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Farewell to my Best Buddy Sam - may he rest in peace now
Apr 2, 2017 22:40:15 #
I think an alternate title of this post could be: "Don't just take lots of still photos of your beloved pet - be sure to make plenty of videos."
For the past 11 years I had taken lots of photos of our 4 cats including my best buddy Sam, who just passed away at 11 years of age after being diagnosed with almost complete kidney failure only 2 weeks ago. It had only been 7 months since he had been checked by our Vet, and just suddenly stopped eating. We had 3 cats altogether after losing my first cat Smokie over a year ago (again with almost no videos of her either); and it must have been about 3 days before I realized Sam no longer had a normal appetite.
The very first day (Friday, March 24th ) our vet said he had badly infected gums and gave me pills to give him as they were out of the 2 week long acting antibiotic shot, and said I should call at 8 AM Monday to schedule additional tests. Then on Sunday he vomited a greenish vomit and so I drove him to the pet ER about 50 miles away in Amarillo. They gave him the 2 week antibiotic shot and then gave me the bad news. Their blood tests showed almost complete kidney failure and to not call my regular vet at 8 AM the next day, but to BE THERE WITH SAM at 8 AM when they opened up. They put him on IV fluids and he stayed there all week until around noon Saturday. He seemed a little better then, but at home he started to decline again so I took him to a different Vet last Thursday, who did more blood work which showed the same bad results as the original tests. He said he had a low chance of living much longer, which was no surprise. (Sidebar - it was frightening to see a once very powerful 27 lb. cat that could jump off a 6 foot fence, try to jump off a chair or our bed and see his front legs buckle and his chest and chin hit the floor instead.) The new vet put him on subcutaneous fluids for the rest of that day. The next day he seemed a little better, but yesterday he sounded like a pigeon cooing with every breathe he took and when I tried to give him water with a small syringe, he coughed out some very thick mucus. So I took him on another 50 mile journey to the ER. The Vet on duty said it would be a very slim possibility that he would get better, but that they could put him back on IV fluids and give him other medications until Monday where he could then be transferred to a non ER pet hospital for treatment through the regular week.
My wife was at a concert 120 miles away Saturday evening and I was to pick her up when her daughter brought her to Amarillo. She had manned up to attend the concert with her daughter despite having almost excruciating chronic back pain, but when we both arrived back at the ER, we were told we would have a 90 minute wait to see Sam. We sadly decided she must get home and rest her badly hurting back.
Later we didn't realize my phone had rang at 3 AM with a call from the ER notifying us that Sam had passed until we woke up this morning. Now my wife regrets not toughing it out for another 2-1/2 to 3 hours to see Sam for a few minutes and then take the long ride home. She takes lots of medications and didn't have them with her so staying at a hotel in Amarillo wasn't an option Saturday.
Now to the main point. Yes everyone thinks their pet is the best in the world and I won't disagree. But our Sam was a man's dream in that he behaved more like a dog than a cat and would usually come to me if I called his name. After being beaten as a 1 or 2 year old cat by various neighborhood cats that would invade our yard, he bulked up and became the alpha cat of our block (in his early days he once he lost a fight so badly he was meowing and wallowing in his own feces on our front porch, according to my step-daughter who had called me at work to report the incident). So after bulking up he could not only drive off all other cats from our property, mainly using this incredibly loud "howl", but large dogs as well. He jumped on the back of my stepson's 75 lb. dog and made it pee on our kitchen floor, which I missed because I was at work. Just like a dog, he loved to roll around in the dirt when we would let him outside. He would remain just a few feet away as I ground and then welded various steel parts in my garage, and I would be so amazed that the sparks and noise didn't scare him off that I would call him "Ironworker Sam", and "Welder's Helper Sam", or "Supervisor Sam".
Last summer he brought me a live baby rattlesnake while I was in my garage (Thanks Sam - just what I needed), and then a few weeks later he had what sounded like a very large rattlesnake cornered in our back yard and I quickly got him inside because it sounded very pissed off. But a few days later when I had my telescope set up in my backyard I had this uneasy feeling about that rattlesnake possibly sneaking up on me while stargazing and when Sam finally came around I felt a whole lot safer.
