Saturday, April 10, 2010

Sad news

This week has been rough on my family. Sunday morning (Easter, of all days), I woke up before dawn to catch my flight to Orlando. The space shuttle, Discovery, was due to launch first thing Monday morning, and I was looking forward to being there to see it go.

I almost stepped on Midnight, our female kitten. She was laying in the middle of the bedroom floor, and she wasn't moving. I picked her up and immediately knew that something was horribly wrong with her, because she was incredibly limp. She was still alive, but when I moved her from the dark bedroom into the lighted hallway, her pupils didn't contract in response to the light. Sweetie took over and tried to comfort her, but we both knew that she wasn't going to survive whatever happened to her.

Sweetie practically had to shove me out of the house that morning. I couldn't stand the thought of going on vacation while my kitten was dying. However, launch tickets sell out within minutes now that the shuttle program is being retired, and Sweetie worked so hard to allow me to see my first and only shuttle launch. I didn't want to hurt his feelings by missing the launch, especially since we both knew that there wasn't much that I could do for Midnight at that point.

He took her to the animal emergency room as soon as they opened Sunday morning, but Midnight died in the car before he arrived.

We are all heartbroken. We worked so hard to bring that kitten back to health after her early setbacks, and it seemed like we finally had her back on the road to health and vitality. She was finally gaining weight, she was playing with Lucky and the kids, and she drove us nuts by pestering us whenever we sat down to eat.

The vets think that she had a stroke. I guess it's common for cats to develop blood clots that travel from their hind legs to their brains. The only thing I am thankful for was the fact that she didn't suffer for very long.

I miss my kitten.

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