Hi Friends. If you did not know, we had a beautiful little girl named Ginger. She was a huge part of our lives for almost 16 years, and part of everything we did at the store too. She also happened to be a cat.
We had to say goodbye to Ginger on February 5th. This is a short blog about how wonderful she was and how hard this has been. We are so thankful to have had her. I wish you all could have met her. We are so thankful to everyone who have been so supportive over the past few weeks.
In Julie Ann's Words...
Ginger's health has been in decline since about 2017. We really thought she was going to go then, so in a way I was kind of prepared, but little did I know how truly heartbreaking it is. Then she had a bout with acute pancreatitis in 2018, so again we thought her time was up when we went against the vet's orders to bring her home, but her last day was Friday, February 5, 2021.
Early last week she started throwing up all her food. She couldn't keep anything down, so we took her to the vet. We knew she had kidney disease and some other problems. She was still active and bright eyed. They gave her fluids and tried to get her to keep food down. She had loose poops all over. Xrays showed nothing was wrong, no obstructions, just immediately throwing up after everything she put in her mouth.
Thursday, February 4 we brought her home hoping to have a few days left with her, and we scheduled her final vet appointment for Monday (or today), but in true Ginger fashion she showed us she needed to go sooner, so we had to move her visit to Friday! She was throwing up blood. Thursday night we watched her favorite show Supernatural. (I've been blogging about Supernatural for a long time on my personal blog Fluffy the Vampire Slayer and Ginger was always my lap buddy. We needed to watch the last part of the last season.) She always loved Sam's gentle voice and even though she couldn't hear him I think she found comfort in it because it was the only time Thursday night she wasn't restless.
Ginger's last Sam viewing.
(Yes, my TV room is a mess right now and we have a clunker TV.)
After watching TV, I wrapped her in a towel and brought her upstairs to bed. I sat up with her all night long and while she was still sitting on me at 3:30am I wrote this...
When Andrew and I bought our house we were so excited because that meant we could get a cat...or cats. Shortly after moving we casually went to PetSmart looking at cats up for adoption. They have cats from the SPCA Serving Erie County and that's what we were looking for. We knew we didn't want a kitten because everyone wants a kitten and they are easily adopted out. We wanted an older cat with an established personality.