Roxie

I may be posting this too soon.  My emotions are still pretty raw.  So excuse me if this post gets wrinkled with snot and tears.  A cat is just a kid with fur.

We got Roxie in January 2001.  Rob's mom picked her up off the side of the road at her workplace.  She was a full grown kitty and looked a lot like our first feline child, Doodle except that she did not have white on her face.

We believe Roxie was abused before she came to live with us.  She was very skittish of us in the beginning and would hide under the bed all the time.  She would swallow her food without chewing it and this would cause her to regurgitate it a lot of the time.  We tried several things to help her with this problem--surgery, different foods, feeding her separately from the other cats, but nothing really ever solved this problem.  We called her our "special needs" kitty.

Roxie became more loving towards us when we moved into this TINY 2 bedroom apartment while we were looking for a house in late 2002.  She was forced to live in a very small space with two humans and two other cats.  She learned to be a little more sociable.

Roxie had this amazing purr.   It was so LOUD.  At times she would sound like a car motor idling.  It was just a good feeling in the morning to be awoken by her at my side with that motor running.

This past Monday, I noticed a change in Roxie.  She had been sitting in our windowsill and had not moved.  Usually, she is an avid bird watcher and that day she had a very blank expression--it was like she was not even seeing the birds.

I picked her up to move her and I felt this lump on her right side that was not on her left.  She did not want to do anything but lie down.  We took her to the vet on Tuesday and found  out she had lost 4 lbs. since April.   Through an x-ray, we could see that she had a mass in her lungs and an abnormal bulge in her liver.

We decided to bring her home for a couple more days so that Seth could spend time with her.  Roxie is a cat who has always kept to herself during the day...it was never unusual for her to hide out underneath the bed until late afternoon.  What is so interesting is that she did not emerge these past couple of days until after Seth had gone to bed.  I think Seth had too much energy for her.

We took her to the vet this morning to have her put to sleep.  She lived out her last hours doing what she loved best--going into the garage, going out on the porch, laying on the trunk at the end of our bed,  and spending some time with Jack, our third feline child.  She was very weak and she went quickly this morning.

Rest in peace my feline child.