I gave you an update in the last episode about our elder cat, Tashi, being carried to the vet because he was having bowel issues. They kept him overnight because the x-ray showed he was backed up, impacted, to the point that it was affecting his other organs.
Around 8am this morning (7/23/24) we got the call -- he didn't make it through the night. That was a tough pill to swallow. Yes, we knew he was old - 15 years. Yes, we knew he was living on borrowed time. Yes, we knew that the vet was attempting to do was a longshot, especially since they had already diagnosed him previously with kidney disease.
None of that makes this any easier, especially for my wife and daughter. I may be stoic from time to time, but fuck it, this is hard for me as well.
Though I don't drink anymore, let's pour one out for Tashi. Thanks, bud, for being such a cool cat.
This is Call Me Donovan, episode 42, recorded Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.
Speaker:I think I'll just skip with the intro music because this episode,
Speaker:this this is a sad one.
Speaker:You'll recall in my previous episode, which was actually yesterday,
Speaker:I mentioned that we have an older cat.
Speaker:His name is Tashi.
Speaker:He's the the oldest of the remaining cats,
Speaker:and he's the only one left inside.
Speaker:At one point over the years, we had a total of three cats inside.
Speaker:And yeah, that that was that was a that was an adventure.
Speaker:We had Shade, we had Gracie and we had Tashi.
Speaker:Shade was the first to pass away.
Speaker:And then we rotated Gracie outside because
Speaker:she was just a wild child, if you will.
Speaker:And oddly enough, she seemed to really enjoy and thrive being outside.
Speaker:So that that was good.
Speaker:But unfortunately, one day we.
Speaker:Had not seen her in a little bit, and she loved to climb and just hang out in trees.
Speaker:I mean, this cat, she wound up there.
Speaker:There was something that went through the cats out,
Speaker:the remaining cats that were outside at the time.
Speaker:And it messed with their vision, and she actually lost one of her eyes.
Speaker:So she she was basically like a pirate.
Speaker:Small little brown fuzzy thing that kept gnawing her hair.
Speaker:And she loved to get up in trees and just.
Speaker:Hang out on branches, and I'm you know, I'm thinking
Speaker:I can't even get up in a tree and hang out on a branch,
Speaker:and I still have both my eyes.
Speaker:But we one day we were we were outside
Speaker:and we were like, have you seen Gracie?
Speaker:And I'm like, no.
Speaker:So I just happened to walk around and we were on the deck
Speaker:and happened to walk around and found her laying there.
Speaker:And I don't entirely know what happened, but.
Speaker:We dropped Tashi off at the vet yesterday, my wife and my daughter did,
Speaker:because he, as I mentioned previously, was having bowel movement issues.
Speaker:I mean, he basically could not shit.
Speaker:And they did the X-ray and they discovered that the old boy
Speaker:was impacted severely fecal impactment.
Speaker:It happens to humans, too.
Speaker:But his was so bad that it was starting to interfere with his other organs.
Speaker:So he needed to stay overnight and they were going to
Speaker:to basically give him some stuff to try to soften it up,
Speaker:maybe even an enema and all of that.
Speaker:And, you know, we we hoped for the best.
Speaker:But this morning around eight o'clock, I guess, my wife's phone rings
Speaker:and she puts it on speaker phone.
Speaker:And the lady on the other end, I don't know if that was the vet
Speaker:or if it was the lady at the front, but the vet is Dr. Hill.
Speaker:She's a vet veterinarian in Osceola, Osceola, Georgia.
Speaker:Today was the first day I actually met her.
Speaker:Very nice.
Speaker:But they called to let us know that Tashi did not make it through the night,
Speaker:that he had started responding.
Speaker:He had actually eaten a little bit.
Speaker:But this morning, no, he had not made it through the night.
Speaker:Of course, I wound up having to finish the phone call because
Speaker:my wife burst into tears and I mean, she did her best.
Speaker:She tried to hold it together.
Speaker:But I finally just had to tell the person on the other end
Speaker:on the other end of the phone, thank you.
Speaker:We'll we'll be over there shortly.
Speaker:And we appreciate you.
Speaker:And of course, then my wife had the task of going upstairs
Speaker:and letting our daughter know.
Speaker:So we went over there and we we got him.
Speaker:He's got little they they gave us two little mementos.
