Our Little Slice of Pumpkin Pie!

"That cat does not leave this house" my husband said as I hung up the phone from speaking with a friend who had a prospective adoptive family for the little orange kitten I was fostering. I will never forget it because since working in Veterinary Medicine and closely with Animal Rescue groups I have heard more often from him, "If you bring home one more animal, you will sleep in the garage with it". My husband truly has a heart of gold and the fact that he refused to adopt out our little golden ball of fluff proves it.
She was brought to me by a friend and fellow rescue advocate who knew I could not say "NO". She was maybe 6 weeks old and had been dumped by someone and probably left for dead. She was a dirty, scruffy little thing with pneumonia, hydrocephalus, entropian eyelids, worms, fleas and herpes. I kept her in a humidifier, gave her antibiotics, wormed her and fattened her up with premium kitten food. I truly wondered if she would survive. But she was a true fighter and after about 4 weeks of TLC and hard work she was moved to our den to await testing and full vaccination before joining her new family of other felines. There she had more room to play and grow and continued to weasel her way into our hearts. I knew my husband was sneaking in to spend time with her even though he had said "I don't want to have anything to do with any more cats". I didn't realize how attached he had become until the night that my friend called about placing her for adoption.
That was it, and we agreed that she would keep the name that I had affectionately begun calling her due to the over-sized dome shape of her "Pumpkin Head". At 6 months we had her spayed and her eyelids fixed and also found out that she left a couple of Veterinary Doctors a bit perplexed. She still had a very round head with her ears firmly planted on the sides. A trait that most kittens outgrow by this age. The gap in her scull had not fully closed, and her jaws were a little malaligned causing a grinding sound when she chewed. She was also about half the size of a normal cat her age and extremely bow legged. She walked like a drunken cowboy at times. Outside of these peculiar physical traits however, she seemed to be as healthy as a horse and was as happy as a lark.
She was our special girl and we loved the way she would chirp instead of Meow like a regular cat. We used to say "she sees dead people", because when playing she never quite batted at the toy, but rather at the shadows surrounding it. When she made "happy feet" she would knead with all four paws instead of the usual two that most cats find adequate. Nightly she would come into the master bath to carry on surprisingly long discussions with my husband and me as we got ready for bed. Sometimes out of the blue she would come running across the living room floor jumping and chasing the unknown. You had to laugh because she was just so damn cute. Every visitor to our home was entranced by the fact that this adorable "kitten" looking and acting cat was really fully grown.
A year ago in November she began to have seizures. We were devastated knowing her physical quirks and history. Lab work, exams and multiple visits to the confounded Veterinarians office confirmed that it was possible for her to live a fairly normal life on medication. She was placed on phenobarbital which kept her seizure activity to a minimum. We gladly held her when she seized, in spite of the scratches and where more than happy to give her the medication every day. It even seemed like she understood the reasoning of it and we made a game out of playing with her needless syringe every day. She would throw it into the air and then pounce on it when it came back down. Often times she would make it disappear completely, hmm she was no dummy.
Through the discovery of her seizures she became more cherished. I think we knew in the back of our minds that she might not live to be as old as most normal cats. After all she was never normal. I never scolded her, not when she snagged the side of my sheets, not when she accidentally scratched me, not even when she had an accident outside of her box, never. She was too special, too innocent, my little angel cat and I loved her so much.
Last night she lost her battle with the seizures. She began seizing in the afternoon and by 2 AM with the additional phenobarbital and the Valium that the Vet gave her she was still wavered between seizing and being catatonic, we felt it best to let her go. I am truly grateful to the lovely Veterinarian who stayed with us for more than 4 hours and her technicians who handled Pumpkin so gently. My husband and I are beside ourselves with grief , we have lost our special child and she was only 5 years old. She is still deeply loved and will be greatly missed by everyone who knew her. I know she will be waiting for us someday just over the rainbow bridge.