kitty Kitty was getting chubby and sure enough she was preggers. I felt bad for not spaying her, but promised myself I would as soon as she had the kittens. Every day after work I would rub her belly and make her feel loved.

May 2005 we had just returned from a weekend trip to visit my mom and Trevor in Columbia, SC and immediately noticed she was skinny again. While Hardy unloaded the car, I went searching through the yard for kittens. It didn't take me too long because I could hear them meowing. I found three adorable kittens, one all black, one gray tabby and one black with white paws and belly. I temporarily named them Blackie, Stripes and Socks (how juvenile right).

Just like I had done with their momma, I played with them every day to get them used to us and surprisingly she didn't mind. My Mom had shown interest in one after meeting Tinker Bell and seeing how much sassy personality she had. Cats and dogs really are polar opposites. They can have some similarities, but you certainly get different packages.

Anyway one weekend, she and Trevor drove out from SC and picked one out (the tabby). They took him home and named him
Lexy (since at the time they were living in Lexington, SC). A year later they ended up moving to Birmingham, AL and for a brief time Trevor went to live with his Dad. Lexy stayed behind with my mom, but Trevor wanted a cat at his dads house too, so they ended up taking Kitty Kitty since she had already been fixed.

About a month or so after Trevor went to stay with his Dad, Mom felt Lexy needed a pal since Trevor wasn't there to keep him company...so I fixed up the black kitten (who I named Rambo) and took him to Birmingham for my Mom and Lexy. Eventually Trevor moved back to Mom's and in tow was Kitty Kitty!! So now my Mom had three cats and we had Tinker Bell and Flower (previously known as Socks).

This month the "boys" turned 7yrs old.

Two years ago we discovered Kitty Kitty and Rambo had a heart condition (cardiomyopathy) and that would eventually take its toll on them. Life has continued as normal until August of last year...Lexy wasn't acting himself and was becoming antisocial. Mom took him to the vet and they said he had elevated kidney levels which meant his kidneys weren't functioning properly. Of course we're all thinking - seriously!!? Can't any of our pets just be healthy?

Their immediate treatment was to change his food to a low protein diet so his kidneys didn't have to work as hard. This is when I did a lot of research on pet food in general and kidney issues.
I discovered that most ALL cat foods especially, don't even have real meat in their ingredients, it's all by products and meals. Scary! Cats are strict carnivores which means they get all of their nutrients from meat (that's also where they get the moisture form their diet).

Hardy and I took charge and changed our cats diets, we only buy dry food that has meat as the first ingredient and none of those fillers (rice, carrots, barley, corn...etc) and we added a can of wet food to their diet each day to help provide the moisture they need.

In January of this year we visited my Mom and noticed Lexy had dropped a lot of weight. She took him to the vet and nearly $1100 later we still didn't have a solid answer. The vet assumed it was hyperparathyroidism, which would mean a tumor was on Lexy's parathyroid gland and would need to be removed. He had one test he was waiting on results for to confirm his diagnosis. When the results were in we were back at square one...it did not confirm hyperparathyroidism.

He ended up sharing Lexy's bloodwork with a friend of his in internal medicine and he believed there could possibly be a tumor in his kidneys since his kidney levels were bad.

After a week at the vet getting fluids and poked and prodded for testing, Lexy went home and he's been there since. If you google anything about cat kidneys you find that damage is like humans, irreversible. Mom was determined just to give him a happy he and hope for the best.

For the last couple of weeks he went back to being antisocial and was again peeing wherever (with kidney issues it's hard for them to tell when their bladder is full...etc). So they made the decision to send him to cat heaven...at least I
like to believe there is one.

I don't even see Lexy on a regular basis, but remembering the kitten he once was and that he always loved and remembered me whenever we visited my Mom made my heart ache. I've shed tears for that cat over the last two days and I'm sure Trevor, Phillip and my Mom have too.

Rest in peace sweet Lexy