My Moby Isn't Going to Live

The vet this morning thought Moby was extremely constipated and compacted with stool and hair, when I took him in and thought he would be just fine with an enema. This is not the case, she said, when she called just now. She was feeling kidney's not stool, in his bowels, she said, and she says his are shrunken and round, and that his liver is shrunken and small, consistent with end stage kidney failure and old age.

How could this be?

Before I left for eastern Oregon, he was racing around playing and healthy.

She said the stress of what went on when I was gone, like Bart dying inexplicitly, reduced his fluid intake and pushed him over the edge, that likely he was keeping up until then. Moby isn't going to live.

I asked that she do bloodwork to be sure.

I don't how to feel. Two cats dead because I left for a few days. Maybe Moby would have died anyhow. Maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe Bart would have died and maybe he wouldn't have. I don't know why Bart died. But I know why Moby is going to die today.

Moby is my ghandi cat, the peacemaker, the defender of those bullied here. Yes, he is old as the hills. I've had him nine years. He was at least six when I took him in. He may be older than that.

I suppose I knew something far worse was wrong after I got back. He was stumbling, seemed disoriented, very dehydrated. Nothing would have changed his outcome. Old age happens even to ghandi cats. It is hard to face with Moby. I love him so. It just seems like too much.

He used to sit on my fence as a stray, when I lived in the Fred Meyer district of Corvallis. He'd been abandoned. He was already neutered, but had mats so extreme he could not raise his chin. When it got very cold that winter, Hopi, Electra, Bangor and I invited Moby in to stay.

Everybody loves Moby. He became the defender of Miss Daisy, when she came to live with us, over when I lived in the slumshack in Corvallis.

Miss Daisy was deaf and very loud as a result. Miss Daisy had been thrown from a car on Seven Mile Lane in 100 degree August heat. She was found by a very kind farmer. She had burns on her paw pads from trekking that hot pavement.

She had great trouble fitting in. Bangor, my Maine Coon, who went to a new home a year ago where she could be an only cat, would attack her from the rear, once she discovered Miss Daisy was deaf. Miss Daisy, one tough cookie herself, began attacking Bangor in offensive.

Moby attempted to make peace between the two. Miss Daisy finally realized, at my request, that she must not attack anyone, that we were all on her side and that we had to get along, to live together in close proximity.

Except Bangor continued the attacks on her. Miss Daisy would even turn her head the other direction, to avoid meeting Bangor's eyes when she passed her, so as not to trigger a fight. But Bangor would still attack. So Moby stepped in. Making peace had not worked with Bangor and so he began taking Bangor out, everytime she started for Miss Daisy.

Miss Daisy and Moby are the best of friends, close as siblings, ever since. Moby never sleeps alone here. He is always surrounded in other cats, curled around him, for naps. It is a testimony to his character, his love, his peaceful nature.

We will all mourn Moby leaving us. I can't even fathom life here without him.