We did not have a good start to the year as on Tuesday 3rd January 2012, we had to have one of our beloved Maine Coon cats put to sleep. On December 30th at around 09:15 hours we noticed that Tikka was struggling to breath so we rushed her to our vet where she was immediately put on oxygen in the incubator.
By 11:00 the vet called to say that her breathing had stabilized enough to anesthetise her in order to investigate whereon they found a growth attached to the back of her throat which they removed. This growth was the size of a very large grape. On the Friday, Tikka was sent home with the vet advising, understandably, that she may have trouble eating but as long as she was drinking fluids then not to worry.
Tikka was fine until the Bank Holiday Monday, when in the afternoon her breathing became erratic. We decided to take her back to the vet where they tried to stabilized her - they did manage to get her breathing to a more regular level, but not back to normal. At 13:00 hours I was called to the vets to authorise Tikka to be put to sleep. What a heart breaking thing to have to do, especially as she had latched on to my husband, who idolised her.
The verdict of the vet was that all had gone fine during and after the operation, and there was nothing to indicate that Tikka would not make a full recovery, after all, she was only six years old, but he believed that she may have contracted phenomena and could possibly have had secondary tumours in her chest. We will never know – she is now laid to rest in our garden in the flowerbed next to Noracoon Atalanta, who died of cancer in August 2010.
The thing with cats is that they can be ill and hide it well but once they show signs, unfortunately they can go downhill at an extremely fast rate.
