Five Thousand Dollar Cat

ZIG ZAG 8/22/03 - 10/2/09

I sit here and stare at the blank text box for my next blog post not knowing what to name this post or even where to start. All I know is that it's dedicated to my late Zig-Zag kitty and the rest will come to me as I go; that's pretty much how I do this thing called life...make it up as I go. This blog is supposed to be all about Alexis, my Doberman, but she and Zig were so much a part of each other that I think it's appropo to memorialize him here.

Zig-Zag kitty's life had a tumultuous start and so I suppose the rest of his life just followed suit and mimicked that tumult. (Yes, I've been known to throw a bit of Yiddish into my blogs.) Unbeknownst to us, Zig was born under our deck in August, 2003 only to be abandoned by his feral mother 10 days later. We were never sure why she abandoned him; maybe he was sickly or maybe there were just too many dam dogs in the yard and she couldn't come back for him. (chicken shit!) She wasn't winning any mother-of-the-year awards on this one. Either way my fenced backyard where I run doggie daycare was an odd location for her to pop out a litter of kittens in the first place but when I look back on it maybe there was some infinite wisdom there after all. None the less, Alexis found the kitty under the deck tucked away behind the usual stuff that is stored under decks; garden tools, bikes, (i have a bike?) lawn tractor and the like. Oh how he cried out for his mommy! We left him there all day but checking on him every few hours, hoping the mother would come back for him but by night fall she did not return so we took him in. The rest, as they say, is history but what an expensive history lesson it was!

Do you have any idea how to take care of a 10 day old kitten? No but I was sure it involved a bottle and some formula so off to the pet supply store we went. It just so happened the Taunton Animal Shelter was holding their cat adoption day there so we sought advice from them how to care for such a young animal. We were a little horrified to find out that kittens this young cannot "relieve themselves" on their own. The mother has to stimulate them by licking their bottoms to get them to pee and poop. OOps sorry should have warned you about the gross factor! We were also told that this kitten would likely not survive. OK miss negative cat shelter lady but you don't know me very well! No kitten's gonna die on my watch! We had our work cut out for us but little did we know we had miss Nightingale to help us...Alexis' maternal instinct kicked into high gear and she actually helped take care of the kitty. Usually she just wants to kill kitties she sees outside but close-up she turns into, well, a pussy cat. She would lick his face clean after he ate his formula, she would lick his ears clean and she would also have the unfortunate task of stimulating the kitty so he could empty his bladder and bowel. Of course she didn't seem to think it was as gross as we did. (Kinda makes that whole human baby diaper changing task sound easy doesn't it?) If Zig cried, Alexis came running! This went on for a few weeks until kitty was out of the danger zone for survival and until he could go potty on his own. Many days and nights of wrapping him tight in a towel like a kitty burrito and holding him like a tiny, little baby to give him his bottle. He would claw and cling to that bottle for dear life! Weeks of watching him grow stronger. Weeks of watching Alexis take care of her baby. By week three I had sent out emails that we would need a good home for this kitten in the near future. But who the heck can give up a cute little kitty burrito after all that? One day I found my self just looking down at him all wrapped up in his baby bunting and it hit me; "oh-oh I love him and I want to keep him". Dave was thrilled (NOT). Naming him was easy! He had this funny little white crooked stripe on his tail and back and he would literally zoom from room to room, from one direction to another. Zig-Zag Kitty was beyond a perfect name for him. The rest is history and what an expensive history it was. Oh shoot, I already said that...well the name of this post IS "Five Thousand Dollar Cat" after all.

