Week 42: Tootsie

A week of moping around the house, crying, terrible phone calls, crying some more, and feeling a bit empty.

Posted on by Rowan Manning.
Tagged with Tootsie

Content-warning: illness and death

  • We’ve gone from a great week to an utterly shitty one.

  • On Tuesday our cat, Tootsie, died at the vet. We were on our way to see him after a stressful day of phone calls. I’m devastated, it was all so sudden.

  • He wasn’t really eating after we got back from our trip. At first, we thought he was annoyed with us but got worried after a second day so we took him to the vet where he stayed overnight. Eventually one of the scans revealed that he had a mass in his chest and fluid on his lungs, and he deteriorated quickly from there.

  • I took some time off work. I keep crying.

  • We gave him a lovely couple of years, he was a happy cat and spent his time following me and Charlotte around the house purring. I feel really grateful for the little bit of time we had with him.

  • We knew a rapid decline was a possibility, Toots being an FIV /FeLV cat. Knowing that his immune system was fucked didn’t make it any easier though. We thought we had a year or two more.

  • I feel like I’m rambling. I’m just going to share some pictures of the best cat.

Tootsie getting comfortable on the sofa
The first photo I took of Tootsie. He got comfortable very quickly
Tootsie laying very flat, half asleep with his eyes barely open
Toots laying very flat, I have many photos of the flat lad
Tootsie laying on his back on his favourite blanket
Toots on his favourite blanket, which obviously we have to keep forever now
Tootsie laying along the length of my arm while I'm trying to use my laptop
Toots helping me use my laptop
Tootsie snuggled up under the duvet in bed
Tootsie loved to climb under the duvet and purr at helicopter volume
Tootsie looking up at me from under a blanket
He always wanted to be as close to us as possible
Tootsie and I sharing a beanbag on New Years Eve, with a Christmas tree lighting us
He liked people, on NYE he just sat watching people and getting stroked
Me, Charlotte, and Tootsie all posing for a selfie
I love this photo of the three of us
Tootsie laying between Charlotte and I on the bed
The last photo I took, wedged between us the day we got back from Scotland