Animal Stories from All-Creatures.org

My Dear Friend Fluffy

From Pat Hermans
Facebook posting, March 2023

I’ve never seen an animal so scared. With a lot of patience, sitting with him and talking to him a lot, he calmed down and slowly transformed into an affectionate cuddly male cat.

Yesterday we had to let my dear friend Fluffy go.

Last year February, he came to live with us, after I heard that he would be euthanized if someone wasn't found quickly to adopt him. He was 15 years old then.

I’ve never seen an animal so scared. With a lot of patience, sitting with him and talking to him a lot, he calmed down and slowly transformed into an affectionate cuddly hangover.

At the placement interview, I noticed that he could "complain" a lot.

After spending a lot of money at the vet, maybe he was sick, turns out nothing was going on.

Now, a year later, it turns out he was exhibiting dementia all along.

Had I known him before, I could have made that diagnosis a long time ago.

The times he was with me he was calm and relaxed but then came the moments he walked around the house unorientated and complaining.

And few moments when he panicked completely, when it seemed he had seen a ghost. The stress caused by all of this was also felt with Chica, our dog. He wanted to help me and wanted to "raise" Fluffy. Which caused Fluffy to get scared of Chica so he mostly disappeared upstairs where he felt safe.

In his last days, he had apparently forgotten that fear and came down more. As long as his and Chica's look at each other but didn't cross there was nothing going on. This is how I managed to spoil him, until yesterday the vet came to give him his last shot.

He's finally at peace now but I miss him terribly.

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