Growing Our Roots: Goodbye my princess Lila

Yesterday we had to make the impossible hard decision to put our baby princess kitty Lila to sleep after an enormous tumor was found surround her entire right lung, most of her diaphragm and was starting to spread to the left making breathing really difficult for her. It was very unexpected. She was fine Monday morning (and every day leading up until that day) but Monday night, she was just laying around and not acting like herself. Joel took her to the vet Tuesday morning to be seen and they started her on an IV and antibiotics, ran bloodwork and urine tests and all that came back with was a slightly elevated white blood cell count which pointed towards either a viral or bacterial infection (at the time they side it was probably just a cold or something of the sort) but they kept her until Thursday because she still wasn't eating. We brought her home Thursday night to see if we could get her to eat and she still wouldn't, plus a new symptom had arisen, she was breathing really hard. So we went to bed early with her sleeping in bed between us and I was up most of the night putting little drops of water on her tongue and petting her to keep her calm. I'm so glad I spent an additional 30 minutes with her Friday morning cuddling. Joel brought her back to the vet and they did some xrays where they found what looked like a large mass. The original plan was to take her to specialist on Monday morning for an ultrasound since our vet only has an ultrasound for horses. So that's how we left it at noon on Friday (I spent my lunch time in the bathroom crying because I felt so helpless in the situation). I barely made it through the rest of the work day, once I got into my car I broke down and cried/sobbed the entire drive home. I spoke with Joel towards the end of the drive and he told me he had spoken to the vet and told me about the large mass and that they had been able to do the ultrasound with the horse ultrasound and it really didn't look good.

Basically our choice came down to really expensive (thousands of dollars) exploratory surgery since the mass was all throughout her chest and going into her abdomen. So they would have to choose whether to go through the chest or the abdomen and because she was having so much trouble breathing as her right lung wasn't doing anything it was very likely she wouldn't even be able to handle the anesthesia. Plus the surgery itself was already really risky, even if she was healthy at the time. Or, we could end her pain, and put her to sleep.

We had to make our decision when we spoke to vet at 9am on Saturday morning. We had already pretty much decided that surgery was out of the question based on the cost, if it had a higher rate of success then we would have found a way and made it happen, but it wasn't very likely at all that they would have been able to successfully remove the mass. When I called the vet, Lila was crying out in pain in the background, I instantly lost it and had a hard time forming any words to talk to the vet tech, we decided we better go right over there to see her. They had just given her some pain meds that hadn't kicked in yet. So by the time we got there she wasn't crying out anymore but was still not comfortable or at ease, until she saw us. We started petting her and talking to her and she calmed right down and started purring. We got to spend an hour with her talking and surrounding her with all her favorite things (a box, a bathrobe, a hair tie, a milk ring and her mouseys). We got to hold her head and pet her and tell her how much we love her as they injected her with the overdose of an anesthetic that would end her pain and suffering. It was the hardest thing ever. I've spent two days straight crying, my eyes are red and puffy and burning and my heart is completely broken. I felt closer to her than most people I know and I'm going to miss her sorely. She was a huge part of our lives the past three and a half years and having known her from the day she was born up until the day we had to say goodbye made it even harder. I am happy to know she's not suffering anymore, there just is no way this hole will ever be completely filled again because she was too unique and special. Good bye Lila kitty, you'll always be my favorite and you'll always have my heart.

6 weeks old:

She was approximately 8 or 9 weeks old when we went to visit our apartment for the first time and bring a few things up to start moving in:

3 months old:

It was pretty chilly in our Oswego. She loved her little sweater:

Our little couch gremlin. She used to go behind our futon/couch when we lived in our apartment and jump up to attack my hair or anything else we'd dangle back there: