# In Loving Memory of Tigris 27.02.2007 - 15.01.2008



## KerLynx (Jan 19, 2008)

We lost our little kitty to FIP...

He fought with it his entire life, but in the end it proved to be stronger than him. 

I had promised myself I will only give up hope on him when he leaves. I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn't at least try to save his life...but now I can't live with myself thinking that maybe I should've let go of him sooner.

Thinking back it was like a rollercoaster - he was doing great, then he was sick again, then there was hope, then we nearly lost him, then he got better again and it just continued on and on like that...but there’s only so little a small creature’s body like that can tolerate.

I don't even know much this will help, but in a way I feel like I should let the tears roll down my cheecks and write his story.

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His life in some way begins at an old abandoned house not far from the city where her Mommy lived with several other stray cats. 

It didn’t take long before the rescuers heard of the place and captured as many cats as they could and sent them all over the country to shelter homes, cat safety homes and some lucky ones even to their new real homes.

Some of the females were pregnant and sadly there was no other way, but to schedule all of them for spaying and aborting the unborn kittens...there just isn’t enough room for all of them and nearly all shelter homes are filled with cages full of loveable furballs waiting to be adopted.

But for some reason on the scheduled day for one of them, the person who had rescued my lil ones Mommy, looked at the pregnant cat peacefully sleeping in the sunlight and thought, „No...you will have beautiful babies that will make this world a better place...” and she cancelled the time deciding to let her have her babies and spay her after that.

On February the 27th 2007 four little creatures were born into this world. And as time went on and the kittens grew bigger it was certain that the rescuer had not been wrong – the kittens were simply gorgeous! Two of them were adorable little striped kittens and while one of them was a smiple Black and White mix he had amazingly 6 toes (!!!) and the last one was a handsome little boy with strinking blue eyes and siamese-tiger-like coat.

All of them found good homes, but there was trouble with the last one. They got a lot of calls and e-mails, but a lot of people wanted him simply because of his appearance...they wanted him as an accesory. So they took down his pictures and decided to wait for a family that would love him for who he is.

Around that time my family and I made a decision to adobt another cat, because we thought Anubis could use the company, because whenever he was on the balcony and another cat was around he got really playful and we paniced thining he’ll jump down any day now, if we don’t do something. He was also getting a tad bit too much overweight so we hoped the new kitten would make him more active and healthy...

We didn’t even begin looking really when my mom simply within small-talk told one of her friends about this, who then told one of her relatives who then called up a few of her friends who then reached a Vet who was working with one of the rescuers...and before we knew it – we were allowed to meet him ^ ^

The second we could hold him, kiss that lil nose of his and cuddle with him we decided to keep him and not long passed before he was getting to know his new home and provided quite a big surprise/shock to Anubis, because he was so little and every time Anubis looked at the little kitten I swear he must've thought, „THIS is a cat???”

We argued over the name for quite some time (since at the shelter they had given him the name Leopold, while he looked more like a tiger than a leon) till we decided to call him Tigris (I started calling him Tiger and then my dad said we should change it to Tigris).

There just isn't enough words in any language known to man to explain what impact he had on everyone and just how deep and strong those little paw-prints in our hearts are. 

But I don't think I have to explain. 

Absolutely everyone who knows the love of a creature who is so small and yet fill us up with so much love and make us complete knows the feeling...

Everyone who knows the softness of their paws, the wisdom in their eyes and meaning they give to our life understands it. 

No words are necessary...

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I don't think I even fully understand right now just what he was meant to do in this world and why he couldn't stay...

...

When his sickness began and we first contacted the vet it was because he seemed in pain and simply sat in a corner with a blank and lifeless look in his eyes. He didn't play and ate/drank very little. 

And a few days later he started vomiting and the only thing coming out was bubbly yellow fluid. 

