Birthday Memorial

today, Max would have been one year old.

to celebrate, we gave the kitties (jack and rowdy) a nice dinner of chicken and melted cheese, and they ate a lot and purred and were happy.

with lots of love for maxerodenfoe r.i.p.

bottle caps, by ashraf
because when he couldn't write it, i stepped in.
he's done the same for me in this difficult moment.
thank you so much dear.

*****

tribute, by danielle
thank you bella, for the picture and the comments.
for the smile your memories offered me.
you're a sweetheart.

the legacy of maxerodenfoe

yep, the only not-quite-ten-months-old kitten with a legacy; that's our max.

today, at 5pm, we brought our little orange kitten to the vet for his very last visit. he hissed and growled as usual. we told him before we went that he was allowed to put up a fight and that we'd be proud of him if he did. so he did. ryan has a brand new little cut on his left hand.

we also showed him the box that my dog denny lives in so he could see what he'll look like when he comes back home in a few days. as of tomorrow some one from an organization called Angel will come pick him up from the vet and he'll be cremated and stored in a nice little wooden box.

we're sad. there's a void on the sofa behind me where, if he were well enough, max would have been sat waiting to walk over the keyboard and bring up the internet explorer help window or make the search bar disappear. he was very skilled at computer ness. did i ever tell you about his google search for mining equipment? yeah. he opened the browser window himself and everything. of course, we couldn't afford the $97,000.00 water purifying pump he wanted.


we're sad, yes. but we're also (at least i am, i guess i shouldn't speak for ryan) happy. happy that we had the pleasure of knowing max. for his affection. and for being given the opportunity to add two awesome months to his way-too-short life. ryan said, and it might sound corny but it made me smile, how could a light that burned so brightly have lasted any longer?

that's our max. the brightest bulb on the tree. (not because he ate all the other bulbs either... although he did eat one....)

we're really going to miss him. my blog might even miss him. hardyf had told me, not too long ago in fact, that he felt as though max were sitting next to him at his computer because there are so many pictures of him up here. sorry if i bogged you down with them, but i was so proud to have him as a best friend for as long as i did. he kept me company on the days i spent home alone or even just the few hours between when i would get home from work and ryan. he was always around to chat with and full of fun and surprises.

hopefully, though, there will be a new addition to the acheson family home. his name will be Rowdy (after wrestler and legend Rowdy Roddy Piper--who had the same cancer as max, in fact, and was diagnosed within the same month--as a way of honoring max and a legend ryan and i are both rather fond up and hopefully meeting in march when we go to texas for a convention thing).


we don't know what rowdy will be like. we're not expecting anything of him either. ah, except we hope he's rowdy. ryan says he wants him to break stuff. all kittens break something. max chewed through ryan's $30 headset cable, for example.

so... this is max's last post. maybe not the last time you hear me go on about max (but i'm not going to do a whole post about the box max comes home in), because he's had that great an impact on both ryan and i.

but this is the last post with max in the tag i think.

with the most love i can offer, to maxerodenfoe, my sweet little orange demon, i love you, i'll miss you, but most of all i'll always remember you with a smile.


.

the lasting max

max and i had a sad visit with the vet on friday. instead of having his regular chemo treatment, he had some blood drawn and a new xray taken. his xray looks exactly the same as the one taken two and a half months earlier when he was first diagnosed with lymphoma--except for the fact that he's about twice the size now as he was then, incredibly enough.

the thought is, that, perhaps he had that other kind of cancer that's untreatable, since the spot in his chest is still there. if that's the case, then we're curious as to how he got as better as he did and so quickly.

the vet was choked up and near to tears when she told me that she wished she had some good news for me.

max is not taking any more medicine. he doesn't need to, because it's not working any more.

i asked the vet if he's in any pain. she assured me that, no, he is not. but as soon as he takes a turn from the worst... starts vomiting or gasping for breathe, then we need to take him in to have him put to rest.

