Sylvester the Cat

Sylvester is a 3+ year old tuxedo cat. He was brought into my home in December 2001/Early January 2002, and has been a much loved and cared for member of my family ever since. He's been one of the constant joys in my life, and this page is dedicated to him.

It's funny now in retrospect we go back and realize all of the things we didn't do. I've got loads of pictures from Rachel's digital camera of Sylvetser, and I'm sure a bunch of rolls of film in my "processed very soon" box, but I have little web presense for him. Somewhere around February 7th Sylvester became very ill, and on February 10th I started this little journal outlining his progress.

I've got a load of images of both Sylvester and my Boxer Zack, and a bunch of little movies shot with Rachel's Fuji FinePix digital camera. We recently purchased a DV camera, and there are about 7 minutes of footage of Sylvester already being recorded. Unfortunately none of it is the funny stuff that he was doing prior to our buying the camera (we bought it for Christmas), and while I've had the camera set up on a tripod ready to take some footage of his antics, he has been less than willing to participate. :( I'm hoping that Sylvester will return home soon so I can get some more footage of him. In the meantime, please check back here often for updates on his condition and as pictures and videos become available/organized I will put them here.

Progress

• 2005-Feb-07: I noticed that Sylvester was having problems breathing.
• 2005-Feb-09: By a chance stroke of good luck, the building I work in lost all power so I got to go home early; I took this opportunity to take Sylvester to the vet. He was brought to Westway Animal Clinic where they did a quick diagnosis and found that he had accumulated fluids in his chest cavity, which was restricting his lungs from functioning properly. He was left at the vet to be treated, which consisted of X-Rays, oxygen and a blood tap to try to remove some of the fluids. Based on his condition, he also requires an ultra-sound to check his heart and kidneys, to determine if one of those are the source of his problems.
• 2005-Feb-09: At 6:00 I went back to the vet. The vet showed me the 2.5 X-Rays he completed on Sylvester: one before blood tap, one after where Sylvester moved resulting in a blurry X-Ray (go Sylvester! Always causing trouble! ) and a sharp X-Ray of after the blood tap. There was considerable difference. I was told they removed 288 mL of fluid from his chest cavity, and looking at him he was breathing easier.. He was hooked up on an IV and taken to the VEC 24-Hour emergency veterinarian clinic
• 2005-Feb-10: I picked up Sylvester this morning with Rachel at 7:30 AM. The doctor at the VEC said that he did well throughout the night, and was taken off of Oxygen, but was very depressed -- understandable since he was in a foreign environment and away from home! He was transported back to his regular vet. He had blood work done on him at the VEC and was told that his white blood cell was high, possibly due to the stress he had recently been put under. When Rachel and I visited him before we left the vet for the day, he was still curled up in a corner, but he had started purring again (a good sign!). We are waiting on the vet to call us back and let us know what comes next, and if the ultrasound can be done today or not.