Around that time he developed a very high fever and when the vet saw him she said that he is unbeliavably small for his age (he was around 2 kg). She gave him antibiotics, medication against nausea, also medication against worms and something to take down the fever. We were also told that at the Safety Home he had had an eye infection, worms and cat fungus, but all of those were cured (and he had had all his shots and vaccination as well). 

I won’t even bother trying to remember the exact names of the medication since in the end we tried so many of them.

He didn’t get any better so the vet took a blood sample, but he was fighting so furiously and with the little blood she had she could only test his liver and kidneys - both tests showed everything's normal, but as time went on Tigris became extremly dehydrated and the Vet began giving him subcutaneous fluid. 

After another home visit (the Vet lives very close to us) she felt his belly and said there’s something there and unlike poop or food it feels stronger and tougher. We were devastated. Tumour? Cancer? But she tried to comfort us saying one of her own cats swallowed a hairband once, but as soon as it was removed the kitty was back to normal in no time.

We didn’t want to wait with anything and she drove me to a nearby clinic for an x-ray and ultrasonography. The x-ray showed nothing, but the ultrasonography showed a mass in his duodenum and a blood vessel right through it.

I came back from the clinic crying my eyes out…they said they’re not sure what it is, but they didn’t give much hope of it being harmless because of the blood vessel.

We decided to have a diagnostic surgery on him and see what it could be. Unfortunately I’m not that good in English to explain just what the vet discussed and said it could be but there were a lot of different options...

And again she was unbelievably kind to pick him up herself, drive him to the clinic, perform the surgery and later bring him back as well (she took him around 5 pm and brought back around 8 – 9 pm).

The results of the diagnostic surgery showed that everything had been normal except for the duodenum which was blood-red and covered with tiny little white dots (she took a few samples and sent them for tests to the laboratory). 

There was no fluid gathering in his abdominal cavity. 

When he came back he was lying in the transport cage, but desperately gnawing at the bars and trying to get out... he calmed down once my sister picked him up and held him in her arms. The vet told us he can’t have a high fever and he can’t be completely ignored since hypothermia would be extremely dangerous to him. She told us how to take care of him and gave us her cell phone number and said we can call her anytime we run into trouble.

I was up almost the entire night - feeding him miniature portions of food every 30 min, checking his temperature, massaging him to keep his blood flowing and making sure he’d fully come out of the narcosis.

The vet had also given us two bags of syringes – in one of them were painkillers and in the other one the same medication we used before against nausea. We were supposed to inject him ourselves (since it was getting so late and the vet had recently had a baby and had to go take care of him) and around 3.30 am he needed his painkiller, but my sister and I failed to inject him…

The first dose missed and got squirted all over his fur and my sister literally injected the painkiller into her own thumb at the second try. We didn't want to waste another dose so I let him go, but because I had wrapped him in a towel...and…probably held onto him too tightly to keep him from moving... the cut on his belly started to bleed and he ran away and hid himself.

I became hysterical and we called the Vet (3.30 am) and she picked up! She told us not to panic and worry, saying it’s normal for fluids mixed with a little bit of blood to gather around recent wounds like that - and they have to come out somehow! She said that if he doesn't seem to be in pain then we can calm down, clean up the fluid and in the morning she'll come by as soon as she can, if not we should try injecting him one more time. 

But my family then sent me off to bed to sleep a little and when I woke up he was happily purring and walking around and eating/drinking normally without the painkiller and the other medication agaist nausea.

(The tests of the little white dots came back a couple of days later, showing that they had appeared due to a huge inflammation.)

The Vet began to suspect pancreatitis and Tigris was put on a special diet, antibiotics, subcutaneous fluid and painkillers (just in case). 

After that the cut healed, the hair grew back and he didn’t need ANY medication. 

