This is Dash:
I got Dash when he was just an itty bitty kitten, probably
not even 6 weeks old yet. I answered a newspaper ad that said “free cats and
kittens”. When I got to the house, there were dozens of feral cats and kittens
roaming the women’s yard. She said she was on her way out, but if I could take
any of them that I liked or could catch. Yes, did I say they were feral?
None of the cats would let me get close enough to even pet
them, let alone pick them up and take them home. After wandering the yard for a
bit, I heard the sound of a kitten crying and found a tiny, sickly kitten under
the porch. He was alone and there were no other young kittens to be seen. He was too young to be taken from his mother, but I couldn’t
leave him there knowing that he would die without help.
On the ride home, the kitten crawled under the dash board of
my truck and I had to pull over to extract him. Hence the name “Dash”.
We took him to the vets immediately, and after two weeks of
vet bills to get him back to health, we joked about changing his name to “Bill”,
but thankfully, the name Dash stuck.
That was in the summer of 1997 and Dash is an old man now.
He has had a heart murmur for most of his life and is on a special diet for
hyperthyroidism. Otherwise, he’s had a pretty healthy and vet bill free life.
This past summer, he had an infection in his mouth and
needed to have 7 teeth extracted. The vet tech who called to tell me his dental
was finished and that he was doing fine, told me that his blood work was amazingly
good for a cat his age. And I thought, despite his questionable start in life,
this guy could live to see 20 years old!
Well, that was four months ago and things have changed for my
Dash. About 3 weeks ago, he started scratching at his cheek and shaking his
head a lot. We went back to the vets and
an x-ray showed what looked like a bone spur on his jaw. They ground it down
and stitched him back up, but that did not make things any better for him. The
vet thinks perhaps he has a tumor that did not show on the last x-ray or maybe
just a nerve issue that could work itself out.
He now spends most of his days trying to hide from the pain
that he cannot understand. And it breaks my heart to him in pain and confused. I will not put him thru the stress of god only knows what tests they could do to try and find the problem. At this stage in his life, I feel the right
thing to do is to make him more comfortable with pain meds for a week or so and
see what happens.
When I found Dash as a sick little kitten, 16+ years ago, I
made a life changing decision for him by taking him away from his mother at a
young age in order to save him. Now it seems that soon I will have to make another,
much more difficult life changing decision for him.