Jack
Some cats steal your heart before you know what’s happening and then you are, as my father’s generation used to say, a goner.
Jack was like that. He was born to Little Sweetie, along with Yuri and Jenny, on April 18, 2018. He was a tuxedo. We’ve always been vulnerable to tuxedo cats and have nearly always, in the 40 years of our marriage, had one, starting with the inimitable Whiskers in 1986 and then Bubbles, who was with us until 2007, and then Inky Bear, starting in 2009.
We lost Inky Bear in 2017, a week after we moved into our country home. He suddenly lost the use of his hindquarters. We took him to a regular vet and then to emergency, where we spent a harrowing four hours waiting and watching other people grieve over their sick and dying animals. So $3500 later, we carried Inky Bear home in a little white box on my lap. That’s how most visits to the emergency vet go: no help, a dead cat, and some debt.
So, as we had no tuxedo cat, when we saw the little tuxedo, we said to each other, “We could keep him. What shall we name him?” A friend’s little daughter told her, “His name should be Jack.”
Jack was sweet, friendly, lively, personable—everything a kitten should be. And so cute, as was his brother, Yuri. Jenny was not too friendly. She resisted being picked up and was kind of skinny and fretful. At least she didn’t have an eye infection. None of the three did, actually, which seemed unusual.
Inexplicably, when the kittens were very small, maybe a couple of months old, Little Sweetie decided to take Yuri and Jenny back to the barn, leaving Jack with us. We didn’t know for a few weeks what had happened to the other kittens and figured they had ventured too far away and been killed by coyotes or something. I was happy to see them when they turned up again after a few weeks, and their mother never took them away again.
As Jack grew, he became friendly with a batch of kittens that had been, unbeknownst to us, born in our garage—Callie’s kittens. He seemed especially attached to a little solid gray fellow, and sometimes they would go hunting in the valley that slopes away from our house. We did not have the cat/deer fence up yet—it was a long undertaking to put it around the whole acre but a necessity because we could not have the deer or The Farmer’s calves invading our gardens.
One night in particular I was worried about Jack because he had been away for hours, which wasn’t usual for him. He showed up with his gray buddy around 10:00 p.m., ravenously hungry. He never stayed away so long again but hung around more, playing with his siblings and other kittens and absorbing plenty of petting.
One day in September, I noticed that Jack was sleeping a lot and didn’t seem to have a lot of energy. Then, he developed a bit of a swollen belly. We decided late one night—I think a Friday—to visit the emergency vet with him. There was a new emergency facility close to our town, and almost no one was there except for a woman somewhere nearby in a room, sobbing over a dying dog.
The examination didn’t take long. The verdict: feline infection peritonitis, usually known as FIP. Our hearts sank. We’d never had a cat with FIP, but I had read about it. The statistic usually quoted was that 95% of cats die from the wet form, which is faster moving than the dry form and which is characterized by the swollen belly.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget Jack’s little face that night at the vet’s: he looked so bright, so cheerful, so alive, so trusting—and we knew it wasn’t the right time to put him down. He still felt pretty good, though he was running a fever, and had an appetite.
So we took him home, and I started researching, unwilling to give up on him. From a book I had purchased on holistic and natural pet car, I read about Dr. Deva Khalsa, a veterinarian who claimed to have sometimes saved cats diagnosed with FIP with the use of homeopathy. I found her on the internet and contacted her immediately to set up a phone consultation.
She was very helpful and told me some homeopathic remedies I needed to purchase. I knew absolutely nothing about homeopathy, but I located the remedies she recommended at a local health food store and drove 30 minutes to get them. She also suggested another couple of measures that we tried as well.
Looking back, with my current knowledge of homeopathy, I realize that the remedies helped him more than we understood at the time. I was hoping to see quick results, and in some ways, we did. His fever abated and he was cheerful with a fairly good appetite. He would go outside, and sometimes he would even venture a little way into his beloved valley. But his belly continued to swell, finally pressing on his stomach until he could not eat.
The consulting vet, with whom I was in touch by email, recommended taking him to a local vet to get a little fluid drained from his abdomen. She emphasized that they should not take too much and said to tell them that. So we did. We told them to be careful how much they took. They carried him to a back room to drain him, at which time the vet left to attend an event for her middle school child, leaving her assistant in charge.
They told us that as the fluid started to drain, Jack was ravenous and eagerly ate half a can of food they offered him. When they brought him back to us, he was smaller—too much smaller. The consulting vet later said they had taken too much fluid, and our regular vet when we told him about the incident years later, flinched visibly and said he wouldn’t have taken more than 100 cc. They had taken much more.
I quote from my October 6 email to the consulting vet:
I was alarmed that evening when we got him home and he was so very limp and tired and wouldn't eat anything at all. I had anticipated that he would be hungry again, but he didn't want anything. In short, he seemed worse than he did when we took him in.
When we forced him to eat on Thursday, it went better than I expected, and he was licking his lips afterward as though the food tasted good to him. We left after that to get the supplies we needed for him, but when we got home and my husband brought him in from the porch to be hydrated, he didn't like what he saw. His head was just hanging down over the edge of the chair; he was breathing rapidly and shallowly, and his eyes were dilated.
As I wrote you previously, then, we gave him pediolyte, a few of his homeopathic remedies, and some Rescue Remedy, and he did stabilize a little. He seemed restless and at one point flopped down from the chair to go to his favorite mat in the living room and then onto the sofa in the dining room. So we went ahead and hydrated him, then, which went well, and he rested more easily after that and stayed in one spot on the floor. I am glad we did that because I think it made his death easier.
My husband came downstairs from his study around 1:30 to try to give Jack some food. I was beside Jack on the floor when I heard him coming down the stairs, and Jack registered it as well, and when my husband came close to him, he began to purr. My husband did feed him a little then, but he wouldn't take much; then my husband got a pillow and a blanket and laid on the floor beside Jack to be with him. Jack put his paw in my husband’s hand and squeezed. He was Jack’s special friend.
About 2:30, then, he roused and cried out and tried to get up and run away. My husband thought maybe he needed to go to the litter box, but then he cried out again, and we brought him back to his mat. He died very quickly after that….
Would Jack have recovered if it had not been for the disastrous mistake at the vet’s? I don’t know; I rather doubt it. I was not experienced enough in homeopathy at the time to address his symptoms properly, and although I have heard that some cats treated homeopathically have recovered, it takes great skill and knowledge to treat them.
But I am glad we didn’t have Jack put to sleep that night at the emergency vet’s. I am glad he could die in his home that he loved, with the people he loved, with his paw in my husband’s hand almost to his last breath. We still have a special love for little Jack, for his five months of life.
If it had not been for Jack, I would never have learned about homeopathy, which has since proven to be of great assistance in caring for all of our animals and us humans. If not for him and the many other cats we care for, I might not have gone on such a relentless search for the best ways to feed and care for them that have helped us avoid trip after trip to the vet.
Your little life was not in vain, sweet Jack. Rest in peace.
This was such a wonderful piece! Just loved it 🥰