He was back to being a playful, loving and simply adorable kitten ^ ^ he ran around everywhere and anywhere he could like crazy, got to know his home even better and terrorized my big fat cat :3 I have so so many unbelievably adorable memories from that time…We grew more and more attached to him, we began to love him so much…the one month he was completely healthy was short, but filled with so many precious memories and things that make me smile whenever I suddenly get a flashback and then feel so much pain when I realise those will forever be the only memories of him and new ones can't be made...

The only problem that remained was his breathing, which just seemed faster than it should be, but when the Vet listened to his lungs she couldn't hear anything suspicious or a sign that something was wrong with his lungs or heart.

But things slowly became bad again...and I contacted the Vet as fast as I could.

She thought he might've gotten a chance to eat my other cats (dry) food (he still had to be on the special diet) and even though I buy both my cats food from the clinic (so it isn't cheap grocery store pet food) she said it could've caused his pancreas to over work again and make him feel sick.

She explained that when the pancreas is inflammatory, but it's canaliculus' are blocked it will release the enzymes all over the body (if he eats foods that will trigger the pancreas to do that) and into the blood stream causing the blood to coagulate within the veins (making him anemic - that way though his breathing was explained and she gave us hope that he might be able to pull through)... she also explained that there are different kind of reasons for anemia and because we can't be sure what's causing it she suggested we give him raw red meat because of the iron in it (I couldn't notice any difference, but at least he loved the meat and growled/purred when he got to eat it).

I began giving him pancreas enzymes as well. They were expensive, but I made a deal with the owner of probably my cats aunt (who was also having problems like that), we split the bottle and the price in half. 

With the enzymes we hoped that way his own pancreas would calm down and the antibiotics would eventually cure it...

Nothing improved though. He threw up a couple of times, kept losing weight (during the month he was okay he gained around 500g - going up to around 2,5kg...he was around 7 - 8 months old), he still had trouble breathing and his heart rate accelerated, his blood was still thick, he was dehydrated... but his tongue and gums were pink and his eyes were clear.

We tried another antibiotic, switched his food to a different type, I gave him a gel-like thing called "Nutri Plus Cat" which gave him extra vitamins and everything else he needed but couldn't get out of his diet food. I took a 30 min bus ride to the city to another clinic to get three quite expensive shots done that would boost his immune system - had to buy even a 4th one because a needle broke causing over half the dose to simply squeeze out from the side.

The Vet then began a 7 day course of Hormones and for 1,5 months I walked to her house every single day to give Tigris subcutaenous fluid. He was getting a little bit better and we were again hoping that after all this he would finally get better, but because of a stupid mistake by another family member he ate a different kind of food (sometimes we buy these miniature cans of special treat-like foods they love but shouldn't eat too often) - that night he nearly collapsed and by the time I made it to the Vet he was drooling and seemed dizzy/nauseus. 

To the Vet though it confirmed that he was sensitive to food and the more we thought about it the more logical it seemed he had Pancreatitis. She gave hope that Pancreatitis is something that can be cured or at least tamed.

I then took him to her clinic (I was running between 3 different clinics) for another blood test and I also brought with me a poop test. 

The poop itself was normal and tests showed no trace of Giardia, worms or any other bacteria.

...I also wanted to kill the people who worked at the laboratory - not only because the blood test was the only reason I took him to the clinic, but also because it was so hard getting his blood sample that we simply had no other choice but to give him a small dose of narcosis - taking that huge risk with his heart and breathing problems - and what did the people at the laboratory say? 

"Sorry, but the amount of the sample was too small to conduct any tests on it..." 

And they simply threw the sample away, while all we wanted them to do was look at the blood under a microscope and count the cells, because the Vet was suspicious he might have a rare defect that his body is creating too many dead cells and those are causing all sorts of problems. They didn't do the tests and there was nothing we could do since we didn't want to put him through another blood test... and we weren't sure we'd even be able to get any more blood from him either.

We then tried another kind of antibiotic, continued with the subcutaneous fluid, hormones and she wrote a long letter of all the things done to him and told me to talk to another very good Vet, give him the letter and hopefully he'd be able to help somehow. 