• 2005-Feb-10: Because the vet didn't have the food that Sylvester usually eats, we had to go buy some and bring it back. The VEC also didn't give us back the X-Rays taken yesterday so we had to go back and get those and bring both X-Rays and food back to our regular vet. Sylvester is scheduled for an ultrasound at 5:30 PM today, we'll see how it goes.
• 2005-Feb-10: I picked Sylvester up at 6:30 PM today. He has been diagnosed with cancer, having two tumors which are in front of his heart. The vet doesn't know how long he has, and it is a fact that fluids will eventually accumulate in his chest cavity again. According to the vet he hasn't eaten all day, even though we brought his own food there, and he is very depressed.
• 2005-Feb-10: Sylvester has been home since 7:00 and seems a little happier being in his home environment. He's already checked out his room, and my hopes went up when he headed straight for his food dish. All he did was sniff at it however, and he didn't eat anything. He's also made a thorough check of my room and his room, checking under my bed and in the closet for who-knows-what. He's also had his first fight with Zack for the evening.
• 2005-Feb-11: It's almost 1:00 AM and Sylvester still hasn't eaten much. Rachel came over after work, and we've been watching my cat all night. Since he's been home I've shot two tapes (2 hours of footage) of Sylvester around the house, following him everywhere. He seems to have little energy though, and frequently lies down on his tummy to rest.
• 2005-Feb-11: 12:00 NOON today. At 10:30 AM I had to make the painful decision to call the vet and make an appointment to put my beloved Sylvester to sleep. Rachel and I agreed that this was the best thing to do. The prognosis for his tumours is grim, and it is a fact that he will not survive the cancer; the only question is when. He still hasn't eaten, and no matter what food we put in front of him he won't take any. I even offered his some ice cream which he loves to share when I am eating it and he shied away. He did manage to drink a little milk, but other than milk and water he hasn't eaten a thing. We leave at 2:00 PM and Rachel and I are spending every last minute with Sylvester, only pausing to give him time to rest if he seems annoyed with our presense. I haven't cried so hard in a long time, as Sylvester has been my faithful companion for just over three years.
• 2005-Feb-11: Between 2:30 PM and 3:00 PM Sylvester was put to sleep while in my arms. Rachel and I brought him to the vet and the vet injected him with the solution that put him into a deep sleep. We've made the decision to have the body cremated and are currently putting together a little collection of things for him to keep with the ashes. My dog Zack still doesn't know what is going on, and as I type this he is actively looking for the cat; knowing that we left with Sylvester but came back empty handed he is a little confused.
• 2005-03-08: Today I finally found enough courage to go to the vet to pick up Sylvester's ashes. Of course, the moment I got in my car I started crying, because even though it's almost been a month, I miss him dearly. He was one of the only constant things in my life that always made me happy. Like all pets, his affection for his owner was uncondtional. What scared me the most was that when I went to the vet, in the back I saw another tuxedo cat walking around and part of me thought it was him, just for a moment. But of course, it wasn't. Miracles are the things of storybooks, and now that he is home again, he has left me forever.

