James' Story

James had lived for many years at a non-kill shelter in Seattle, WA.  My husband and I volunteered there.  One day we had finished with our chores for the day and were saying good bye to the owner, when James came and climbed up on me.  I held him and petted him and he purred loudly.  It was then that I realized how little he weighed and how thin his coat had become.  Kathy, the owner, told us that James was getting pretty old.  He was about 15 years then.   During the next few days, the shelter had a very bad virus out break and most of their kittens and several adults died (this in no way reflects upon the shelter, it was very well organized and kept very clean).  We went to get James as soon as we heard and took him to the vet.  He had bad diarrhea and trouble keeping food down.  At 15 a bad virus can easily be fatal.  But James slowly got better and after a few month he started growing a thicker coat and looked a much younger cat, even though, he had to have several teeth pulled.  Jamie moved back to Arkansas with us and lived about 8 more years.  He started loosing weight and having chronic bladder and kidney infections. Blood tests showed the infections but nothing else, the thyroid test came back negative.  Jamie still ate well at first and shouldn't have been loosing weight at all.  When he finally got too weak to eat and all he wanted to do anymore was sleep, we let him go over the Rainbow Bridge.  An autopsy showed what the blood tests wouldn't, Jamie had had thyroid cancer, that explained also why his infections would not heal.  Jamie we miss you very much.

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