Cat died.

Dear Doctor Haynes,

I started looking after a stray young tomcat (who I presume was around 3 – 4 months old) at the beginning of this week.

He spent most of Monday and Tuesday sleeping on a coat in an old car on my driveway with a bowl of cat biscuits before my conscience got the better of me and I took him into the house on Tuesday night.

He was clearly quite anorexic and seemed to have little appetite. He did drink a little bit of skimmed milk on Tuesday night, but the cat biscuits weren’t stirring his appetite in the slightest. On Wednesday morning I gave him a pouch of wet kitten food which he wolfed down quite enthusiastically. But after that he ate next to nothing – water, cat biscuits, skimmed milk (it was all I had in) and two more pouches of wet cat food all failed to stir his appetite.

I left him in the house on his own of Wednesday night with water and a pouch of food; and whilst he was extremely lethargic and devoid of appetite, I put it down to exhaustion – and simply thought he was relieved to have shelter and that he just needed rest.

On Thursday morning I returned to find him dead. He was laid out on his side with his back legs stretched out, his head thrown back at an acute angle and his eyes open but his mouth closed. In front of him were two pools of vomit – one of which consisted mainly of cat biscuits (which was surprising, because he’d barely touched them in the previous 24 hours). Strangely he didn’t have a look of particular distress on his face when I found him (but of course I guess that is subjective). He’d also urinated on a polythene sheet a couple of times in the night – whilst the urine contained no obvious levels of blood, it was nevertheless quite darkly coloured with a difficult to describe bronzy / golden (but not alarmingly so) hue.

Before I’d left him for the night I had noticed a little stiffness in his hind legs (but again not alarmingly so), and I’d noticed that his back of his hind legs were permanently damp – I’m not sure whether with urine or with saliva (I noticed that he did seem to have a mild penchant for licking around his legs – but again, it didn’t seem to be particularly abnormal at the time.) He would also always squeal when I picked him up under his ribs – at the time I put it down to him being just a bit whingey, but the more I think about it I think it was a sign of distress.

I’m really sorry for the step-by-step monologue here, but the whole event has left me pretty (and uncharacteristically) distressed. I’d grown very fond of him in those few days and I really thought he’d be OK.

I would be very grateful if you could give me any insight as to what might have gone wrong. I feel overwhelmed with guilt at the moment not knowing if I could have done more or whether in fact, his demise was inevitable. But any light you can shed on this, good or bad will be well appreciated and would certainly be worth a great deal more than the nominal, but appreciated low fee you charge.

There’s a short video I recorded just before I left him for that last night, which I’ve uploaded to http://youtu.be/CSt3PpbJ5uk - I don’t know whether it’ll help or not.

Kind Regards,

Gareth Mitchell

(This has even led me to write an article at http://helpfulhabits.net/what-the-fuck-is-it-all-about/ such is the profound impact it has had on me).