Sam would also lay flat on his back on our carpet to sleep, and would also lie on his back between my right arm and my torso when I was in my recliner with his hind legs stretched out next to mine like a little boy, instead of curling up in my lap like all other cats. So this is regret number 1 - I thought many times about setting my Nikon D70 up on a tripod aimed at my recliner and using the remote to photo us reclining together. "Yeah Someday I'll do that".
Regret number 2 - my biggest regret - many times when I'd look for him outside at bedtime to bring him in for the night, he would do this resisting routine that I know would have been so hilarious it would have won $110,000 on Americas Funniest Home Videos. I kept thinking I need to get some kind of wearable night vision camera like I've seen on those Ghost hunter, Bigfoot hunter "Reality" Shows on satellite TV, video his cute stubborn routine, and send it in to AFV. "Yeah someday I'll do it" I thought for so many times in the past.
So my advice to all of you pet-owning Hoggers who have been putting off videoing your pet's unique/most memorable behaviors, to paraphrase R. Lee Ermy: "GET THAT BLANKING VIDEO CAMERA ON TOP OF THAT BLANKING TRIPOD NOW PRIVATE PYLE !!! DO IT NOW SWEETCHEEKS BEFORE WE ALL BLANKING DIE OF OLD AGE!!!! IF GOD HAD WANTED THAT CAMERA ON TOP OF THAT TRIPOD HE WOULD HAVE MIRACLED IT UP THERE WOULDN'T HE PRIVATE PYLE!!!
In closing, we never truly own our beloved pets, they are only loaned to us by Almighty God - and much sooner than later he's going to want them back.
Farewell Dear Sam. Your journey to Heaven makes me want to be a better man.
For the past 11 years I had taken lots of photos of our 4 cats including my best buddy Sam, who just passed away at 11 years of age after being diagnosed with almost complete kidney failure only 2 weeks ago. It had only been 7 months since he had been checked by our Vet, and just suddenly stopped eating. We had 3 cats altogether after losing my first cat Smokie over a year ago (again with almost no videos of her either); and it must have been about 3 days before I realized Sam no longer had a normal appetite.
The very first day (Friday, March 24th ) our vet said he had badly infected gums and gave me pills to give him as they were out of the 2 week long acting antibiotic shot, and said I should call at 8 AM Monday to schedule additional tests. Then on Sunday he vomited a greenish vomit and so I drove him to the pet ER about 50 miles away in Amarillo. They gave him the 2 week antibiotic shot and then gave me the bad news. Their blood tests showed almost complete kidney failure and to not call my regular vet at 8 AM the next day, but to BE THERE WITH SAM at 8 AM when they opened up. They put him on IV fluids and he stayed there all week until around noon Saturday. He seemed a little better then, but at home he started to decline again so I took him to a different Vet last Thursday, who did more blood work which showed the same bad results as the original tests. He said he had a low chance of living much longer, which was no surprise. (Sidebar - it was frightening to see a once very powerful 27 lb. cat that could jump off a 6 foot fence, try to jump off a chair or our bed and see his front legs buckle and his chest and chin hit the floor instead.) The new vet put him on subcutaneous fluids for the rest of that day. The next day he seemed a little better, but yesterday he sounded like a pigeon cooing with every breathe he took and when I tried to give him water with a small syringe, he coughed out some very thick mucus. So I took him on another 50 mile journey to the ER. The Vet on duty said it would be a very slim possibility that he would get better, but that they could put him back on IV fluids and give him other medications until Monday where he could then be transferred to a non ER pet hospital for treatment through the regular week.
My wife was at a concert 120 miles away Saturday evening and I was to pick her up when her daughter brought her to Amarillo. She had manned up to attend the concert with her daughter despite having almost excruciating chronic back pain, but when we both arrived back at the ER, we were told we would have a 90 minute wait to see Sam. We sadly decided she must get home and rest her badly hurting back.
Later we didn't realize my phone had rang at 3 AM with a call from the ER notifying us that Sam had passed until we woke up this morning. Now my wife regrets not toughing it out for another 2-1/2 to 3 hours to see Sam for a few minutes and then take the long ride home. She takes lots of medications and didn't have them with her so staying at a hotel in Amarillo wasn't an option Saturday.