The first few years were typical; vaccinations, neutering, watching Zig & Alexis become more and more inseparable, etc. BUT (there's always a big BUT) four short years into our life with this black and white tuxedo wearing zigging and zagging back and forth dog loving cat his bladder became blocked. This is very common in house cats (not sure why but every cat I've ever had has developed crystals in the bladder which end up getting blocked so they can't pee, a/k/a Feline Urological Syndrome or FUS). You wont mistake it for anything else. Besides the obvious straining to urinate and spending copious amounts of time in the litter box with little results, a cat with a blocked bladder will symptomatically crouch and become very vocal. Wouldn't you? Unblocking them is simple, if you've spent 6 years in veterinary school, that is. The animal is sedated and catheterized and the bladder is flushed with saline to remove the crystals. Badda Bing Badda Boom! This has been a typical, non-eventful procedure every time in my other cats. Oh but not THIS black and white tuxedo wearing zigging and zagging back and forth dog loving cat! We brought him to our regular vet who shall remain nameless....awww what the heck I'll tell you. It was Hanson Animal Hospital. They performed a flush earlier in the evening but it didn't quite work so they kept him overnight so they could try again. Well during that 2nd try they accidentally perforated the bladder!! We got a very matter-of-fact-non-apologetic call at 11:00pm that the cat needed emergency surgery and we would have to take him to a 24 hour facility. Say whaaaaaaat? and oh by the way, before you can take him you owe us $1,000. Say whoooooooo? Those of you that know me can imagine my disgust and anger, which was not held back during that 11:00pm phone call, at the fact that I had to PAY them to almost kill my cat. Well Hanson Animal Hospital had us by the schnarglies; what could we do? Thank God for credit cards and equity lines of credit that's all I can say. We arrived around midnight with said credit cards and checkbook in hand and brought the semi-sedated cat with a catheter in one end and IV in the other to Westbridge Animal Emergency Hospital. If you know anything about 24 hour emergency animal care the price depends on what time you walk through the door. The price at midnight is higher than at 11pm. Now had we walked in at 11pm we probably could have saved a couple hundred dollars but I don't have THAT much control over the universe no matter how many times I watch The Secret DVD. We arrived around 1am. Because we called ahead they were ready for us and they scooted him into surgery. But no sooner had we let out a breath of relief had the receptionist whipped up a nice hefty estimate for us to the tune of $3400 of which a 50% deposit is required on the spot. Again, thank god for the credit card and equity line. Mind me when I tell you this was all the EASY part of the story! Yes it gets worse. What could possibly be worse you say? Well, he was supposed to only be in there for a few days. But three days turned into four and four turned into five and so on, of which every day they said "he should be able to go home tomorrow". If only i had a thousand dollars for every time they said that I could have paid the bill in cash! The issues is, the same as it is with people, when a catheter is removed you can't go home until you can pee on your own. Well Zig Zag kitty was having severe urethra spasms and he couldn't urinate so they had to keep reinserting the catheter, which in itself is traumatizing to the urethra and can cause scarring. OK so stop doing that! This "he should be able to go home tomorrow" went on for a week and a half to the high-pitched tune of $250/day ON TOP of the surgery cost plus trying every medication under the sun to try to relieve the spasms! Needless to say we blew their original estimate out of the water like open season on a mallard! I don't even want to tell you how much the final bill was. YET! (I can hear your internal calculators going CHA CHING) Every day we grappled with spending that much money vs. having him euthanized. I'm not going to lie; Dave and I argued about this every day during this ordeal. He would ask "what's the line in the sand, how much are we going to spend here?" and I couldn't answer the question. All I could say was "I don't know" ...I did know that I didn't want to be one of THOSE people who put down an otherwise healthy, young animal because we didn't want to spend the money. I felt his frustration. He felt mine. We were emotionally drained and soon becoming financially drained. The piggy bank was becoming anorexic! We jokingly referred to it as a money hemorrhage. We visited Zig every few days and even started to bring Alexis with us hoping that would help him along faster. I'm not sure it did but it made us feel better I guess. Approaching the end of the second week they told us once again "he should be able to go home tomorrow." It was like a bad version of Groundhog Day minus the "I've Got You Babe" song. Well, Dave just about lost his mind and told them that Zig is going home tomorrow come hell or high water. We went in the next morning with check book in hand to pay their rent for the next few months and brought Zig home. All told between the Hanson Vet bill and the Westbridge vet bill we spent ((drum roll please))...wait for it...$4973!! I know, you're gasping for air right now aren't you?!

