February 26, 1993 - July 16, 2011

I had to say goodbye to the beautiful Judah early this morning.

Ever since Oscar's passing on May 24th, Judah has been enjoying the freedom of the house (and even the yard), and in fact, seem to be getting physically stronger from all the walking and climbing he has been doing.  It surprised me that a boy who hasn't been able to jump over a baby gate in almost a year is suddenly clearing them, and jumping up on my very high bed at night.

As you may know, Judah has had a life-long enlarged heart and has been on medication (Enacard) since he was 4 years old.  At age 16, he was diagnosed hyper-thyroid and has also been on medication (Tapazole) to treat this.  And he bounced back from death's door at that time.

This week, around Tuesday, he started to rebel against taking his medication and then on Wednesday I noticed his breath smelled terrible.  It reminded me of the smell of infection.  Thursday I noticed he was getting wobbly again.  Friday morning he had worsened and then I made an appointment for a check up for him, knowing that I may very well be saying goodbye at the same time.  That appointment wasn't available until 9 a.m. this morning.

When I came home from work, he had worsened a lot.  He was meowing loudly, and his walking had deteriorated.  He wanted to be outside and I didn't see the harm in letting him go out one more time.  He tried to race down the stairs as he always does, and his body didn't cooperate - he flattened at the bottom of the steps.  He eventually walked around the deck to a narrow area beside the fence to lay there.  Not "normal" healthy cat behaviour.  I picked him up to cuddle him and brought him back in the house, and downstairs to his bed.

At bedtime around midnight, I couldn't find him in his room.  I could smell the litter though and found him in the crawl space under the stairs where the litter boxes are kept along with the water boiler and the central vac unit.  He had wedged himself into the furthest corner behind the water boiler.  This reminded me of an animal that goes away to die. :(  I had to remove the bottom of the central vac unit to reach him and pull him out.

After 15 minutes of cuddling with him on the bed, I made the decision that he couldn't suffer through the night until 9 this morning.  We drove to the Metro Animal Emergency Hospital - my sister met me there as she was in the area coming home from a night out.  After a quick check over, the decision was made.

Judah died peacefully at approximately 1:30 a.m. early this morning.

Despite the segregation he and Kayzee suffered the last 6.5 years at the paws of Oscar, he lived a long and relatively happy life.  18.5 years is quite extraordinary for this beautiful boy and his health conditions he had!

I can only hope that Kayzee won't suffer from this loss too badly.  She didn't come near us on the bed last night as she would normally do; I think animals are very intuitive that way.

Judah was such a people-cat.  He just wanted to be with everyone, all the time.  If I had a party and someone vacated their chair, he would jump up and claim it as his own, sitting there regally.  He tolerated the foster dogs over the years and didn't hesitate to box them to put them in their place.  He was just simply... awesome.

Rest in peace beautiful boy.  You really were the most wonderful cat that I've had the pleasure of having in my life.