Now to the main point. Yes everyone thinks their pet is the best in the world and I won't disagree. But our Sam was a man's dream in that he behaved more like a dog than a cat and would usually come to me if I called his name. After being beaten as a 1 or 2 year old cat by various neighborhood cats that would invade our yard, he bulked up and became the alpha cat of our block (in his early days he once he lost a fight so badly he was meowing and wallowing in his own feces on our front porch, according to my step-daughter who had called me at work to report the incident). So after bulking up he could not only drive off all other cats from our property, mainly using this incredibly loud "howl", but large dogs as well. He jumped on the back of my stepson's 75 lb. dog and made it pee on our kitchen floor, which I missed because I was at work. Just like a dog, he loved to roll around in the dirt when we would let him outside. He would remain just a few feet away as I ground and then welded various steel parts in my garage, and I would be so amazed that the sparks and noise didn't scare him off that I would call him "Ironworker Sam", and "Welder's Helper Sam", or "Supervisor Sam".
Last summer he brought me a live baby rattlesnake while I was in my garage (Thanks Sam - just what I needed), and then a few weeks later he had what sounded like a very large rattlesnake cornered in our back yard and I quickly got him inside because it sounded very pissed off. But a few days later when I had my telescope set up in my backyard I had this uneasy feeling about that rattlesnake possibly sneaking up on me while stargazing and when Sam finally came around I felt a whole lot safer.
Sam would also lay flat on his back on our carpet to sleep, and would also lie on his back between my right arm and my torso when I was in my recliner with his hind legs stretched out next to mine like a little boy, instead of curling up in my lap like all other cats. So this is regret number 1 - I thought many times about setting my Nikon D70 up on a tripod aimed at my recliner and using the remote to photo us reclining together. "Yeah Someday I'll do that".
Regret number 2 - my biggest regret - many times when I'd look for him outside at bedtime to bring him in for the night, he would do this resisting routine that I know would have been so hilarious it would have won $110,000 on Americas Funniest Home Videos. I kept thinking I need to get some kind of wearable night vision camera like I've seen on those Ghost hunter, Bigfoot hunter "Reality" Shows on satellite TV, video his cute stubborn routine, and send it in to AFV. "Yeah someday I'll do it" I thought for so many times in the past.
So my advice to all of you pet-owning Hoggers who have been putting off videoing your pet's unique/most memorable behaviors, to paraphrase R. Lee Ermy: "GET THAT BLANKING VIDEO CAMERA ON TOP OF THAT BLANKING TRIPOD NOW PRIVATE PYLE !!! DO IT NOW SWEETCHEEKS BEFORE WE ALL BLANKING DIE OF OLD AGE!!!! IF GOD HAD WANTED THAT CAMERA ON TOP OF THAT TRIPOD HE WOULD HAVE MIRACLED IT UP THERE WOULDN'T HE PRIVATE PYLE!!!
In closing, we never truly own our beloved pets, they are only loaned to us by Almighty God - and much sooner than later he's going to want them back.
Farewell Dear Sam. Your journey to Heaven makes me want to be a better man.
Apr 2, 2017 23:18:42 #
Apr 2, 2017 23:44:59 #
So sorry for your loss, our pets are our family and it is very hard to lose a family member. He was a beautiful cat, thank you for sharing.
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Apr 3, 2017 00:18:09 #
wdross
Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado
Very sorry for your loss. We too have had to put some of our animals down when the vet and medicines could no longer add valued life and control the suffering. It is never pleasant, but to keep an animal suffering just so they can be around for us has never seemed to be right thing for us.
I am sure that Sam knew he was loved and knew that your wife love him too even if she didn't get to see him one last time. Just like my wife and I have memories of are "furry teenagers", pull the memories out one by one sometime in the future and have a good laugh or a good cry over them together so Sam and the others will aways be with you.
I am sure that Sam knew he was loved and knew that your wife love him too even if she didn't get to see him one last time. Just like my wife and I have memories of are "furry teenagers", pull the memories out one by one sometime in the future and have a good laugh or a good cry over them together so Sam and the others will aways be with you.
Apr 3, 2017 00:29:32 #
I'm so very sorry for the loss of your adorable Sam. I know how much it hurts having lost pets of my own and having all the pets I do now I know there is more pain to come. For now, I love each and everyone of them and try to spend as much time with them as I can.
Hugs to you and your family at this sad time from myself and my dog, cats and birds.
