Rest in Peace Oscar.
I had to have my scrappy outdoor kitty put to sleep this morning. What I thought was just simply another of his bi-yearly cat fight abscess turned out to be kidney failure. My poor baby boy. He spent four days sleeping in his room only drinking water while I forced antibiotics down his throat until he finally was weak enough to not be able to keep me from really checking him out and discovering that he was alot more sick than he let on. You see, Oscar was a street cat before adopting us at our old Ankeny place, and well, he has his own rules for how one handles Oscar. That is, you do it very gingerly if you care for your health.
So this morning he didn’t stop me from really checking out his body and mouth, and what I found scared me to death. Scared me enough to say to Brandon before he left for work to say his goodbyes to Oscar now, because I didn’t think he’d be coming home from the vet alive. Turns out I was right.
The vet was wonderful. I love this girl vet at Banfield, I’ve had her before with Marcus (and Oscar) and she has always been the kindest, sweetest person you could ask for to work on your babies. She checked him out, told me it was probably kidney disease but they wouldn’t know for sure without tests, and what it would mean to treat it. Basically, it would be days in the vet, followed by IV’s at home. Awful stuff for a rough and dirty outdoor cat. Stuff I couldn’t do to him. I told her I wanted to put him to sleep. She agreed with me.
I got to be in the room with him and stroke his head as he passed. It was really pretty quiet and peaceful, and he seemed okay with it. He tried to purr for us, he was just happy to be held. It was wonderful and horrible at the same time, and she did a pretty good job of looking me in the eye as I was crying my eyes out pretty much the whole time I was there. The vet tech wasn’t so good at it. I kinda didn’t like him, although I probably just made him uncomfortable.
Sorry if this blog doesn’t make much sense. I’ve kinda been in tears all day. I had thought about how much easier things would be around here with one less cat to torment the dogs, but now that it’s happened I don’t think it was worth it.
When Brandon got home he dug the hole for Oscar under the camellia bush. We are going to get a cement cat sculpture to mark his spot.
Oscar was a great cat. He had crazy amounts of personality. Back when we lived on Ankeny, my brother called him the Ambassador of Ankeny Street, because he would walk up to anyone. He used to walk over to the Video store and wait outside and let the kids pet him while we rented movies. He would walk down the block to Cameragraphics to get copies and treats (cat treats) with me. I think that’s why they remembered me at all there! I still get copies there, although we have both changed locations. He was a crazy cat, he wouldn’t get out of the way for dogs, preferring to make their owners drag them around him when he was walking down the street.
During parties we would always have to go over the “Oscar Rules” with new people, and they almost never believed us and usually got scratched because of it. He loved sitting in laps, but only liked being pet on the head and shoulders. If you wanted to pick him up you had to go straight up and down, no scooping or you’d get swatted. If you were a cat, he’d fight ya.
He went in about every other year to get an abscess drained, cause of all the fightin‘. That cat was so gross. The first time it happened he got a drain put in, and had to wear this snazzy blue cape, which is in a picture below. That was when we learned that he was literbox trained. He was also previously neutered, a fact that was unknown to us until we took him in to get neutered, and they knocked him out and discovered that it had already happened once in his life.
So we know he once had people, and then somehow lost them. I had been watching him for about six months before he decided that we should be his people. And it was very much his decision. One day while Ce’Anne and I were gardening (she was my neighbor then) he just walked right up to us and pretty much demanded to be fed. He had a dime sized chunk out of his forehead, and I felt bad for him. We named him Oscar after Oscar the grouch, cause he had this huge oval head on this skinny body. This we fixed by feeding him lots, and he filled out and started looking like a bit of a pitbull of a cat. Before we got Marcus I kinda wanted a blue pit to match my blue pit cat.
I know this is a rambling post, but there is just so much to say about this wonderful, cantankerous cat of mine. I love him, and I miss him so much already. I’m going to stop now, but there are some pictures of him below. Turns out that while I have about 50 million dog and chicken pictures, I don’t have many cat ones. And hardly any Oscar ones at all, and we had him for almost eight years.
Here he is contemplating the fertility shrine in our kitchen. Just after we moved in.
And here with his lovely cape. I decided not to show the one with his drain in. Yuck.
Snoozing on Brandon, several christmases ago. This is before Marcus.
And just after we moved in, before he took up permanent residence in the back yard. Him and Cassady, forever separated by screen doors. I don’t think they would have been friends. She is to much of a princess, and he, to much of a Bruiser.
Goodbye Oscar.
