Fat Kitty has colon cancer.
His health has been failing him this week and I thank God a thousand times our spring break plans to Sea Island were canceled due to COVID-19 because he would have been all alone.
There have been signs the past couple of months that something was wrong but we didn’t pick up on them. He was throwing up a lot more…which we just attributed to binging and purging grass (which he tends to do). And then there is the trauma of the basement being finished. We’ve had a lot of loud noises pounding away, we completely filled our storage room with furniture which is where his kitty litter and food are located and he has refused to go down there. We thought he was just being anxious and his stubborn self. And of course, there’s the pooping. Since he wasn’t using his kitty litter box, he has been having accidents everywhere.
But it was when his vomiting came to the point where he couldn’t keep any of his food down last week, we took him to Wasatch Animal Clinic. Due to the Coronavirus, we weren’t able to take him inside so it was drive-thru service where we dropped him off and someone did the check-up while we waited in the car. They took his blood and treated him for deworming. His levels from the blood test came back normal except for high white blood cells which generally means an infection. The vet thought he might have a UTI so we took him back on Friday. He should have gotten better but he was worse all weekend. Lethargic. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Even with the Easter commotion yesterday, he made a brief appearance before weakly going back to my bed, the place where he loves the most–curled up at my feet or by my side every night on the softest blanket. 
We took him back to the vet again today (Monday). It had been a week since this all started and they did an ultrasound this time and found a tumor. Colon cancer. The four of us were crying as we listened to the vet tell us our options. 1) Chemotherapy. Expensive and painful treatments. And with an old kitty, it really wouldn’t add that much time to his life. 2) Prednisone. The same drug that gave Jamie life during his cancer treatments. It can’t cure Fat Kitty but it could possibly shrink the tumor and give us a few more weeks to say good-bye. 3) The vet could put him down at his office right there. WHAT?!
Jamie suggested we say a prayer to figure out our course of action and we ultimately decided to treat him with prednisone. He’s in a lot of pain right now so we’ll see if we can stabilize him and if not, we’ll say good-bye sooner than later. We don’t really have any pictures with him so our friend Sarah is going to come and take some for us.
As Hadley and I were sobbing on the drive home from our appointment today, I suggested we sing a song to make us feel better from my favorite movie “The Sound of Music.” Except when we got to the second line of “My Favorite Things” and it said, “Raindrops on roses, WHISKERS ON KITTENS,” we decided that maybe singing isn’t such a good idea right now.
So, we’re just going to enjoy these final hours or days we have with our beloved pet of more than a decade, unapologetically feeling the pain of this loss while honoring the world’s collective trauma of grief, panic over livelihoods, panic over loss of lives of loved ones, the anxiety of uncertainty and missed milestones, no matter how big or small because right now, it all feels big.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 