TAPO IN THE SUN

above

tapo outdoors

Tapo is home from the hospital for the weekend. I'll be taking her back in the morning. She'd been in a cage surrounded by dogs in cages several days and nights, needed more time in there, so I wanted to bring her home for the weekend. I can't care for her to the extent they can in the hospital, force feeding her. I can do it, but it's such a struggle when she doesn't want it. I have never forced her other than putting her in the carrier to take to the vet. I've had to hold her down to put the one-spot flea poison on her. That's it. It doesn't feel right forcing her mouth open and using the syringe to squirt this formula down her throat. I don't know how else to do it.

She has essentially stopped eating and drinking water. She acts like it hurts her to drink water, and often will gag it up later. They've had her on an IV and I don't know if they force fed her, imagining they did. She's in pretty good health with her dehydration cured and some nourishment in her. I've not kept up with the schedule for feeding her I was sent home with. Didn't even come close. She spent all day both days lying in the sun from morning til sunset. I felt like lying in the sun for her is so special a cat thing to do I could not disturb her composure.

She was at home, she may be dying, I want her to be able to lie in the sun in her own space, the place she's known all her life.

I don't want to lose Tapo. I have a decision to make, let her die in comfort at home if that's what she wants, though I don't know that's what she wants. Maybe she's so ill she's relaxed into it. I don't know. I don't believe she wants to die. I just don't believe it. It's clear she doesn't want to eat or drink water, but I don't believe it's suicidal. Her symptoms tell of a problem with the liver in cats her age that have been overweight. There is a cure. It's rather extreme, so they haven't done it yet. When I take her back Monday it will be with the go-ahead to put a tube into her stomach through the nose (makes my toes curl to think about it) and get her stomach accustomed to having food in it again. It's a kind of priming the pump method to get her interested in eating again. If this doesn't work, then I'll bring her home and let her die here instead of in a cage surrounded by dogs.

The decision has been made. If this treatment at the vet works, then it's worth whatever it costs. If it doesn't work, I'll have only one left, Caterpillar. I've often wondered which one would be last. Looks like Caterpillar. Maybe Tapo is tired of a life of laying about. Outside, she's not as free as she was back when the dog was living and kept other dogs away. Now the dogs are free to come around all they want, coyotes too. So cats stay indoors. TarBaby was as much an outdoor cat as indoor. It wasn't safe any more. I couldn't make him stay in the house when he wanted out.

It's a sorrowful time with Tapo fading away like Jr did. TarBaby gone. This is how it is after a certain amount of time in a body. People we know and are close to start dropping off. Pets drop off. This one is gone, that one is gone. So many of my friends, relatives and pets are on the other side, they make over yonder more attractive every year. I don't have any idea what's on the other side. It's something I learned long ago is a waste of mental energy to wonder about beyond a certain point. We have several different interpretations of what's over there. Different psychics say different things. People who went over and came back didn't stay long enough to tell us much more than the entry, which must be pretty incredible going by the different accounts I've read.

I'm not afraid of Tapo dying for her sake, only for my own. Another period of time with a heavy heart missing Tapo. I raised all three of them from the day their eyes opened. I became their mother keeping them alive with mother love. I nursed them with kitten formula for a few weeks. Tapo was the ravenous one. Tapo and Caterpillar. Tapo was born hungry. She was a charming kitten. They all were, but Tapo had a charm all her own. She's been the smallest of the 3 all her life, meaning Caterpillar and TarBaby could pounce on her, threaten her, make her hiss, but she couldn't do it to them. In that way, she's had a miserable life. But that's catness too, something outside the realm of my understanding. I've stayed out of their relationships with each other, except when Caterpillar or TarBaby was being especially cruel to her. When I drew the line, they seldom crossed it again, that is, in front of me.

I don't know what they did when I wasn't around, so I tended to let them be when I was around and stay out of their cat scuffles. I didn't want to suppress them fighting each other when I was around, believing they would attack Tapo with purpose while I'm gone. I'm thinking Tapo misses TarBaby quite a lot too. She always liked him. He was never mean to her like Caterpillar was. He'd give her a rough time occasionally, like walk up to her looking into her eyes until she turns and goes away to find a hiding place with TarBaby right behind her tail. The problem with being chased by another cat was TarBaby could get into any little space she could get into. She'd go as far as she could and start growling. TarBaby would pretend to swat her, she'd hiss at him. Made him laugh. That was just cats being cats. She and TarBaby have been close all the way along. She may be wanting to die to get away from Caterpillar. She's never liked Caterpillar. I believe she misses TarBaby as much as I do.

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