Fred-n-Sara

Last night sometime one of our cats, well, originally my cat, Casper passed away.  He had been sick for a while, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise, but that doesn’t mean it hurt any less.

He had been prone to UTIs since Calvin was born.  The stress of the new babies, we thought, triggered these, but it may have been something more.  In late November he got his 3rd UTI and the vet told us that we should switch his food to support a healthier urinary tract as well as overall lifestyle for him and our other two cats.  Well, Casper, who has never been a picky eater, didn’t like the new prescription food.  He went on a hunger strike and tried to eat anything else he could, including dog food and table scraps (thanks to Calvin, he was able to keep this up for a little while).  Then he just stopped eating all together.  By Christmas we noticed that he was losing a considerable amount of weight, and still wasn’t eating the new cat food, so we switched back over to the food we had been feeding the cats before.  We thought that fixed the problem and he’d start gaining weight back.  Well, we were wrong.  He never started eating again.  And he started urinating in different spots around the house.  So back to the vet, who gave us more antibiotics for his UTI.  But that didn’t fix the problem.

Last weekend I noticed that he had become really yellow under his black coat.  So after some googling, I found that he probably had liver failure from not eating for so long.  So Fred takes him back to the vet who tells us that this isn’t the end for my 5 year old cat; he could insert a feeding tube into his stomach and we could force feed him back to health.  He told us the procedure had an 85% survival rate.  We took a day to think it over, because with 2 small children, tube feeding a cat every 3 hours or so is not easy.  But in the end, we couldn’t not try, this is my Casper, the feistiest black cat known to man!  Unfortunately, we can’t add him to the 85% of cats who survive and thrive after liver failure.  He died sometime last night, 1/29/10.

So here’s a few pictures that I found today that made me remember all the good times

He loved his pink string and his “jungle.”

He loved Nina (sometimes) and the babies, even if they were loud!

But most of all, I think he loved being close to the action, he never missed anything!

He will be missed very much.

It’s been a while since I updated the site, sorry.  Fred and I were both off for Christmas break, but we were more busy than when we were working!  Now that we’re both back at work, I “should” have a little extra time.  Haha, what am I thinking?  I have 2 babies!  By the time they’re in bed, I’m too tired to see straight!  I really don’t know how Fred keeps up with his other websites all the time.  But anyway, back to the post…

Christmas was great!  Thank you to all our friends and family who made it wonderful!  Here’s a few pictures from Christmas day.

Oliver says, “Let’s get on with my first Christmas!”

Our tree and Cal, playing with a toy he got the night before from Grandma and Grandpop.  He totally wasn’t interested in opening presents.  You’d think he’d love ripping off the paper, he’s destructive like that any other day.

After breakfast (and spitting up on my shirt, which I hadn’t even noticed!), Oliver opened his new toys, including an inchworm!

Cal likes his new blocks!

Oliver loves his too!

Fred had to show Calvin how to work his Little People Garage.

Even Casper had a good time!

I’ve got more updates and posts to make, but I’ll save them for another day!  In the meantime, here’s some more Christmas pictures.

I have no excuse for not posting this yesterday…except I was feeding a craving (of mine and Fred’s) for homemade (I had to make them and then eat them!) chocolate chip cookies after we put Calvin to bed.

Kitty!

Cal loves Jade.  He gets a huge smile on his face every time he sees her and says “Hi” and tries to pet her.  She usually puts up with him for a couple minutes, but ends up hissing at him and walking away.  Here they are on his “big boy” bed after Fred and his dad put together.  Jade was sleeping peacefully and Cal crawled in and was trying to pet her through the bars.  So Fred picked him up and put him on the bed.  Jade fled soon after this picture was taken.

What’s really funny is that this could be any of our cats…especially Sally, who is very large.  Then again, Casper will eat anything in front of him, including ziploc bags, cheese, and bacon.

Fred recently directed me to a website that has funny animal pictures and I just had to share this!