I lost my beloved cat, Loki, on March 11. I am beyond heartbroken. I’ve been crying for days, and sleep eludes me. I miss him so much. Please allow me this space to grieve. It helps me to work through my feelings by writing about them.
Loki was sixteen years old and, until the last year, was in perfect health. Last year, he started having seizures, at first tiny seizures, but then a couple of grand mal seizures. It appeared to be something called Feline Audiogenic Reflex Seizures, or FARS, a type of epilepsy that usually occurs in older cats where seizures are triggered by specific sounds. There’s not a whole lot known about it, but we could see it. The sound of a metal spoon hitting the ceramic bowl when I fed him made him flinch; a tiny seizure. Ice coming out of the refrigerator into a metal cup made him cower and shake. I bought silicon spoons to use when I fed him, and we put a plastic cup next to the ice maker; it was still noisy but not troublesome. I was never sure what caused the grand mal seizures, but it never appeared to be sound-related. He hadn’t had a seizure since late last year; then, a few weeks ago, it appeared he had another full seizure. He had peed on the rug, and he only ever did that during a grand mal seizure. But it turns out the seizures weren’t the problem; it was his heart.
A few weeks ago I started noticing he wasn’t eating very much, and he was sleeping even more. Cats typically sleep 12-16 hours a day, and he was probably hitting 20. Then he started getting these episodes where he was breathing heavily with his mouth open. Dogs pant, cats do not, so I started researching. It’s a well-kept secret that there is a lot of good information on animals on the National Institutes of Health website. The lethargy, loss of appetite, and panting fit the symptoms of congenital heart failure, which is not uncommon in older cats.
I had been in touch with his breeder when he started having seizures, and she told me that she had never had a cat with that issue. She also told me his mother had passed away at 17 of what she called natural causes; she was getting older, slower, wasn’t eating as much, and eventually passed away. That seemed like maybe what was happening with Loki. We kept a close eye on him. I had read that some cats can live for a while with this heart issue, anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of years. My husband and I discussed it, but he seemed to think if we took him to the vet, the only option would be to put him to sleep. So we didn’t take him.
Then the episodes of heavy breathing started becoming more frequent, at least once a day, that we saw, then a few times a day. He didn’t like being held anymore; we thought he might be in pain. He wasn’t moving around much, either, and didn’t jump up on the furniture to hang out with us anymore. He didn’t come to bed with us anymore. He was sleeping on a rug in the dining room or near his food. He went to the litter box, but that was about it.
I was getting more concerned as his breathing seemed to worsen, and at his loss of appetite. I weighed him, and he had lost over a pound since November. Alarmed, I again suggested we talk to the vet. My husband was afraid that the stress of taking him there would kill him – cats, as a rule, hate getting into the carrier, hate car rides, and hate going to strange places with strange smells, and Loki hated all three of those stressors. But I thought if there was any way the vet could help him, any kind of medication, maybe it was worth a shot.
It turned out that my husband was right. The vet couldn’t find anything wrong other than his heart was racing. We hung out there for a while, discussing options, but Loki seemed to be getting worse, instead of calming down. He could go on Lasix, but the longer we stayed, the more the vet was convinced it wouldn’t help. He couldn’t hear any fluid in his lungs. He said we could take him to a veterinary cardiologist for scans and more sophisticated testing, but he didn’t think he would even make it there. He pointed out that it is a horrible feeling to not be able to breathe normally and he was right. It was an agonizing decision, but we all agreed he was in too much distress at this point, and we were going to put him to sleep.
The vet said he would sedate him first, then give him something to stop his heart. I couldn’t bear the thought of watching that, and neither could my husband. We held him to say goodbye, and his beautiful blue eyes were just solid black, all pupil. He didn’t appear to be cognizant of what was happening or even who we were. The vet took him from us, and we left. We had barely left the parking lot when he texted us that Loki had died before he could even sedate him.
My heart broke. I spent the day crying and looking at pictures of him.
