Comment on Pet loss and self-forgiveness by Marie Angleton.

I found this article, because I am overwhelmed with grief and cannot stop crying over the loss of my cat Aslan.
I blame myself for his demise. I’ll explain (and I apologize for the long post)
It was a series of events.
The first event was in early August, when my food obsessed boy jumped up on the counter and ate my dinner (I set it down to go use the bathroom). It was fettuccine alfredo, full of fresh garlic and onions.
I took him to the vet the next day for blood work, as i was afraid the garlic and onions would make him sick.
They gave me medicine for him, as they assumed pancreatitis.
Turns out, he was fine, no issues with his blood when the tests came back.
Second event, I changed their cat food.
I have three cats. Aslan, Aurora, and ClawDia.
ClawDia is overweight, so I decided to change their food to something that would help ClawDia lose weight.
I changed cat food often, so it wasn’t something new to them. Each cat has their own issues, so i was always trying to find a food that all three did well on, and I only fed them high end, grain free dry/wet foods.
I picked a Hills Science Diet as it was always suggested by my vet.
Within a week of eating the new food, Aslan got very sick from it. Diarrhea, vomiting, etc. (I switched them back to the food they were previously eating after he got sick.)
I took him to the vet and they did blood work and took x-rays.
The x-rays showed he had a lot of inflammation in his intestines and showed a few tiny stones in one of his kidneys. The vet said he very likely had Inflammatory Bowel Disease. But she didn’t seem too worried about anything else.
They wanted to do a biopsy to confirm IBD, but I couldn’t afford it.
At this point, he was still eating and drinking on his own, but a few weeks later I had to take him to the vet again, as he suddenly stopped eating.
They did more blood tests, urine, etc, but everything came back normal, with the exception that his vitamin B level was very low.
They gave me vitamin b shots to give him weekly.
I was now feeding him 4 times a day with a syringe.
They gave me a liquid appetite stimulant medication for him. I tried it multiple times, but he puked it up almost every time, and when he didn’t puke it up, it didn’t work for him.
We also tried him on antibiotics and another appetite stimulant that went in his ear. After a week on it, he still didn’t want to eat on his own.
I continued to syringe feed him for two more months, but he continued to lose weight. He went from 22 pounds to 14 pounds, even though I was getting about 10 ounces of food and over 350 calories into him a day.
In November he developed an upper respiratory infection and I noticed his pupils were not dilating properly.
I took him back to the vet for more tests.
Turns out he went fully blind from a taurine deficiency.
And my vet warned me that due to his weight loss, it could be lymphoma and not IBD.
I had been online looking for other medications and treatments for cats with IBD, and I asked the vet for a steroid medicine, Prednisolone, for him.
I was reading up that it would reduce inflammation and help anorexic cats gain weight and get their appetite back. I was desperate for him to regain his appetite.
I was exhausted feeding him and it was wearing me down. So I wanted to try anything that might help him (and me).
My vet was a bit apprehensive to give it to him, but gave me the prescription anyway.
I started him on it as directed, and the very next day he stopped drinking water on his own.
Now I am syringe feeding him food and water multiple times a day.
The first week, he seemed ok. But then he started having breathing issues again, so I took him back in.
They did more blood work and took more x-rays.
This time, it showed everything was inflamed.
His heart was inflamed 3 times it’s size, kidneys were inflamed, and he had pneumonia in his entire lungs, and had probably aspirated on either some food or vomit. His eyes were also red and inflamed.
I was given more antibiotics and some eye gel for him.
He stared recovering from the pneumonia, but he developed nasal polyps and was so congested i couldn’t feed him food or water without him choking on it.
He was declining and still losing weight. He started getting dehydrated, so I got a bag of subq fluids for him.
The last week of his life he went lame in his hind legs and lost the ability to walk.
I was carrying him to the litter box every few hours and sleeping on the couch, since he chose to only lay in his favorite spot in the living room.
I had also found a huge golf ball size lump in his primordial pouch. That wasn’t there before. I was concerned it was cancer.
He was lethargic and struggling through the weekend.
I had an appointment for him on Monday, and when I took him in, given his condition, the vet suggested I put him down.
Aslan passed away in my arms on December 16th.
He had so many things going wrong with him.
So many of them were sudden and out of the blue.
But I really feel that the steroids made him worse.
I believe the steroids are what started killing him, causing heart failure, the eye inflammation, lung inflammation, and suppressed his immune system badly.
Even though he went blind, lost weight, and wouldn’t eat before the steroids, he was still an active, loving, playful cat. He was his normal self.
After the steroids, he lost all of that. He declined hard and fast the month he was on the steroids.
And I’m the one who asked for that medication.
I feel like in doing so, I killed my cat.
And I have to live with that for the rest of my life.
I will always have the what-ifs rolling around in my head.
I am heartbroken and devastated.
Aslan was my soul cat. He was my bottle baby and I had him since his birth. He died at 11 years old.
I’m having a hard time dealing with the regret, and my grief.