About 13 years ago, my sister caught and brought home a semi-feral kitten to my parents house. We think he was separated from his mom too early, because he just didn't know how to cat. He never once groomed himself (we had to give him baths), he was completely anti-social to anything except the dog. He also, from day 1, peed all over the house. So this is a chronically stressed, unhappy, and weird cat.
He was neutered before he hit sexual maturation, and was peeing, not spraying. Medically, he was fine up until the last few months when he started having symptoms much like one of my IBD cats (throwing up, losing weight). If it had ended up being a chronic condition, I'm not sure my parents would've treated it.
Over the years, many things were tried to reduce his stress and alter his behavior. I don't even know that I can list them all. Nothing worked. For years, they'd been threatening to get rid of him. They tried giving him away (no takers), and called 2 no-kill shelters who didn't even bother returning the messages or e-mails. The only option was animal control, where he would have been euthanized (senior cat, litterbox issues, and not even nice). At that prospect, I said it would be kinder to take him to the vet and have him euthanized, at least spare him the trauma of a shelter.
Well, I don't know what the last straw was, but it apparently happened this week. I received a text from my dad, without warning, that he had taken the cat to our vet to be euthanized.
Since then, I have been feeling guilty (over a cat I didn't even like) to the point of making myself physically ill (did you know you can stress yourself into acid reflux?). Realistically, I know taking him wasn't an option. I have 4 cats of my own (who also hate him), 2 of which are chronically ill, and 1 is really high strung and also pees inappropriately if he gets too stressed. I guarantee if I'd brought this cat home, I'd have 5 cats peeing all over my house, everyone would be miserable, the the IBD cats may be so stressed as to worsen their condition. Which is why I think my dad didn't tell me beforehand...because I'd have taken the cat, and he didn't want that.
I feel so guilty that it came to this, but I don't know what else I could've done.
[link] [comments]
from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/c6mtkp/guilt_over_parents_euthanization_of_cat/
No comments:
Post a Comment