And because his breathing had become worse, but nothing suspicious could be heard, she told me to get a chest x-ray done ASAP and bring it with me when I went to see the other Vet. 

We were becoming desperate... and we wanted to try and talk to as many people possible and see if anyone knew what to do or how to help.

Regarding the x-ray. She was actually hoping he'd have a little bit of fluid in his lungs so we could find a way to draw out some of it and test it for FIP (it had something to do with counting some kind of cells or something similar and if those were over 50% it would've been sure he had FIP). 

(We were more and more suspicious of FIP, but we still didn't cross out Pancreatitis on the list. And the Vet said that with his symptoms it might also be something we've missed - that the real reason for his sickness had hidden itself behind all the other symptoms.) 

Only one clinic was willing to take the x-ray at such a short notice - I begged them, saying it's extremly important and I don't care how much it costs, but the x-ray had to be done that same day before 5 pm (when I had to go consult the other Vet) So eventually they were willing to slip us in between the times and simply take the x-ray.

It showed that 4/5 of his lungs had collapsed and/or were filled with fluid.

The other Vet didn't say it's hopeless though and thought the problem was his heart and said if we can fix his heart the fluid in the lungs would go away on it's own and Tigris still has a small chance of surviving...he also did a Cat AIDS and Cat Leukemia test - both were negative...but technically the only thing we really got from that clinic was another huge bill, Tigris' paw had a nasty blue bruise on it where they took the blood sample and pills that would supposedly support the heart and allow it to transport oxygen faster and more to the organs.

But my Vet said that those pills are used as a last resort, since when an animal begins to take them they can no longer survive without them. She also said that if you give too little it won't have any affect, but if you give too much it will be too toxic for the animal. So I had to be really careful about the dosage and making sure I'd give him 2/5 of the pill every day.

I also started giving him a different kind of medication to help get the fluids out of his lungs, continued with the antibiotics, I added vitamins, the heart pill and hormones. 

He was taking 5 pills every single day. 

The Vet taught me how to give him subcutanious fluids myself - so once I learnt to handle the needle I could treat him at home and it would be less stress on him. 

But at home he wasn't scared, thus he fought back more than at the Vet's house and pretty soon it became impossible for me to do it on my own.

Soon the Vet managed to somehow do another blood test and when I went to her place to pick up some medicine she made me sit down with her and showed me two gigantic 1500 paged books about cat diseases, health and so on and showed me the part about FIP... there was a long list of things cats with FIP might or might not have and she just talked to me, pointed out what Tigris' symptoms are, his blood tests show and so on...she said I can hate her for saying it, but the odds of him making it are very slim and the odds of him having FIP are very high. 

I told her I really don't want to give up hope... and after so many things and everything he's been through, to put him down now would be unimaginable. Why fight for so long and then just give up like that? I said I don't hate her for saying we should say our goodbyes to him, but I also said I still want him to become one of her positive stories - a story of a lil kitty who went through so much and lived happily ever after...miracles happen. 

I wasn't mad at her for saying he probably won't make it - because of that the moments I spent with him were more cherished and more valuable than anything else in this world... 

But I found myself sitting down several times and staring at the pile of pills, the fluid bottle, the needle, the pile of materials about him and all those things...and trying to decide if I really should let him go. 

But he always made me change my mind by suddenly appearing next to the chair and attempting to jump to my lap (nearly falling several times and creating deep cuts on my thigh since he was too weak to make the entire jump)...but he would simply sleep in my arms or on my lap like that. 

Sometimes I wonder if we really deserve the love they have for us...

I was the one who dragged him to Vets and clinics, I gave him all those pills and I was sticking a needle into his neck every now and then...and still he trusted me.

