The Passing of a Bitchy Kitty

Thanksgiving eve while I was editing my paper for the gay law seminar I took this semester, my kitty Franklin came into the dining room acting odd. He was breathing from his mouth and drooling, and making a weird cough noise. Earlier he had messed in the floor around his food dish, which is very odd for him. When I picked him up, he yowled, and I could tell he had wet himself as well. We went to the emergency vet clinic, and it turns out he had cardiomyopathy, and likely had an aortic thromboembolism in his rear legs. Basically he had congestive heart failure and blood clots in his legs. The legs were ice cold and his temperature was very low. The vet gave almost no chance of recovery, so I made the very difficult decision to have him put to sleep. It was a pretty terrible evening, but we are getting by. I stayed with him during the event and saw him off, then buried him in a flower bed behind the house Thanksgiving morning.

Franklin was a Persian mix shelter kitty, and has always been a little neurotic over the year and a half I've had him, but the vets never found any health problems before now. His vet estimated that he was around five years old. He hated to be held, and if you insisted on doing it anyway, he would glare as though he wanted nothing more than to stab you in the face. In fact, he always kind of looked that way, in addition to bearing a striking resemblance to Wilford Brimley. He was a cranky little asshole, and I miss him terribly.