He brought so much joy into my life! We had another cat, Edgar, who we adopted from the shelter, as we had all the cats in my life. But Edgar had some issues; he was hearing and visually impaired, and startled easily. He was an orphan, a specific term for kittens taken from their mothers too young, before being socialized. And worst of all, he was a biter. Not little nips, we are talking teeth sunk into the skin, drawing blood. Cat bites are much more dangerous than dog bites and almost always cause serious infections. My husband was nearly hospitalized a few times, and my daughter was hospitalized once. The morning I woke up with him biting my ankle and blood all over the bed, I’d had it. He moved out onto my back porch and never even tried to get into the house again.
I became afraid of cats. I’ve always had cats, but he really freaked me out. One day, my husband came home from helping one of his customers – he helped people with their computer issues. This particular customer had a couple of Birman cats, which I had never heard of, and he said they were the sweetest, friendliest cats he’d ever seen. While he was working on the computer, they just hung out with him. He got the name of a couple of breeders, and suggested we look into it. She had told us that this one breeder was very particular about where she placed her cats, and in fact, she hadn’t been able to get one and instead used a different breeder. We visited both, and it was no contest. If the breeder approved, we would get a kitten from her. I sat down with her and told her about my experiences with cats, and how Edgar had made me afraid of them. She had half a dozen Birmans roaming around, and they were all so calm and so sweet. She agreed we could have a kitten from her next litter. This was a first-time mom, so she only had two kittens.
I never had any experience dealing with a breeder. We were animal shelter people all the way. These cats were also very expensive, which made me uncomfortable. My husband argued that we could afford it (sort of) and then stipulated that Loki would be my fiftieth birthday present. He knows how to play me, and that worked. The timing was perfect; Loki was born on November 1, and a few weeks later, I turned fifty.
We started visiting the breeder when the kittens were just a few days old and had just opened their eyes. We visited regularly, at least once a week. She gave them temporary names, Lewis & Clark, and originally, I was going to take Clark, I thought he was cuter. But as they got older, he got a little more rambunctious, and I got scared because of the horrible experience we had with Edgar. Kittens are very playful! The breeder told us to take Lewis, that he had a very sweet nature. I’m not sure how on earth she knew that about kittens that were just a few weeks old, but she was right. Lewis became Loki, and we lived happily ever after.
Loki was the sweetest, most loving cat I’ve ever had. He wasn’t a lap cat, but he loved to sleep on the hassock with his head on my ankle, or on the arm of the chair cuddled up with my husband. He slept in our bed for most of his life until the very end.
He would be waiting by the front door when I got home from work and would follow me all over the house, often getting underfoot while I was cooking. He always seemed to know when I was sad, and he would come sit with me. Loki was also a talker – he always had something to say. Birmans were bred from Siamese cats a long time ago, but if you look up the breed, it says they are quiet. We used to kid around and say guess he never read the book on Birmans. Their fur is also supposed to be easy to maintain because they don’t have an undercoat, so they are not supposed to be prone to matting. But he was – another instance of him not reading the book.
I was able to teach him to ‘give me five!’ When I brushed him, I would say, “put your keppe back” (keppe is Yiddish for head) and he would throw his head back so I could brush his neck. The funniest thing was that he never really liked playing with toys, and we tried them all! He would play for thirty seconds, then just walk away. He liked these little crunchy-sounding foil balls, and he would swat them around and chase them, but after a few swats, he was done. Laser? No reaction. He was scared of this fish toy that moved if he touched it, so he avoided it. The dangly toys didn’t interest him; really, nothing did. He just wanted to hang out with us, and he was happy.
The day we lost Loki, the New York Times ran this article:
I miss him so much, my heart hurts. We are talking about retiring to Portugal in a couple of years, and my husband said once we get settled, we can get another cat. But I can’t imagine wanting another cat. I don’t think any other cat would ever measure up to Loki, and that would break my heart all over again.
Rest in peace, my beautiful boy.
Posted by Stacy Alesi 
Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™ 