Today my cat purred for the first time in 11 days

[SkinnyPupp]

Today was the best day of my life so far

TLDR: I just have to express myself after the roughest 1.5 weeks of my life.. This might be long and indulgent, feel free to ignore and move on. I've been holding this in for the whole time, only really talking to my wife about it, and I just have to spill it for some reason. Might even delete it before even posting.



I've written about Jett before.. Probably several times, as he's been with us for over 15 years now. I think I posted here when he broke a tooth on the doorway playing fetch, and again when he had his gallbladder removed for gallstones.

Well on August 7, the worst thing imaginable... At 15 years old, he decided he could go up to our rooftop and try to jump across to the neighbour's rooftop. He didn't make it. He fell down 4 storeys. As soon as my wife told me she couldn't find him anywhere, somehow I knew what happened. I grabbed my flashlight and peered over the edge.. Sure enough, there he was, huddled on the ground. I ran down to check on him, knowing cats can survive falls like this on occasion, but he was an old cat. Not a frail one though - he is quite healthy and strong for 15. But there are certain things that age can't defy...

When we got there, it was like living a nightmare. He was in shock, mouth wide open, blood coming out of his mouth. It looked like he could barely breathe. We carried him inside to call for a 24 hour emergency vet (yes, once again he injured himself at night). We found one my wife's company works with, they are good but expensive. It's not our normal vet, but we needed one with 24 hour care. We called a taxi and got there as soon as we could. While she was on the call, I tried my best to see if there were any broken bones. Something didn't feel right with his chest.. More on that later

Vet does the initial exam, and finds that he has a pneumothorax - air in the chest cavity. Scans also show some fractured ribs, and a luxated sternum (dislocated chest bone). We don't know how bad any internal injuries were - you have to wait and see if he starts bleeding internally or urinating blood, etc. They did a full blood test, and everything was as you'd expect after trauma. His liver and kidney are healthy, and all this blood levels are healthy. Some things go out of whack after trauma, so that's fine.

They immediately did a thoracentesis to pull the air out, and he could breathe better right away. But he wasn't out of the woods, not even close. He was put in an oxygen cage and we left him that night and told the doctor to call us if anything changed. They would examine him the next day in more detail

My phone rings at 4am, with the doctor telling me that he is not doing well. He can't lift his head and his blood pressure crashed. He said he might even be in a semi coma due to brain damage. He was able to get his blood pressure back up, so we'll have to see how he's doing in the morning.

We went there first thing in the morning, and he was nothing like described... He wasn't in great shape, but nothing close to being in a coma. Jett likes to "talk" to us, and he was responding to us, but not in a "meow" but more in a groan. So he was in a lot of pain, but alive.

To make the long story shorter, the next week or so was like this. Go visit him every morning, and hope for the best. But he wasn't doing well - his red blood cell HCT crashed down to 16%, which is close to the level you'd want to do a transfusion. Oh by the way, we found out Jett has a rare blood type with no antibodies, which less than 1% cats have, making transfusion possible but risky unless we find one of the other few cats with that type. He started drooling, and his eye developed an ulcer. His breathing was rapid, between 80-100 breaths per minute (normal is around 20-30) so something was still very wrong. Eventually scans showed fluid in the chest cavity.. So they had to pull that out. His breathing improved, but not much. He was still out of it, barely responding to us. He stopped eating, even from a syringe, so had to have a nasal tube put in to feed him liquid.

At this point, the vet had told us to do a CT scan several times, since that's the only way to really know what's going on. In theory that's correct, but I had a few issues with that. 1) You have to put him under general anesthetic for that, which is risky for a healthy 15 year old, let alone one in his condition. 2) If you do a CT scan and find out he needs surgery, is it even possible to perform surgery on a cat in this condition? Most likely they'd advise PTS. 3) It would cost about $40K and costs were already piling up. Do I want to take all these risks, pay $40K, and then find out "sorry he's not operable". But they kept pushing it.

After another chest drain to get the fluid out, there wasn't much improvement other than his HCT stabilized and started climbing. His WBC started improving too, so he could start healing. No other improvements though - still breathing hard, still barely recognized us, didn't meow or purr, couldn't walk, etc. He couldn't be taken out of an oxygen cage without risk.