Speaker:They did his little paw prints and they he was swaddled up,
Speaker:you know, in like a blanket type thing.
Speaker:And Oriana had texted Tyler and Tyler
Speaker:had let Devin know because Devin really doesn't pay attention
Speaker:that much to our family chat.
Speaker:And that the Tashi had had passed away, but first,
Speaker:Oriana had texted Tyler to say, hey, when you when you wake up,
Speaker:let me know, because she wanted to call him.
Speaker:So she did. And we've got this particular tree.
Speaker:It's it's actually been nicknamed the graveyard tree.
Speaker:And keep in mind, we're in the south.
Speaker:So as the ones that passed away
Speaker:or where they passed away, where we could get to them,
Speaker:they have been buried around this tree.
Speaker:They've been put in a box.
Speaker:Any kind of little keepsakes or whatever we wanted to put with them.
Speaker:They were buried around the tree.
Speaker:So it's nicknamed the graveyard tree.
Speaker:It's a Bradford pear tree.
Speaker:I hate the damn thing.
Speaker:And one day it's going to come down.
Speaker:But for now and for ever since we've lived here since 2006,
Speaker:it's known as the graveyard tree.
Speaker:So I told Oriana to ask Tyler if if he wanted to be,
Speaker:even though he's in Washington, he's in Seattle,
Speaker:if he wanted to be a part of us laying Tashi to rest.
Speaker:And and he did.
Speaker:So I set the tripod up, got my phone and did a signal video call.
Speaker:And so he was able to watch me work my ass off.
Speaker:To dig this basically three foot by three foot
Speaker:by one foot hole to lay Tashi to rest in.
Speaker:And he's in a box.
Speaker:It's an Amazon box, but you know, he's in a box.
Speaker:He's got a plastic bag, which is something he always loved to chew on.
Speaker:And a couple other think
Speaker:we had these collars
Speaker:that none of them really took to wearing.
Speaker:So he would play with it.
Speaker:So it's in there.
Speaker:He had this little fluffy ball Oriana put in there.
Speaker:And so, yeah, 15 years old.
Speaker:And we have two of the
Speaker:two, two outdoor cats that are part of the the crew there.
Speaker:The quick story is we are used to and I think I've mentioned this before,
Speaker:but we used to joke that we bought a cat and house came with the cat
Speaker:because there was this cat that my wife,
Speaker:I guess she's the one that named her Musi.
Speaker:She was around the house.
Speaker:And of course, she got pregnant and then she got pregnant again.
Speaker:And I think she may have had three litters.
Speaker:I'm not sure.
Speaker:And that's the reason why I wound up fixing,
Speaker:you know, spayed or neutered 18 to 20 cats at one point.
Speaker:I did lose my sanity there, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker:But we only have two, Josie and OJ.
Speaker:And OJ is actually named because we had we had a cat out of one of the
Speaker:one of the letters named Oscar.
Speaker:And so OJ is named for Oscar Jr.
Speaker:So we just call him OJ.
Speaker:No, he does not. He's not orange.
Speaker:He doesn't look like orange juice or anything like that.
Speaker:It is OJ. And then we have Josie.
Speaker:And then we have this black cat with this
Speaker:the white markings that almost look like a tuxedo.
Speaker:He took up with us a year or so ago.
Speaker:I used to run him off all the time.
Speaker:And then finally, I just gave up because our sunroom,
Speaker:we don't actually use our sunroom for us.
Speaker:The sunroom is used for the cats.
Speaker:One of the windows is is held up so that they can come in and get out of the weather.
Speaker:That's also where all the food is.
Speaker:And they just, you know, they'll they'll hang out in there.
Speaker:So eventually I gave up trying to run him away.
Speaker:I was like, well, the crew's dwindling.
Speaker:If if he'll he wants to hang around, you know,
Speaker:what's one more mouth to feed, I guess.
Speaker:He's still skittish of me.
Speaker:Most of the time he runs from me, but he's
Speaker:he's fine with with Lee and Oriana.
Speaker:So that's what we have now.
Speaker:We have no we have no indoor animals anymore.
Speaker:And my wife was talking to a friend and former boss of hers,
Speaker:letting him know, I guess, texting maybe.
