Life's an Adventure!: Max

Monday I had to put my sweet little kitty Max to sleep. He had been sick since January and this last week he showed signs of getting worse. At the beginning of this year he started throwing up dry cat food. So I started to feed him kitten milk (it's a powdered milk mixture that you give to kittens). It was the only thing he could keep down. After a little while he started eating dry cat food again. This only last a little while though and I had to go back to kitten milk. I took him to the vet and they put him on a medicine that basically was for acid reflux. We gave him this for a while but it didn't seem to work. He lost some weight after all these troubles so I knew I needed to find a way to get him more calories. I tried all sorts of wet food but none of them could stay down. I then read how someone gave their cat baby food - chicken and turkey. He loved it! I had to water it own sometimes and spoon feed him so he wouldn't scarf it down too fast. After a while he had some troubles with this too. I took him back to the vet to get an x-ray to see if he had swallowed something but they didn't find anything.

After Parker was born my mom and I took him up to Fishers to a specialty vet office. They did an ultrasound to see if there was anything in his esophagus or belly that an x-ray wouldn't see. Unfortunately there was nothing there. I wish it would have been something he swallowed because they could have taken it out. The vet recommended a scope of his esophagus with exploratory surgery to his belly. There best guess was that they would have to fix the muscle that connects his stomach to his intestines. These procedures unfortunately were extremely expensive :( The cost paired with the uncertainty of the diagnosis/recovery were not good.

The vet did give us a prescription wet food that was even softer than ones you can buy in the store. After I watered them down some he was ale to eat it! The vet said he would be fine to continue with these feedings probably for quite a while. He did pretty well with it for a little bit. Then he had trouble keeping it down too. So I bought a food processor and started mixing the wet food with water and kitten milk powder twice a day. He ate this for the last month and hardly had any issues! We really thought this would work for him. He even gained some weight! Then this last week he threw up every time he ate. He lost quite a bit of weight from not being to eat for almost a whole week. After about 5 days Clint and I realized that it probably wasn't going to get better. A few times when he threw up he looked awful and didn't sound too good either. Mostly though he purred and played and acted like the playful kitten he still was. He just was soo skinny. I like to think that even though he was so hungry he was still so happy to be loved! It was such a hard decision and I feel so sad especially for Lucy (who I am keeping a close eye on and playing with a lot!). However I know he isn't sick or hungry anymore.

Owning a pet is one of the best things in the world. They really aren't just your pet; they are family, which makes losing them even harder. I am so glad that he was such a sweet and loving kitty!