RIP: Terrance

None of you even know about Terrance (unless you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Google plus).  I didn't have time to blog about him yet.  And now I'm telling you all about him having nothing good to say other than "well, he had at least one moderately good day in his life, and I tried to give that to him."

Terrance came to me after my friend Sarah messaged me on Facebook asking if I could foster a cat who was scheduled for death early last week.  He had had a terrible life with his previous owner, who had kept him on an apartment balcony for five years in Florida.  When he arrived at my place, he had an upper respiratory infection and looked fairly worse for wear (his previous owner clearly didn't feed him well and the infection he got between surrender and arrival didn't help at all).

But I didn't want him to be put to sleep without having a shot.  I took him in, gave him a place to live in the bathroom, with free reign in my bedroom (and the apartment at large when I was at home -- I have lizards, so I had to keep them isolated...you know how cats are).  Things were going well.  The first day, he came out of the bathroom to hang out underneath my legs while I was on

the computer.  Then that night, he spent five to ten minutes staring at me from the corner of the bed looking like he wanted to jump up and say hello.

And, of course, that's exactly what he did.  While I read, he slept between my legs with his head on my hip.  When I finally went to sleep, he slept next to me (and woke me up a few times when he got up to stare at me -- this is a creepy thing to see in a black cat with bright yellow eyes and a drooling mouth (from the infection)).  And it all seemed like a really good thing.

But this morning, after trying to feed him a little more liquid mush, he had some kind of attack.  He tried to walk away, lost his balance, and fell over.  Several seizure-like attacks rocked him afterwards, and I sat there with him not knowing what to do while he slowly fell away from the world.  By the time my friend managed to get to my apartment, he had stopped breathing.  It was awful and unfair.  Not for me, but for Terrance.

This poor cat had an awful life because his owner was an awful human being.  Finally he was away from that.  Finally he was with someone who cared about his existence.  I'm not even a big cat person, being mildly allergic and all.  But I still wanted him to get better, to get fat and lazy like a normal cat, and to find a wonderful home.  That life was stolen from him.

So I'm really bummed out today.  It's not easy watching an animal die, particularly one so sweet as Terrance.  It's not easy feeling helpless while it happens.  It's not easy knowing that a few days in my apartment with a cat cold were probably the best days he ever had.  All of it is messed up and awful.  I hope his previous owner has karma slap her in the back of the head.  She deserves it.

For now, maybe Terrance is up in kitty heaven with plenty of toys and people to love on him (along with whatever else belongs in kitty heaven).

Below are some pictures, in case you want to know what he looked like.  Yes, he was beautiful (or handsome, as the case may be).

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