The other night, as we were headed up to bed, we discovered our cat, Sadie, was crying and hiding her paw under her chest. Thinking she maybe had fallen and hurt herself, we took her to the emergency room. We expected she might need a cast and we’d wonder how the silly girl could have done this. She was always getting into mischief like this.

Sadie spent all night and the next morning at the ER. The vet told us Sadie’s lungs were full of fluid and that she might not live through the night. She asked if the cat could have been hit by a car. We said it wasn’t possible, she is strictly an indoor cat. We racked our brains trying to imagine what had occurred. Did she fall down the steps? Did she catch pneumonia? Did she inhale gas from the stove? It made no sense.

Twelve hours and $1,500.00 later, the animal hospital said they were ruling out trauma and suspected a heart problem. They suggested we transfer her to a hospital with a cardiology specialist. We drove her to the hospital with the specialist and waited all day to see him. We sat in the waiting room, we stood beside the kennel where they stored Sadie and tried to pet our disconsolate little kitty.

The specialist finally saw her, and told us she had a congenital heart condition that caused blood to trap in her heart and clot. The clots would get out into her body causing things like stroke, paralysis and heart attacks. The injured paw was paralyzed with one of these clots. He told us that sometimes, with medication, cats with this condition can live for a few more years, but it wasn’t certain how well the medication would work or how long she’d get. He told us we could leave her for observation for 24 hours to see if her condition started to improve at all with medication.

We had to try to give Sadie a fighting chance, so even more money was spent. It was more than we could afford but we loved her so dearly, we would have done anything for her. We told her “you have to get better, it’s the least you could do, we’re going to be living on Ramen forever after this.” Sadie just got worse and got more clots. So early this morning we drove back to the hospital to say good bye and put an end to her suffering. She was only three years old.

Words can’t express how much I miss her already.