Hugs to you and your family at this sad time from myself and my dog, cats and birds.
Apr 3, 2017 00:37:18 #
Apr 3, 2017 00:56:59 #
Bentarrow wrote:
I think an alternate title of this post could be: ... (show quote)
Sorry you lost Sam, we lost two of ours in the last two years.
Apr 3, 2017 01:46:18 #
as a fellow pet lover , I DO understand your grief! Sam is pain free forever and his spirit will never leave you!
Apr 3, 2017 06:52:27 #
Apr 3, 2017 08:23:31 #
Apr 3, 2017 10:08:05 #
My feral cat pet was 21 years old when the organs started giving up. She is in the yard now and see her every day.
Sarge69
Sarge69
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Apr 3, 2017 22:00:55 #
My thanks to all who responded and offered your condolences and admiration for such a fine creature as Sam was. Another nickname we sometimes used for him was "Handsome Sam". He was buried today next to my first cat Smokie at Adobe Pet Cemetery between Amarillo and Canyon. It was hard to come home this evening and not see him making a mad dash out of the house to go outside on his usual evening patrol.
I will always thank God for seeing that he never wound up on the street dead with a badly mangled body caused by an automobile, like what I saw on the shoulder of the highway going into Borger this morning. That poor cat was also brown with a white patch underneath it just like Sam. I do not want to imagine the agony the family of that poor cat will be going through once they find him.
I will always thank God for seeing that he never wound up on the street dead with a badly mangled body caused by an automobile, like what I saw on the shoulder of the highway going into Borger this morning. That poor cat was also brown with a white patch underneath it just like Sam. I do not want to imagine the agony the family of that poor cat will be going through once they find him.
Apr 3, 2017 23:09:03 #
My heart is with you on your loss as well. We lost our buddy RANDY to a spider bite two weeks ago. He was bitten last September. We fought to get the wound to heal with antibiotics; (a pill a day since September 28th.) On the 23rd of March he quit eating and I took him to the vet. A blood test showed that his immune system had shut down and he was no longer creating red blood cells. I asked if his lack of being able to produce red blood cells caused his leg to never heal but was told that the spider bite had destroyed his ability to heal and that it had also destroyed his immune system. He had several other major problems that made prolonging his life something we could not put him through.
I say this to warn everyone to watch for spiders.
We have lost 3 cats to natural causes but we had to put Randy to sleep, a first for us.
We will miss our devoted friend.
One other thing I would like to point out ...we stayed with Randy until the end. We were still holding him, telling him we loved him, and petting him when he drew his last breath. I truly cannot understand how anyone could take a beloved pet to a veterinarian and leave the room at the time of the euthanasia. If your pet gives you years of love and companionship, you own him to at least not to abandon him at this time of departure.
I found this photo of our baby after his death. I am so glad I had snapped it last year! I consider it one of my best.
I say this to warn everyone to watch for spiders.
We have lost 3 cats to natural causes but we had to put Randy to sleep, a first for us.
We will miss our devoted friend.
One other thing I would like to point out ...we stayed with Randy until the end. We were still holding him, telling him we loved him, and petting him when he drew his last breath. I truly cannot understand how anyone could take a beloved pet to a veterinarian and leave the room at the time of the euthanasia. If your pet gives you years of love and companionship, you own him to at least not to abandon him at this time of departure.
I found this photo of our baby after his death. I am so glad I had snapped it last year! I consider it one of my best.
Apr 4, 2017 08:30:26 #
True, we would never leave the room when a pet is leaving us. We talk to them and hold them and pet them as if nothing was happening. Hopefully they pass with good feelings with the humans that had the pleasure of being with them.
Sarge69
Sarge69
Apr 4, 2017 12:31:29 #
I never thought about spider bites being another lethal danger to cats. We have Brown Recluses and Black Widow spiders here. But now our 2 remaining cats are indoor only, so I hope this never becomes a problem with them. I will need to see about spraying for insects and spiders in our yard and in our house.
Regarding being with your cat when it passes on, this is what my wife and I wanted - especially after a very sad experience with my first cat Smokie, who died at one of the local veterinarian clinic overnight over a year ago. We (I) just couldn't give her full time care with me having a very stressful full time job back then and my wife being partially disabled. So we left her at our regular vet for better care, but we suspect she didn't actually get better care there and died the first night at their clinic. This decision still haunts us. But with Sam we thought he would receive much better medical care at the Pet ER 50 miles from our home.