Eventually he was below 2kg...around 1,7kg (I'm guessing since I didn't weigh him) and he was around 10 and a half months old...he was pale, his fur had become more white and lost it's colour, he had more bones sticking out that anything else, his first legs were shaved and blood had been taken so many times they looked awful and he barely moved around, choosing to lay on the bathroom floor which we kept on max heat for him. He still went to the litter box and tried doing cat-like things but Anubis took over grooming him and tried to be close to him as much as possible.

I gave up on him...

In my mind I kept thinking that everything we've done will work eventually and he can live a very long life...but in my heart I knew his time was running out.

I told him I love him and kissed him everytime I had to leave somewhere.

And whatever medication I gave him after that was no longer to cure him, but to make him feel better and give him a chance to leave peacefully and without pain.

On January 15th he took his last breath and left us.

When we found him it seemed as if he had laid down to sleep and slowly drifted away from his world. 

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*In Memory Of All The Lost Cats*
By Astrid Reinla

Where do all the cats walk,
When they don't come home?
Far away at Cassiopeia,
They light a fire.

They sit in a circle,
And in the light of the pale flames,
In the softest of whispers,
The God of Cats speaks to them.

In the Ursa Major they ride,
Over the Starry sky.
The Shepherd will protect them from the cold,
And the night will embrace them.

Their fur will be like silk,
Their scars and wounds will heal.
And their shining eyes,
Will become the bright stars of the sky...

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He is now sleeping inside a warm sweater in a forest not far from us.

Sweet dreams little one!
You will forever be loved and missed by us!!!


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## morea (Feb 8, 2005)

I am so sorry for your loss. It is heartbreaking to lose such a special friend. How wonderful that he had you in his life to care for him, to love him, and to encourage him right up to the end.


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## Chattycat (Nov 25, 2006)

I am so sorry for your heartbreaking loss. You gave it your all, & you really let this little sweet kitty know he was special & he was loved. There was nothing more or less that you could have done. You loved him with all of your heart, & he was blessed to have you in his life. Be comforted in knowing that you gave him the happiest possible life he could have had. However short, his life certainly was full of more love than most kitties see in a 20 year lifespan. God bless you during your time of grief.


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## Duchess (Dec 26, 2007)

I don't think you gave up on him.

I think you made the decision that all pet owners have to, eventually, when it comes down to whether to let your loving pet live out his last days in peace and comfort that can be provided through minimal medication, or in misery over being constantly forced to the vet, tapped for blood over and over, and having tons of medication forced on them.

Sometimes it can be hard to believe that what's best for our beloved companions is to stop fighting for their lives and start making them comfortable for their deaths. I believe it's probably the hardest part about owning a pet that you love with all your heart.

I'm terribly sorry for your loss, but I'm sure he'll be waiting for you with kisses of thanks when you join him.


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## Jeanie (Jun 18, 2003)

Sometimes even love like yours can't heal their precious little bodies, but if it had been possible, I know you would have done it. It's so terribly hard to lose a pet that is loved so much, but it's a comfort to know that God knows every sparrow that falls, and He knows your little friend. I believe your sweet kitty is purring in the arms of angels. Knowing how much we are loved, I believe that you will hold him again some day. Until then, I hope your memories of his good days will comfort you. God bless.


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## Leazie (Apr 14, 2007)

Your precious little one is at peace now. You could not have fought harder for him if you had all the money in the world, all the specialists right at your door step. You gave him everything, and the monst important thing- love and devotion.

I hope that your heart begins to heal soon. You are are very, very special person.


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## chaoticborders (Nov 27, 2006)

I'm so sorry for your loss. You were so wonderful to him, please don't feel like you gave up on him. ((hugs))


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## Siamese Louise (Jan 28, 2008)

Your story about Tigris brought tears to my eyes. It's just so hard to lose a cat. You were obviously a wonderful parent and absolutely devoted to him. No one could have loved him any more. I'm sure that he has crossed the Rainbow Bridge and is now feeling no more pain, only contentment. God bless you. Purrs,


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