John Howard Payne wasn't just whistling Dixie when he said "Amid pleasures and palaces though we may roam; be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." Neither was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Zig started to improve immediately as soon as he was back with his beloved surrogate Doberman mother, Alexis. Geesh we shouldda brought him home sooner. We still had a long row to hoe but there was a light at the end of the tunnel that he would be ok. For several months after we had to force feed him his muscle relaxing pills twice a day. We had to survey the litter box every time he went in it, which was probably 5-10 times a day, to monitor his output. We added Chinese herbs to his food to aid in his bladder function. And best of all we had to switch him to a very expensive food that would prevent the crystals from returning. We also had to tell the entire family that year that we had to scale back on Christmas and that we would only be buying gifts for the youngest children of which there were few of.

Eventually Zig fully recovered and never had another episode. He went on to be a healthy, happy cat for the next two years but remember my previous reference to his tumultuous life ... Healthy and happy until his stroke this past October. It just came out of the blue. We woke up one Friday morning to find him paralyzed from the waist down. It didn't really seem to stop him though; he dragged himself around pretty good. But I knew this was bad! Dave brought him to the vet; I could not go as I had daycare dogs to tend to. I thought maybe he fell or Lexi stepped on him in the middle of the night but the vet could find no injuries on the xray or anything else conclusive in the blood work. Over the phone we made the decision to euthanize him but I made Dave bring Zig home first so we could spend the rest of the day with him. I kept it together until my last daycare dog had gone home. I laid on the couch with Zig and just bawled! Dave and I returned to the vet that evening together with Alexis to give Zig a proper farewell with his "pack" around him to send him off to the next world.

I must mention Zig was an integral part of my doggie daycare business over the last five or six years. Many times customers would come through either with an adopted dog or young puppy not knowing if their dog got along with cats. Zig made sure they did. He's even responsible for fully rehabilitating Brady the Boxer who had a less than healthy appetite for cats when she first started coming to D2D. Because Zig grew up with dogs all around him he was fearless of them and acted very much like one so he would always make an appearance at the meet-n-greets to sniff out the new dogs. And he would often play, nap and eat among them during daycare and boarding. As a result all of my dogs had some exposure and interaction with a cat, which enhanced their social skills and allowed my customers the possibility of owning a cat one day as a companion to their dog. My remaining cat, Tiny Tim, has some big shoes to fill. 'Not sure if he's up for the task...Zig always held his ground when encountering dogs. Tiny on the other hand, will run for the hills. If it runs, a dog will chase it. Zig knew that somehow so he stayed put and claimed his territory and won out every time. 'Shouldda named him Alpha Cat.

I'm glad Zig was able to make it into one of my blog posts before he died. My "What's In A Name" post gets rolling with the many nick-names of Zig-Zag kitty so be sure to scroll back and read that one.

I've had pets all my life. I've loved and lost many. I go into it every time knowing full well that some day I will have to usher them into the next life. That's just how it goes. But this one made me a little angry. What was it all for? All that saving and rescuing we did. All that money spent. Only to get a measly six years worth of living and loving. But you know me; I can find the "everything happens for a reason" in anything so I've gotta look at it like this... If we had never found him under the deck he probably would have died. Or if his mother never abandoned him he probably wouldn't have survived in the wild to six years old anyway. (Ferals typically live shorter lives) Or if he did survive to six years old in the wild he would have woken up paralyzed one day out there, instead of in our warm toasty house and he would have struggled to survive or would have become a sitting duck for coyotes. So I guess in the end we saved him from a savage death no matter how you look at it. Not exactly the nine lives I was hoping for but I can live with that.

Now Zig lives in my heart, and on my screen saver. I get to see him in the sink every day like he never left. And I have a video of him and Alexis cuddling so that I can hear him purring any time I want. Modern technology does somehow ease the pain a bit.




We never did go back to Hanson Animal Hospital. We moved all our pets and their records to Westbridge because I can just about guarantee that if an emergency is going to happen with our pets, it's gonna happen at midnight.

Zig was a truly unique cat and he will be missed by humans and dogs alike! Bye Bye Boop Kitty!

"IT BREAKS MY HEART EVERY TIME A BELOVED ANIMAL LEAVES THIS WORLD ... BUT A BROKEN HEART MAKES MORE ROOM TO LOVE AGAIN" ...ME