I have no doubt my judgement was clouded (except for opting for the DNR option) because of all my wife and I have been through. I could simplify this reply by saying you should search for my previous post about a month ago to see the extraordinarily bad events that have happened to us. But briefly, my wife fell down the escalator at the Amarillo Airport on Friday January 13th, 5 weeks ago I had a near head on collision at almost 75 mph when a driver turned in from of me after running a stop sign, the following Tuesday a fire started by a tree sparking the power lines over our back fence nearly set our house on fire, and then at the end of that week I wound up in the ER after having a bad reaction to my doctor giving me an antibiotic shot and a steroid shot for an upper respiratory infection.
The other untold part of our sad story is at the same time I was trying to get Sam well, I was also fighting to keep one of my wife's two cats that has chronic kidney disease and a "mega-colon" from being put down. When I wasn't shuttling Sam to the Vet or the ER, I was taking Clementine to or back to the Vet. Plus I have to do all the cooking and cleaning since my wife's bad back keeps her from doing any kind of work.
Clementine hasn't used the litter box in several years and goes on pet pads I put down in our Sitting Room next to our front door, so I had a real incentive to have her put down. My wife told me a few years back that it would be OK to have her put down - but I knew better, so I began the vigil of changing out pads twice every day. Then when she had a problem with her mega-colon at the same time Sam became ill, I was determined to try and save her too. Well it looks like Clementine will be doing well, but every now and then I wonder if using the time I had to devote to her for Sam would have made a difference with Sam.
However, I learned 2 things from the last vet to treat Sam (at the ER Saturday night). First, kidney failure causes a cat to lose its normal sense of taste and no food tastes good to them. Second: major kidney disease causes the bone marrow to shut down, making the cat very anemic. But even after hearing all this I thought there might be one last chance for Sam to pull through.
My thinking was that even if Sam's life had an unhappy ending, I never wanted to ask myself over and over again in the future,"What if I had gone ahead and spent just a few hundred dollars more on additional treatment - would we still have our "Sam-Sam"?" All in all I have spent nearly $2000 on Sam which hurts my now limited pocketbook because I reluctantly took early retirement a year ago. However I feel I will never kick myself while asking myself did I try to save money and deprive Sam of a longer life. We were aware that at best Sam wouldn't have much longer to live and we desperately wanted him to stay around for just a few more weeks or hopefully a few months longer. Our experience with Clementine having been diagnosed with kidney disease and still doing relatively well many months later definitely clouded our judgement with Sam. We just couldn't comprehend that Sam would be a far worse victim of kidney failure than Clementine has been. He was gone in only a little less than 3 weeks after our noticing him not eating properly.
As I'm writing this, my wife's other cat, Annabelle, is doing her once a week routine of vomiting because of her extra sensitive stomach, and I'll be cleaning up her messes most of today. All 3 cats had to have special prescription food and trying to keep them from eating the wrong food has been physically and mentally draining.
10-1/2 years ago I had only one cat (Smokie), my soon to be wife had two (Clementine and Annabelle) so we had plenty of cats. However this underweight half grown brown cat with white feet and white patches underneath his neck and belly walked into my back yard while I was out on the patio. My future wife said: "If you feed it, then you'll own it" so as to advise me that maybe I should let this stray move on. I just couldn't let him move on, and after 10 years of marveling at his ways of expressing very obvious gratitude for saving him, by acting just like a little boy - like "my little son that I never had", I have no regrets. So despite this incredibly heartbreaking ordeal my wife and I have gone through, I will always thank God for allowing us to have such an extra-extra-extraordinary cat for a little over 10 years. I think back on what a terrible mistake it would have been to have such an extra-special cat move on to someone else or most likely get run over by a car trying to find someone else, or attacked by coyotes, etc.
We had counted on at least another 4 or 5 years with him, after which we could have accepted him passing on as we know the average lifespan of most cats is 15 - 17 years. He simply left us far too soon and we are wondering why, even though deep down we know that's the way life goes sometimes.
