As a joke I tell my mother I was raised by Leão.
Leão was a german shepard that took care of me until he died, when I was 5 y.o.
I was born with a problem in my left leg that avoided me to walk at the normal age. I had many operations since birth until 3 and I wore a paraphernalia that didn't allow me to move much. My darling dog would carry me like a pup, so I could see the world outside. When I got rid of those handicapping devices, Leão would provoke me to walk hanging on his fur.
He was the most beautiful dog in the world, I still remember my mother getting me from sleeping with his paws around me to get me to bed.
This dog was viciously killed and we (the family) never recovered from his death.
Recently I lost 2 cats, and even coming from a family that always had animals, pets, and experiencing the loss of those friends, these last ones was too much to deal with.
Twelve or thirteen years ago a student, knowing that I loved animals, arrived with a little basket with two tiny cats. She just said to me, either you take them or they are going to die.
What could I do?
I took the little things, both of them weighted less than half a pound and prayed to be able to make them survive. They were a week old, still with their eyes shut. I took them to the vet because they had parasites. As they were so young they couldn't be medicated. I did the best I could and eventually we got rid of those damn fleas. For 3 months I would carry the kittens in a kangaroo styled way, hiding them under loose clothes and feeding them every 3 hours. Once I was caught while delivering a seminar, because one of them meowed.
To shorten the story, they became big beautiful cats. The black one, Felix was 18 pounds of muscle, Carlos, the striped one, was 16 pounds of fat.
when they were 9 years old, Felix revealed a bump on his back. Vets, analysis, biopsys,...It was a very aggressive sort of cancer. He was operated but I was told immediately that there was no chance he would survive. But Felix wouldn't have any of it. As soon as he got home, even with the collar he would do all the naughtiness he used to do. One afternoon I arrived home and Felix, with his isabelian collar was just sat very quietly on top of lots of books from a very high shelf. In less than 5 minutes he starts to blow like a balloon. I got really frightened, just grabbed him, took off the collar so he would not choke, got him in the car and drove like mad to the animal's hospital.
His Excellency, Felix, by falling down, had provoked a strange condition where air gets in between the flesh and the skin. He had to be punctured with a needle to let the air off. I was crying, terrified with what had happened but Mr. Felix was delighted with the attention and licking the vet's helper hand. He had to be strapped in order to allow the skin to get back in place, and to make him less vain (more for commodity in fact) I made him wear baby t-shirts.
Unfortunately the cancer, as predicted, returned even more massively just a couple of months after the operation. There was no way we could operate again and chimio was too aggressive and in this case with no perspective of success.
The only solution was to give him pain killers or put him to sleep. Egotistically, Felix survived on pain killers for another year. It was not until his basic functions became impossible that I got the guts to release him from such a miserable life - the hardest decision in my life.
Carlos (Carlinhos for the friends), was a calm cat. In fact he only got in trouble when following his brother Felix. Carlos would spend his days with his tummy up at some sunny corner and would just make a little yawn sound when Felix decided to play with his ears. They were very close, those two.
When Felix died I was afraid Carlos wouldn't get over it. They had never been apart since birth and they just couldn't be one without the other - when they were kittens I would know in which drawer or closet Felix was hiding because Carlos would be meowing by it.
Carlos got over it and apparently seemed happy to have me all to himself. About one year later he started to have problems with the food. He was on a low caloric and urinary diet because he had had a urinary infection when he was 1 1/2 y.o. He was taken to the vet and they said it was nothing, just to change his diet. For the following six months I would take poor Carlinhos to the Hospital because he couldn't keep nothing he ate and was loosing weight so fast.
Finally they re-checked his analysis and x-rays and concluded that Carlos not only had already lost one kidney but was also with the other one being destroyed and not functioning.
Once again I was a coward and kept taking poor Carlinhos to the hospital for hemodialysis, until one day, after 3 days linked to the machine, he just rested his very thin body against my arms and closed his eyes. I had to ask for him to be put to rest.
I miss all my animal friends that passed away, but these are still too vivid in my mind.
I would love to have a dog or a cat, but I'm still frighten to face the pain again.