Sylvesterisms

While I had Sylvester there were many things unique to him, that I doubt I'll never see again. Of all the pets I've had, I think I've been the closest to him, mainly because I am old enough to appreciate his companionship, and it was my responsibility to take care of him. What follows are a list of "Sylvesterisms", those attributes unique to my special cat. As I remember more things, the list will grow.

• When I first received Sylvester he was one, very, very dirty cat. He was originally owned by the father of a friend of my dad's, who was put into a nursing home so he could not have the cat anymore. When he first arrived at my house he was covered in dirt, his fur had dandruff and dust interwoven in it, and he was generally dirty. For the first week I had him, he sat on my bed day and night cleaning himself until he had the cleanest and softest coat of fur I had ever seen.
• While Sylvester like my room, he usually only slept on one spot of my bed: the corner by my left foot (when I was lying on my back). I'm not sure why he picked this corner. Possibly because it was easiest for him to see the rest of my room and out into the hallway. But the real reason was never found out.
• I own one of those foldable lawn-chairs that people usually take camping, and I use it in my room for a regular chair when I am playing on my PS2. A typical gaming session consists of me sitting in the chair, and my feet propped up on my bed, near Sylvester's corner. Whenever Sylvester saw me with my feet propped up, he would use my legs as a bridge, walk over to my lap and curl up in it while I played video games.
• Usually when I came home from work I would head down to my computer room to do some work on my laptop. Sylvester, always needing attention, would often enter the room, do a quick walk around to ensure that all things were in order, and then sit beside or behind my chair and sit there staring at me until I paid attention. If more than a few minutes passed without me looking at him, he would meow, and do this every few minutes until I finally picked him up and put him on my computer desk. Once my my desk, he would typically walk around, and then place himself between myself and my laptop, curling up into a ball to sleep in front of my keyboard. I would usually end up typing over him to do my work.
• Whenever something was placed on my bed, Sylvester would try to sleep on it: towels, coats, jackets, lego, my laptop, pillows, anything, as long as it was over the top sheet of the bed (so if I put the pillows under the top sheet, he would ignore them). To top this off, he included people in his "list of things to sleep on". So if I was lying on my tummy reading a book, Sylvester would often walk up onto my bum and legs and curl up and fall asleep.
• The first time I took Sylvester to the vet, I didn't have a cat carrier for him. I had to drive him over in my current car at the time (a '91 automatic Cavalier), so I took him out to the car and put him in the passenger seat. As I started driving, he tried to explore the car, and eventually settled for crossing over the center console, and curling up in my lap while I was driving. Needless to say, if a police officer had pulled me over, s/he would have been pleasantly surprised at my passenger. My next car was a 5-speed 240SX, so I doubt he could have curled up in my lap at that point. Lucky for me (and unlucky for Sylvester) I acquired a cat carrier by then.
• Sylvester hated his cat carrier. To get him into it, I had to put the carrier on its side so the door was at the top, open the door, pick up my cat and lower him into the carrier vertically. Once he was in I could close the door, and rotate the carrier so that it was in the proper orientation (a nice little ride for Sylvester as the carrier turned over!).
• I used to do a lot of electronics projects, some for school and some for myself. The projects usuallly used a lot of copper wire, which I usually pulled from old telephone wire. If I was working on my desk, Sylvester would often jump up, and then try to eat the wires! He liked to chew on them for some strange reason.
• Sylvester had two nicknames: "Ester, Syl V." and "Kitten Caboodle".
• One of the reasons we got Sylvester was because he had a reputation as a good mouser, and our house had mice at the time. Sure enough soon after Sylvester came into my life the mice started disappearing. Of course, whenever the weather got bad, the mice would try to get back in, but Sylvester would keep finding them. I always wondered what he did with them, and I assumed he ate them. One night I came home from closing at my work around 12:30 AM, and went downstairs to jump in bed. As I was about to jump in bed, I saw a half eaten mouse on my bed! Sylvester had left it there as a gift for me to show me he was doing a good job. This became a regular tradition, him leaving half-eaten mice around for me to find, as it was his way of showing what he could do for me.
• One night I woke up to hear Sylvester meowing in what sounded like pain. I started calling him and he eventually came into my room, still with the strange anguish-meow. As he came into the light, I saw that he had a mouse in his mouth! And to top it off, it was still alive! Another one of Sylvester's gifts! This one wasn't his best idea though. He dropped the mouse to give it to me, and the mouse got away from him; despite his running around after it in my room.
• Sylvester was slightly overweight, and b/c of this when he jumped on my bed at night sometimes it woke me up. One night he jumped up, and I was half-woken up, but he kept jumping around on my bed. Eventually he left, and then came back ten minutes later to jump around again. Finally he settled down beside me, but I could hear him cleaning himself. It turned on the light, and found that he wasn't cleaning himself, but eating a mouse right beside me!
• Some of my favorite memories are waking up to Sylvester. Sometimes in the morning, he would come downstairs, jump up on my bed, walk up the length of it to where my head was, walk over to my night table, and then walk back to my head and curl up beside me. The whole time doing this he would be purring very loudly, but it was a great sound to wake up to.
• Sylvester had a tiny piece on the inside of his eyelid missing. We don't know where it went, but we guess that he must have been a fiesty cat at one point.
• Not quite a year after Sylvester first came into my home he started scratching like crazy. I brought him to the vet and since he didn't have any flea's the vet said that he either had OCD or some other type of (mental) disorder, so he prescribed anti-depressants for him! Putting him on the medicine made him a totally different cat, so I stopped giving it to him, and gave him flea medicine. He stopped scratching and returned to normal! It turns out that he did have fleas, but the reason why the vet couldn't find anything was because he was so good at cleaning himself!