07/10/2025
Paco (~12-14) fought the good fight, and gained his wings 🪽
I am struggling so much tonight. I adopted this little clunky cat last March was advertised as 8 at our shelter, but upon getting him it began to become apparent that he is a senior guy with lots of health issues.
Most notably, end of July he ended up in congestive heart failure. I rushed him to the ER 4 times since then, met with our local vet on so many occasions and he had a cardiologist. About 4 weeks ago, we got him on a thyroid med for hyperthyroidism & I felt so optimistic that this was it, and 4 weeks went by which is the longest we’ve been away from the ER/local vet, and I was so hopeful he’d live a long awesome life with me, as there has been no stone unturned so far with his diagnoses. I got him on meds for his arthritis that worked wonders, he got his teeth pulled for a painless mouth that he happily devoured everything in sight after, had an oncologist monitoring a mass in his liver & abdomen, and a cardiologist on standby for his heart. I loved him dearly and caring for him and watching him thrive in ways he didn’t even know he could before me, has been the most rewarding thing in my life. Early this morning to my dismay, he went back into heart failure. This whole week starting Monday he had lost his appetite, and hadn’t pooped for the last few days. He had blood work on Thursday for his organ functions after a med checkup, and all organs looked great. Despite his organ functions looking great on that thursday when the blood work was done, he still had two back to back fainting spells Friday despite being on high doses of his heart meds with no fluid in his lungs present at that time. I rushed him to the ER this morning at 3 am when I noticed his breathing, where they gave him an extra dose of heart meds and transferred us to his cardiologist, 3 hours away. I noticed his breathing and effort getting worse and worse, and at that point still had a 2 hour and 20 minute drive to make, and I told myself I’d give myself until we passed thru my town (the er vet was 1 hr 30 mins away from my town in the opposite direction of cardiologist), and once I got to city limits I had to be real with myself and weigh my options: potentially have his heart fail while driving in the car, get him to the cardiologist & he stayed over the weekend with no guarantee he’d get better (fainting spells I guess with meds during heart failure, can often signal end stage heart failure where the heart is too weak to pump adequate blood at that point I learned 😔), or take him home, let him be in his favorite spot and let ME be present with him instead of stressed and driving, and make the decision to let him rest.
I let him rest. 😔 I struggle with that given his blood work, but his CHF keeps coming back despite it all. His arthritis was also worsening when we last checked and his mass grew a cm since March, these were also all things I weighed. he fought so hard and he was a shelter cat who LOVED life with me..seriously. I was his girl and he was mine and I loved him so much and he was SO happy 😭 we slept together every night and I loved him so dearly. I’m struggling and honesrly nauseous thinking about if I made the right call since it wasn’t so straightforward as “there’s nothing we can do”, but we’ve been to the ER vet almost every couple of weeks minus these last 4, for 36 hour stays where he’s stabilized..and then it fails again 😔 and he’s elderly and I just wanted him to go as peacefully as he could. I worry I made a premature call or the wrong one..idk but his absence is deafening tonight and I feel so terrible 😔
