The Passing of Chai

It's over now. And it came upon us and Chai so fast that we are struggling with our loss. Chai was put to sleep this morning after she showed signs of labored breathing just 36 hours ago.
Jo came home from a luncheon on Wednesday and noticed the cat lying on the floor of our motor home. She was panting and very lethargic. When I returned from exercise, she suggested we call the vet, since Chai has never been sick in all of her seven years. The vet saw us at 5 p.m. on Wednesday. He did two xrays and found a massive amount of fluid in her thoracic cavity. He said he wanted to draw off some of the fluid to check it. This fluid was almost all blood - 300 ml of it. He said a cat the size of Chai (about eight pounds) usually has two liters of blood circulating. He put her on oxygen and suggested that we take her to an emergency animal hospital for overnight monitoring.
Jo and I drove her south about 25 miles and checked her in. The vet there set about analysing her blood to see is she had the ability to coagulate. The lack of coagulation would indicate she had been poisoned. Her tests showed she was coagulating, which indicated there might be tumor which was being masked by the fluid. She suggested keeping her overnight in an oxygen tent and then setting up an appointment on Thursday morning with a vet who could do an ultrasound scan of her chest.
We took her to a third vet on Thursday morning at 8 a.m. and it took seconds for the vet to gasp at the size of the tumor. It was between five and six times the size of her heart and was pressing on the heart.
The vet said thoracic surgery was not a good idea because of the size of the tumor. She said it was time for us to let Chai go. The shock of this news knocked the stuffing out of both of us. We drove home and Jo suggested that we hold onto Chai through Thursday so we could say goodbye - a smart decision.
This morning (Friday), I called our primary vet and arranged to have the cat euthanized.
So it is all over now - exactly seven years to the day after she was born. And we are both heartbroken.
This wonderful, loving creature brought so much joy to us in her seven years. She had touched so many lives and we think lovingly back to people like our housekeeper in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She had never seen a pet cat before since life in that land does not permit most people the luxury of having a pet. Jo and I reveled in the squeals of delight we would hear from Eng, our housekeeper, as she was changing the sheets on our bed and Chai would get under the billowing sheets to make a dive at them when they touched the mattress. We remember the guard, named Boo, at our house there who allowed Chai to escape the compound. He went off down the dirt street, calling for Chai and checking with the guards at each of the neighboring homes. Eventually, he found her and proudly brought her back to us, arms outstretched, carrying Chai, smiling and saying, "Chai, Chai."
She traveled around the entire world with us, visiting Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, Canada and the U.S. and she sailed 12,000 miles. She fell into the Atlantic in Maine and into the Gulf of Mexico in Florida. But she survived it all and loved her adventures.
When she was with us, she was at her happiest.And so it was with us. Oh, dear Chai, we shall miss you.

This Anhinga dries his feathers on a branch in Emerson Point Park, Palmetto, Fl.

Our cold snap was one for the record books. Lizards fell from trees in a comatose state. Foot-and-a-half-long snook died because the Gulf of Mexico waters turned too cold to support them. Farmers who watered their crops in an attempt to create an insulating coating of ice on their strawberries and oranges sucked so much water from the aquifer that we now are being plagued by dozens of sinkholes so large that entire houses are dropping 40 feet into the earth. I saw a picture on television the other day in which a 50-foot high oak tree had plummeted vertically about 40 feet and only the top branches could be seen.

That being said, it has warmed sufficiently that Jo and I were able to venture out on our canoe again. We took a trail through the red mangrove bushes at the end of a spit of land, and poked our way through the sun-dappled waters where very few fish were jumping. We came up many water birds, though. They must be hungry since their meal of fish has been so depleted. But they seemed pretty happy up in the branches.

The anhinga is a beautiful, pre-historic-type bird with his snake-like neck and mahogany-brown feathers. He has the difficult problem that he needs to dive and swim under water for long periods of time, seeking his prey. His feathers do not have enough oils embedded in them and, as a result, his underwater sojourns result in his getting waterlogged. This makes it very difficult for him to take off from the water. So you always will see anhingas perched on branches with their wings out, airing them in the warming sun. This is the only way they can return to diving and feeding.

We saw 8-10 osprey, fluttering like helicopters at 100-200 feet and looking down with their eagle eyes to survey the fish scene. They drop out of the skies like a bomb when they spot their fish. I remember 60 years ago in Scotland that only five osprey were left in the country. They had been killed off by DDT, which caused the egg shells to crack prematurely. It is to our credit as humans that we've managed to bring this magnificent bird back from extinction.