I’m gutted about this cat. He was a rescue (dropped off somewhere, they brought him to the farm) Tuxedo cat with no tail and a particular kind of mustache. There are only so many things you can call a cat with a mustache who always looks like he’s glaring at you, so I named him Charlie before “Hitler” stuck. He was just a really fun cat- super friendly and curious, always into everything (he was barred from the feed room several months ago after we found him sampling the SMZ tabs, and you couldn’t leave food out in the tack room as Charlie Cat would eat it.) He was absolutely the worst barn cat I’ve ever met. Watched birds for entertainment but would not hunt- as it got colder we were hard pressed to even get him to move off of a trunk or saddle pad he had claimed as his. Left to his own devices he’d spend most of his day napping in his bed in the heated tack room. On warm days, though, he practically beat down the door to get out and trot around the aisle looking for sandwiches, batting hay stems around the floor, and trying to get into my coffee. Just a really fun cat. I am not in any position to have a cat right now, but I had in the back of my mind that when the opportunity arose, I was going to try to adopt Charlie to be a house cat.
Charlie Cat died, possibly in his sleep, today, and since there was no immediate cause, I’m asking for my own edification if anyone has seen this kind of symptomology before and what it might have indicated, so that I can be more informed in future.
Charlie came to the farm with what appeared to be a mild cold- clear nasal discharge, little cough- that he never quite got over. His symptoms worsened, and once or twice his sneezes included blood. The vet prescribed an oral antibiotic in November, which greatly improved but did not eliminate his symptoms. From then until present, Charlie Cat continued to sneeze (infrequently, not constantly, but more than a healthy cat) and would very occasionally (once a month) pass bloody mucous after a particularly heavy bout of sneezing. The vet suggested a possible nasal polyp, but exploratory surgery and lay-up care for a drop off barn cat was not in the budget, and the vet was satisfied that his symptoms improved after antibiotics. Recently his demeanor was normal. He was cheerful, sociable, and kept to his regular routine of sleeping 23 hours a day in his bed in the warm tack room, except for warm days or horse shows, when he’d trot out and hit up anybody who came near him in hopes of getting fed a bagel or some tomato soup. He was a lazy bum but I wouldn’t characterize him as lethargic. His eating and drinking was all normal and he was in good weight and condition. Today he was found in his bed, curled up as normal with his eyes closed, with what I estimate as about 1.5ccs worth of bloody discharge from the nose. No apparent discharge from eyes or mouth. Between the time I fed him at lunchtime (he was sleepy and didn’t want more kibble, but acknowledged my presence and purred when petted) and when he was found around 3:30, rigor had partially set in, and I did not open his mouth to check for blood inside it. There was no sign of any trauma outside the body or that would have occurred as he died, and there was no sign that he got into anything that could have poisoned him. We have no idea how old he was.
Does this happen to ring a bell to anyone of an illness you may have seen before?
I loved that damn cat. I wish I could have buried him on the saddle pad he claimed as his (I took it away once to wash it when he was out in the hay barn, and there was such hissing at anyone who approached “his” counter in the tack room until he got it back.) Worst barn cat I’ve ever met in my life. Hopefully that wasn’t his 9th life and he’ll be reborn as somebody’s pet.
