Tootie

This is Tootie:

This is Tootie's old house:

Take out the house, the toy, the two bowls, and that's what she was used to living with. One square foot of nothing.

Tootie came to the shelter when her parents went to jail for beating each other up. She came in with two cats, who went back to the rescue that they were adopted from. No one came for Tootie.

Her teeth were all messed up and overgrown, and she seemed sick.

But she was nice. So the shelter team trimmed her teeth so she could eat again. But they weren't sure what was wrong with her. The shelter director has a soft spot for rats, so we took her to the experts.

They took radiographs. And it didn't look good. Both lungs should be black (full of air), but only one lung is working. Could be pneumonia.

So she went home with the director (who gave her that awesome bed) over Christmas break and got her antibiotics.

She didn't get any better.

We took her in again, and discussed her prognosis. She's lost a lot of weight, and her teeth are growing fast because she won't eat anything hard. The vet was not optimistic, but said we could try steroids. Chances of improvement were slim, but it was one more thing to try. We decided it was probably best to go ahead and euthanize, since she was having trouble breathing, hadn't responded to treatment, hyperventilated after medication, was severely stressed out, and probably wouldn't recover.

But then the euthanasia techs were busy at work, and Tootie sat with us up front while we waited. And she did this:

And I asked the director for her opinion, because I was having second thoughts about having her put down.

So here we are.

We started her steroids and new antibiotics on the first and there's been no improvement so far. She fights the meds so hard that she hyperventilates and sounds like she's going to collapse right after. Which I actually take as a good sign, even though I'm sure we're going to stress her to death. I make her a little milkshake with emeraid and coconut milk every morning and every evening; most days she licks the bowl clean. Sometimes she likes applesauce, usually she likes egg yolk and almost without fail she likes yogurt-covered papaya treats. She won't chew on things, she won't eat rat food, she won't eat grapes anymore or cocoa bunnies. If her heart doesn't give out, she'll starve to death if she doesn't start eating better. We're not going to syringe feed her because of the stress being restrained causes.

But as long as she's grooming, as long as she's using the bathroom, as long as she's eating a little bit and asking for attention, we'll do our best for her. We've been allowed to keep her in hospice foster care through the shelter for however long she has left.

Time to go make a milkshake.