Cassidy was my first cat that was all my own. When I moved to Ariona, I visited her in her foster home every other weekend for 6 months until I finally moved into my own place and could take her home. I took her home and noticed that she wasn't pooping, so I took her to a vet (and, of course, I didn't have an established relationship with a vet since it was my first cat of my own and I was new in town). The vet noted some yellowish color on her face but wrote it off to her natural coloring and said that she was just constipated. Gave me some hairball lube stuff and said that he could run bloodwork but he didn't see any real need. She seemed to get a little better, but then started peeing everywhere and not eating or drinking. Took her to the emergency vet and they gave her fluids and sent us home. Went to the regular vet on Monday morning and they wanted to keep her for fluids and tests. She died before they got the test results back. No necropsy was offered, and they stopped the processing of the bloodwork at that point. So no answers about what happened, other than that the yellowing had gotten worse, so something was obviously liver-related.
I felt really guilty for a while because I had her for less than three weeks when she died, whereas she had been living in the foster home for a year and a half. But I finally realized that a lot of it was stuff that really wasn't my fault. Looking back on it, the foster mom realized that there had been some subtle behavioral changes for the three months before I took her home, but they were so subtle that they weren't really noticable until they started thinking back over it. She was a tiny cat and I had never had full responsibility for my own cats before, so I thought that the small amount of food she was eating was normal. There was no way for me to know that her appetite was decreased because I hadn't had her long enough. And the vets didn't recommend the appropriate diagnostic tests in a timely manner. By the time the vets admitted how serious the condition was, it was too late.
Yes, she's missing a leg. She was brought into the rescue with it badly damaged, came through the surgery well, and lived happily in a foster home for almost two years before she died.
