DAMN HEIDI

This is a post that I didn't want to write.
I share a lot of things here, but there's many things I don't.
I don't talk about all my pets.
I try to mainly focus on Blue and Jimmy Chew
with the occasional side story.
It's not that I don't love all my critters, I do.
But I think it can get rather confusing for people if I talk about them all.
I have several cats, and ok ,to be honest Harry and Ghost are at the top of my list
but I do adore the others.
So... I don't know if I've talked about Raini, ever.
If so, it wasn't recently.

I adopted her 16 years ago when she was almost 6 months old.
I adopted her as a favor to a co-worker.
I used to work at the Humane Society back then and the girl who ran the Cat Area
had fallen in love with Raini. Her actual name was Loraina but...
Anyway, she begged me to adopt her.
We were over loaded with black cats and Raini was growing up at the shelter.
A kitten about to become a cat.
She had come in with a stump for a tail.
We never knew the story of that.
So I took this kitten/cat home and she stalked me everywhere.
She would leap off high surfaces with her claws out and then jump onto me and drag the claws 
down my back, my arm, my leg. I was covered in long scratches.
Then she would leap onto my shoulders and drape herself around the back of my neck like a collar.
I would wake up in the middle of the night, feeling like I was suffocating and realize she was across my neck.
Every time she did one of these things I would yell "Damn Heidi!"
Heidi being the co-worker who talked me into adopting her.
Another co-worker, who is a good friend of mine, pointed out to me that I never actually called her Raini but instead she was "Damn Heidi".
So, back then I had a lot of cats.
Cats that were in a sort of underground railroad system at my house.
Cats that the Humane Society couldn't or wouldn't take.
So that meant old cats, disabled cats, and mostly black cats.
I even had feral cats.
I found farm homes for the ferals. 
I had quit the Shelter and had started working at the vet clinic and Doc's now ex-wife helped me find homes for all these unwanted cats.
She had a lot of cats too. 
Rescues.
So, she would pay for them to be fixed and vaccinated and we would find homes for everyone.
Eventually all my cats either passed on or found good homes and I was just left with a small handful of those I dearly loved and Damn Heidi.

That was years ago.
and slowly Damn Heidi turned back into Raini.
She never got very big, she was just this tiny little cat who loved the dogs.

She would still wrap herself around my neck when she could but mostly she loved her dogs.
Many times I would find her giving massages.
She loved Vera.

Vera is a sweetheart poodle of mine.
But she loved the other dogs too. 
She would try to lay on top of Blue but he'd just stand up to get her off.
She would find the dogs sleeping and she'd run and lay on top of them and go to sleep too.
Here she is with Jimmy.

So...
Last June her ear started to smell.
I took her into work and she got a medicated ear treatment.
It's a waxy substance that stays in the ear for 2 weeks.
Most times a retreatment is required 2 weeks later and her ear still had this odor
so she was retreated.
Then 2 weeks later, she was treated a 3rd time.
After those 2 weeks, I kept cleaning her ear everyday but the odor was still there
and then it got stronger.
Doc reexamined her again and he could now see a growth deep down.
He did surgery on her and got pieces of the growth. It was very hard to get at.
2 weeks later she had a second surgery and he got more....
and then the odor was so bad that it started making people gag.
She had a third surgery and more was removed.
And once again, the odor was back within days.
At this point she had turned 16.
I said, no more surgeries.

I continued to clean her ear out everyday and it was always full of...
I won't go into detail but it was really bad and gross.
I kept her at work in the cat room because she was shaking her head a lot and the horrible stuff would fly.
I had to clean the big window she liked to sleep near, several times a day.

But she was good about the daily cleaning and she liked the other cats.
I even found her massaging the old cat in his bed.

Then I came into work this Monday and noticed that she was squinting.
I showed her to the several co-workers and we all thought that the growth was bigger.
I took her up to the Office Manager and she felt it and was surprised how big it was.
I took her to the other vet at our clinic and asked for his opinion.
A second opinion.
He said that cats just sometimes get these polyps .
He said for it to be removed, that I would need a surgeon who specialized in that kind of thing.
I guess they cut open the side of head and lay open the ear canal and, anyway...
I told him that she was 16.
I could see him wince a little.
One of the techs said that the surgery was VERY expensive.
Then the vet said that many times the polyps grew back again after the surgery.
I said ok, and carried her back to the cat room and cried.

Yesterday, as I cleaned out her ear, removing a lot of gunk,
I looked at her little face and her squinted eye.
Tuesdays are my double shift day. The day I stay after everyone else leaves and I take care of the boarders.
All the appointment's were done for the day and I went and got the vet tech that I consider a friend
and asked her to come back and look at Raini.
She looked at her and looked at me with a sad face and asked what the two vets had said recently.
I told her.
She thought it was a quality of life decision.

I asked her to see if Doc could stay a few minutes longer to "let her go".
Lily came back then and my friend returned to say he had said Yes.
So they went with me into an exam room.
I wanted to just have the people who really care around me.
Doc said he felt I was making the right decision.
And my friend, Lily and I all cried as she left this Earth.

Damn Heidi