Speaker:And he said, well, you know, the best way to fix that is you immediately
Speaker:get another pet.
Speaker:And my wife is like, no, you know, that's that's
Speaker:you got to have time to grieve.
Speaker:You got to have time to mourn.
Speaker:And that's disrespectful to the memory of the pet that you just lost.
Speaker:And I said, yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker:Plus, a little selfish part of me is I'd like to reclaim my house
Speaker:because the cats of the years have done so much damage.
Speaker:All my carpets have to be replaced in the house.
Speaker:Every damn bit of it because of either throwing up or mainly just that.
Speaker:Throwing up.
Speaker:We had one cat that used to urinate on the carpet all the time.
Speaker:So, yeah, I probably have about 20, 20 or 30 thousand dollars
Speaker:worth of repairs that need to to take place.
Speaker:And plus, you know, when we when and if we ever get to that point,
Speaker:we're not going to put down carpet again in all areas where some places
Speaker:may have carpet, they still have carpet, they have carpet now,
Speaker:and some places will have some kind of a different type of flooring.
Speaker:But needless to say, today is not not been a an easy, an easy day.
Speaker:And on top of that, I've been trying to I've got these five PCs
Speaker:that I'm trying to get ready to go for one of my clients,
Speaker:and I'm trying to image their older machines onto these newer machines
Speaker:because I don't want to go through the hassle
Speaker:of trying to get all the software reinstalled.
Speaker:And it's a difference between a a an MBR style
Speaker:and a UEFI style, or I should say a legacy boot versus an EFI boot.
Speaker:And that's been fun.
Speaker:And at one point I had it working.
Speaker:Everything was seemed to be working great.
Speaker:I rebooted and it all blew apart.
Speaker:So the reason why I'm doing the imaging for like the fourth or fifth time.
Speaker:And I said, this takes about 20 minutes.
Speaker:Fuck it.
Speaker:I'm going to sit down and record this episode and let you know that Toshi.
Speaker:I think it's Rainbow Bridge.
Speaker:So I like to think that I'm I'm stoic most of the time.
Speaker:But, you know, this was the cat that I wished for.
Speaker:And I'm going to miss the dude.
Speaker:I mean, 15 years.
Speaker:He was more than a pet.
Speaker:If you have animals, you know, part of the family.
Speaker:And I honestly never thought that I'd be that kind of guy.
Speaker:You know, I was I was raised by especially a father
Speaker:who in the in my younger days would have been the type that if
Speaker:if some stray dogs or stray cats or something just showed up
Speaker:and a cat wound up having litters, those cats and the mother
Speaker:and the young kittens would wind up in a sack somewhere in a river.
Speaker:As he got older and mom wound up getting her first indoor dog
Speaker:and all of that, that that changed.
Speaker:But yeah, it's it's rough.
Speaker:I said, I'm going to miss the dude.
Speaker:And I know it's rough on for Oriana.
Speaker:It was like her child.
Speaker:You know, she's she's expressed to me that she's
Speaker:she's probably going to be one of these zoomers that her children are going to be
Speaker:pets. She doesn't really care about getting married.
Speaker:She definitely doesn't care about having kids.
Speaker:She's just going to have pets.
Speaker:And for the longest time, as I said before,
Speaker:he hung out up there in her room.
Speaker:The litter box was upstairs.
Speaker:We just in the last month or so moved the litter box downstairs
Speaker:because he started hanging out down here because of we're presuming arthritis.
Speaker:At least that's what the vet said.
Speaker:So you got any if you're a pet owner, got a furry family member.
Speaker:Do me a favor.
Speaker:Hug them. Give them some treats.
Speaker:Tell them you love them because you just never know how much longer they got.
Speaker:I mean, we knew he was older.
Speaker:We knew he had we discovered when we took him to the vet back in February
Speaker:that he had a kidney disease, that he was he was living on
Speaker:borrowed time or a short amount of time anyway.
Speaker:We just didn't expect it to be this year, this week, this day.
Speaker:But I guess now he does have an opportunity to find out
Speaker:what the answer to life, the universe and everything actually is.
Speaker:He wasn't much for fish.
Speaker:He loved chicken and he loved hamburger. So
Speaker:Toshi, thank you for being
Speaker:cool cat that you were.
Speaker:All right. That's all I got till next time. Take care.