They told us we need to "make a clear plan for his future" and you know what that means. I'm thinking.. wtf? He just fell off the damn roof less than a week ago, and he's relatively stable, and we need to "make plans"? They said we're "just treating the symptoms" and I'm like.. yes! Treat the symptoms and give him time to heal!

So our plan was to take him out of the big expensive vet and bring him to our usual vet who did an amazing job saving his life a few years ago. These doctors are amazing - they are great communicators, and expert doctors. My wife's dog rescue uses them as much as they can, and she also knows some of the staff there. The only issue is they're not a 24/7 clinic, so he'd be on his own every night. We decided to take that risk. We hired an ambulance so he'd have oxygen on the way there, and had them take him in. They immediately lowered his dose of methadone, checked his kidney for issues and once that checked out, gave him an NSAID that is somewhat risky for old cats since it's hard on the kidney, but worth it if they're healthy.

Every day since then, he has gotten better and better. When the doctor first saw him, he described him as "flat" and not looking good at all. But the next day, after another chest drain, he already looked better. He ate some food, but that's about it. We visited him, and he actually "talked" to me again! An actual meow! And he would come in for pets and snuggles. Still no purring though. He even gave me a nibble, something he likes to do where he bites my arm lightly. At this point he can still barely walk, and when he tries he falls flat on his face. They were pretty sure it wasn't nerve damage, but only time would tell.

The day after that, even better. He is eating more, talking more, and he even started purring! The moment I felt him purring, it seemed like that was it. He is going to make it! Today he was in pure snuggle mode.. he usually gets snuggles every night before bed, and every morning when we wake up (and whenever we're around of course). He's very affectionate, and pretty much relies on contact with us, and he hadn't gotten it for 11 days.. or when he did, he was unaware of it. We stayed with him for over an hour, just taking turns putting our arms around him and holding him as he tried to bury his head into us as much as possible. When we got ready to leave, he sat up (he can sit now!) and started crying at us.. He doesn't even do this at home! It was really hard to leave him like that, but we couldn't stay there forever. Maybe he'll come home soon.

He's still not out of the woods though. His pleural effusion keeps coming back, although I think at a lower pace. He'll need at least one more tap, but hopefully that's all. We technically don't know what's causing it - it could be all the damage in his chest, like the fractured ribs, luxated sternum, and just his lungs being bashed so hard they are all beat up and bruised. But if something did get bruised and isn't healing fast enough, it can develop necrotic tissue, and that would be really bad.

But all signs so far are good ones.. after 8 days of nothing but bad signs, I almost can't believe we keep getting good news

I'll post today's video, but nothing from our prior visits.. He is in REALLY bad shape in the prior videos, but this one is nice and hopefully. You can tell where I feel his "pulse" (actually purr) and note that he purred for the first time in 11 days. His eyes are all goopy because they put on topical ointment every day for the ulcer. Turn your sound on to hear him "talk" to me.. He just started doing this again yesterday.

Streamable

The first doctors took good care of him in terms of keeping him alive, but man. They are basically "by the book" and talking to them is like talking to a pre programmed AI. Even going over the bloods the first night, they saw the high glucose and were like "he might have diabetes" and high liver enzymes saying "this could be cancer". Like what the fuck? Obviously it's because he fell off the roof! So weird. Every problem needed a solution, and if we can't find it, might as well put him to sleep. It's really sad. New doctor even mentioned a CT scan would be best, but whatever it tells us would probably be the same as just seeing if he starts doing better anyway...

So today was the best day of my life - when Jett finally seemed like himself again. Long way to go, and hopefully even happier days are ahead.

And then we have to pay back the vet bills, which are at about $10K USD so far (worth every penny though) And yes we're poor (freelance design in 2023 is a dead end job, and saving dogs for a living isn't going to generate a lot of revenue unfortunately) as some trolls like to point attempt to ridicule me for, and $50K a year for free would definitely improve my life, and this is part of why No shame whatsoever though. We'll manage

[sonick]

Hoping for continued progress and recovery for Jett

[unit]

as someone with a black cat, i can almost see my own cat when i look at jett so this is all so hard to read, but i appreciate the post and and very happy for you guys.