a sad day in my animal kingdom
November 12, 2008“A Week of Horrors, A Week of Hope: Part Deux” is being put on hold for the moment. today was a tough day for my animal-loving friends and family; two members of my extended furry family passed on, and they will be greatly missed.
the first one to pass was Mittens the Sheep. Unfortunatly, i don’t have a digital photo of her (but i have many prints, and there is even-yes-a painted portrait of her at my mother’s house).
Her mother, Madeline the Sheep, is still alive-she was a teenage mother, just one year older than Mittens. Mittens’ father Flash the Ram is long passed, may he rest in peace. I have fond memories of Flash’s statuesque nature; sometimes you could catch him standing with his two front hooves on a small rock, perfectly still, staring off into the distance, as if he was thinking “YES, I OWN ALL OF YOU.” Mittens looked more like her dad than her mom, and had a slight overbite–you had to mind your fingers when you hand-fed her grain.
Mittens the Sheep was euthanized today because of health complications due to a meningeal worm infection. I don’t want to humiliate her here with the details, but, as she was an old sheep (14!), my mother and the vet thought it best to let her leave this earth before the pain was too great.
I had never heard of a meningeal worm before. Apparently, if you don’t have a minute to read the link, it’s kind of like spinal meningitis in humans. Here is a diagram showing the life cycle of the worm:
and, i couldn’t find one of these for a sheep, but it affects llamas in the same way:
the numbered parts are all the organs and other bodily functions the worm seriously damages. apparently, from what they could tell, Mittens’ entire nervous system was ravaged by this worm, which comes from white-tail deer. and if you know anything about hunterdon county, nj, them bitches is everywhere.
I was talking to my mother on the phone about what happened to Mittens while taking a break at work when my manager came in from the back garden and told us that she went to pet Tuna, the cafe’s cat, and Tuna was dead.
We had taken Tuna in as a stray; she had appeared one day in the back garden, small and cute and friendly as can be. My boss loves cats, and decided to keep her. We soon after discovered that Tuna was pregnant (she couldn’t have been older than nine months!) She had her kittens, four of them, which I helped her to deliver because one was stuck in the placenta. Tuna had given birth on the concrete, and being able to dry off newborn kittens and help calm Tuna down and make them all comfortable in a kitten nest together was such a special experience.
The kittens were immediately spoken for. We told all the adopters to wait until the kittens were off nursing and Tuna got to spend some time with them; it was a real Discovery Channel-touching-moment to see how Tuna instantly knew just how to be a mom.
This past week, some of the kittens started going home with their new human parents. Tuna got spayed a few weeks ago, had an infection, but my manager and my boss both took care of her with medicine and paid the vet bills (along with help from all the generous donors at the cafe to the Tuna Health Fund) and Tuna seemed good as new.
Until today, when she was found laying under a bench on her side, stiff with rigor mortis, a small pool of blood on the concrete under her mouth. Tuna had no wounds or external signs of physical trauma. After my manager and I bagged her up and put her in a box and called our boss (who is devastated) a customer told us that she saw Tuna no more than two hours earlier, strolling around in front of the cafe, looking and acting like the usual Tuna.
I think she may have had a brain hemmorage or an aneurysm or, this is something else I found which may explain what happened.
Whatever it was, it was obviously quick and not diagnosable, since she had just gotten a vet checkup not even a month ago.
i’ve lost a lot of animals in my time, and it’s difficult to deal with, but it’s always much harder when the animal is young. there is no feeling of relief when they die, because they had a long life ahead of them and you expected to see them everyday.
i also don’t have any photos of Tuna–if anyone does, please send them to me. i know my boss would love to have them, she got very attached to Tuna. the sound of her voice when i told her the news broke my heart.
now, you should all learn about the Rainbow Bridge. apparently, it really helps you deal with situations such as these.
Sad day indeed. RIP Mittens, and Tuna, though I never met her. I always loved taking care of your sheep the few times you guys went on vacation and I was around to play shepherdess, and I usually explain where I’m from in NJ with “and one of my best friends, who lives down the street, has sheep. Yeah, it isn’t Newark.”
Mom seems to be coming around. When I got home after the deed was done, she handed me a paper with a bunch of notes she had written down from the vet. The vet believed that Mittens did not have the meningeal worm. I tend to be believe him. He thought that Mittens had a chronic digestive problem which caused malabsorption of nutrients. I had come to the same conclusion a few days before when I watched her attempt to eat. I don’t know much about sheep, but I know a lot about parasites, and the way her stomach tensed and she regurgitated food I knew it wasn’t the worms. Also he said the meningeal worms really only effect llamas, and its not common in sheep.
I’m exceptionally bummed to hear about Tuna. I think your theory on the embolesym (sp?) is right on. At first I automatically thought she was HBC (hit by car), but when you said there was no trauma, I figured it was unlikely.
Post-operative infections are pretty nasty, but it doesn’t strike me as the cause, especially since she was perfectly fine prior to her death. if she had a bad post-oeprative infection, she would not be moving around, and woulda been sick for days.
The embolesym/stroke seems likely. In a cat as young as her, she most likely had an undiagnosed, congenital heart murmur, which could have led to cardiomyopathy or blood clots. If she threw a blood clot, it would have been instantaneous and would explain the pool of blood…blood would have diffused into her lungs. I remember when you told me how small she was, which I think is another solid point for your theory. Cats with heart murmurs, especially females, are noticeably smaller in stature than the average cat. Just think of a little weak kid with a heart problem…its the same idea.
unfortunately I’ve been exposed to too much animal death over the years, so my instinct nowadays is to figure out the cause of death, which gives me piece of mind. Its a bit morbid I suppose.