Regarding being with your cat when it passes on, this is what my wife and I wanted - especially after a very sad experience with my first cat Smokie, who died at one of the local veterinarian clinic overnight over a year ago. We (I) just couldn't give her full time care with me having a very stressful full time job back then and my wife being partially disabled. So we left her at our regular vet for better care, but we suspect she didn't actually get better care there and died the first night at their clinic. This decision still haunts us. But with Sam we thought he would receive much better medical care at the Pet ER 50 miles from our home.
I have no doubt my judgement was clouded (except for opting for the DNR option) because of all my wife and I have been through. I could simplify this reply by saying you should search for my previous post about a month ago to see the extraordinarily bad events that have happened to us. But briefly, my wife fell down the escalator at the Amarillo Airport on Friday January 13th, 5 weeks ago I had a near head on collision at almost 75 mph when a driver turned in from of me after running a stop sign, the following Tuesday a fire started by a tree sparking the power lines over our back fence nearly set our house on fire, and then at the end of that week I wound up in the ER after having a bad reaction to my doctor giving me an antibiotic shot and a steroid shot for an upper respiratory infection.
The other untold part of our sad story is at the same time I was trying to get Sam well, I was also fighting to keep one of my wife's two cats that has chronic kidney disease and a "mega-colon" from being put down. When I wasn't shuttling Sam to the Vet or the ER, I was taking Clementine to or back to the Vet. Plus I have to do all the cooking and cleaning since my wife's bad back keeps her from doing any kind of work.
Clementine hasn't used the litter box in several years and goes on pet pads I put down in our Sitting Room next to our front door, so I had a real incentive to have her put down. My wife told me a few years back that it would be OK to have her put down - but I knew better, so I began the vigil of changing out pads twice every day. Then when she had a problem with her mega-colon at the same time Sam became ill, I was determined to try and save her too. Well it looks like Clementine will be doing well, but every now and then I wonder if using the time I had to devote to her for Sam would have made a difference with Sam.
However, I learned 2 things from the last vet to treat Sam (at the ER Saturday night). First, kidney failure causes a cat to lose its normal sense of taste and no food tastes good to them. Second: major kidney disease causes the bone marrow to shut down, making the cat very anemic. But even after hearing all this I thought there might be one last chance for Sam to pull through.
My thinking was that even if Sam's life had an unhappy ending, I never wanted to ask myself over and over again in the future,"What if I had gone ahead and spent just a few hundred dollars more on additional treatment - would we still have our "Sam-Sam"?" All in all I have spent nearly $2000 on Sam which hurts my now limited pocketbook because I reluctantly took early retirement a year ago. However I feel I will never kick myself while asking myself did I try to save money and deprive Sam of a longer life. We were aware that at best Sam wouldn't have much longer to live and we desperately wanted him to stay around for just a few more weeks or hopefully a few months longer. Our experience with Clementine having been diagnosed with kidney disease and still doing relatively well many months later definitely clouded our judgement with Sam. We just couldn't comprehend that Sam would be a far worse victim of kidney failure than Clementine has been. He was gone in only a little less than 3 weeks after our noticing him not eating properly.
As I'm writing this, my wife's other cat, Annabelle, is doing her once a week routine of vomiting because of her extra sensitive stomach, and I'll be cleaning up her messes most of today. All 3 cats had to have special prescription food and trying to keep them from eating the wrong food has been physically and mentally draining.
10-1/2 years ago I had only one cat (Smokie), my soon to be wife had two (Clementine and Annabelle) so we had plenty of cats. However this underweight half grown brown cat with white feet and white patches underneath his neck and belly walked into my back yard while I was out on the patio. My future wife said: "If you feed it, then you'll own it" so as to advise me that maybe I should let this stray move on. I just couldn't let him move on, and after 10 years of marveling at his ways of expressing very obvious gratitude for saving him, by acting just like a little boy - like "my little son that I never had", I have no regrets. So despite this incredibly heartbreaking ordeal my wife and I have gone through, I will always thank God for allowing us to have such an extra-extra-extraordinary cat for a little over 10 years. I think back on what a terrible mistake it would have been to have such an extra-special cat move on to someone else or most likely get run over by a car trying to find someone else, or attacked by coyotes, etc.
We had counted on at least another 4 or 5 years with him, after which we could have accepted him passing on as we know the average lifespan of most cats is 15 - 17 years. He simply left us far too soon and we are wondering why, even though deep down we know that's the way life goes sometimes.
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