Thank you all for your thoughts and your kindness. We are still both currently alternating between crying jags and shock, and trying to calm down and collect ourselves. Marble and Chestnut still seem not to know what’s going on, because Sunshine has been at the vet overnight before, but they’ll soon figure it out.
We had made an appointment for Sunshine to have his teeth cleaned yesterday. If cats develop dental problems, it can lead to infections, heart problems and liver problems later in life, and his teeth had gotten pretty built up with tartar. Due to the nature of the procedure, they have to place the cats under general anesthesia.
Apparently, about halfway through the procedure, Sunshine’s heart monitor indicated his heart had stopped. The staff performed CPR and administered epinephrine, and got back a brief, weak heartbeat, and then he passed away.
The vet’s office called me, I went to Leigh-Anne’s office, and after we both had a long, good cry, we went to the vet to see him. He looked so still, and peaceful, just like we had seen him laying in the sunlight in the window so many times. We both petted him, and held him, and told him we loved him and how sorry we were. We cried, and raged, and pleaded desperately for him to wake up, to come back, for his little back foot to twitch like it did when he got tickled, for his little chest to rise and fall . . . but it didn’t. We stayed with him as long as we could bear, and then we covered him up, told him we loved him, and said goodbye.
The doctor performed a necropsy for us and determined that he suffered from restrictive hypertrophic myopathy. In other words, the wall of his heart was unusually thickened, especially around the left ventricle, which pumps the blood into the body. She said he really didn’t have a very large blood supply for a cat his size, and it was kind of surprising that he was as old as he was with such a small heart. We know how big it really was, though.
It was so hard and so shocking for us, and still is, because he wasn’t sick. He didn’t have FIV, or leukemia, or kidney failure. He was happy and healthy, and content to lay in the sun and sleep all day. We think maybe the fact that he was so sedentary helped keep him in our lives as long as he stayed, or maybe he knew somehow that he couldn’t be too active. It’s difficult to be in the house because so many things remind us of him. The footstool he used to lay on, the orange hair on the curtains, his favorite brush . . . so many things.
We’re having him cremated, and will be getting his remains back next week. We’re going to sit down together and build a special little shelf for him, someplace beautiful, from where, in our minds at least, he can sit and look out the window, and chase all the birds and squirrels he never got to chase, and run in the sun, and be free.
We miss you, boy. Be safe, wherever you are.