i was told, "maybe weeks". i don't think he's going to last that long though... he's not had anything to eat or drink since yesterday morning when he shared some honey nut cheerios with me.

we knew when we started his treatment in late november that he would not last forever. i was hoping he'd have made it all the way through his treatment (another 12 weeks), but we weren't even certain the chemo would do anything for him.

in the end, we are so grateful for the 2 full, healthy, happy months we were able to add onto his too-short little life. if he makes it until feb 12th, he'll be a full ten months old.

no, we'll never get to see how big he would have gotten (i think he would have been a big cat, what with his loooong legs and looooonger tourso and tail, and those big ears and really big eyes). but other than that, ryan and i have been through so much with max. so many memorable moments and little life lessons... as many as any life time, as long or as short, could wish for.

he helped us build our kitchen over the summer. he ate strange things, and i will think of him every time i open a bottle of water. he, even now, is lying down a kitty arm's reach away from one of his many bottle caps. it's going to be really hard to pick them all up... i'm not sure what i'll do with them all.

for all of you who have been with max since we got him, since he was diagnosed... it's couple hundred times harder for us right now. but, we're okay.

max is sleeping, resting. he's pawing his bottle cap and watching my little brother play super mario on the tv. he's been following me to bed and then downstairs for the day. he even meowed once this morning.

... i guess the next post with max in the title will be the last...

(((((maxerodenfoe)))))

our max

michelle took some beautiful pictures of maxerodenfoe a few weekends back and has put one, as well as a little tribute, up on her blog.
thanks michelle!

i guess an update on max's cancer condition is about due...

he's been doing really really well. we had, as you have seen, a wonderful christmas. unfortunately for our little orange wonder he's started to get sick again. the vet called yesterday to check up on him... from his blood test results she fears that his lymphoma may be coming out of remission. he's eating and drinking, but he's not been playful the past few days. he's sleeping a lot and not jumping around... a lot like when he got sick the first time around... before we knew what was wrong.

i'm hoping, after his xray and blood work and maybe chemo on friday afternoon, we'll know more and have a new path for his treatment.

here's hoping for the best.

((((max))))

peek-a-boo

you can just make out his nose poking out from under the carpet...

the max effect

ryan and i went to philly this weekend past to see ashraf read some of his mighty poetry. we had a fabulous time (thank you dear!!) and got to meet the adorable foxy (ashraf & wojtek's new lady dog friend). it was a rather eventful weekend actually... snuffy caught two mice. one ashraf found dead and one that i took out of snuffy's mouth while it was still wriggling and trying to get away (i think it will be alright). ryan and i had our first taste of proper geno's cheesesteak and tastykakes as well. we visited the new rocky statue...


and saw the Child of Man (with Clive Owen, recommend it). i ate *a ton* and slept lots and overall feel pretty relaxed for having gone away for a few days (despite the 6hr drive there and 6hrs home; thankfully my back hasn't ached at all like i feared it might with all the driving around).

but,

because we were gone for a few days i needed someone to come administer a pill to max. that person was my mom.

unfortunately for both my mom and max, the encounter resulted in my mom having to go to the doctor and is now on antibiotics from the bite max inflicted. they brawled. and max won.

i feel awful that my mom got hurt and that max was so shaken up by it all. my mom took some pictures of the damage... you can't see the swelling, but you can see at least that he drew blood in several places...

so this... a public apology to my mommy (like i said, i really feel terrible for catalyzing the whole thing), to max who i should have known better than to think he'd take anything from someone other than me or ryan, and a thank you to ashraf for a lovely weekend away from it all, for the food and the bed and the fresh set of memories.

cat in a bag

max likes sleeping in his newbury comics bag... with his favorite orange ribbon, and you can see two of his almost 40 bottle caps (he collects them)

kitty's first crimbo

crunchy christmas blessings

so i'm sitting here, filling out a couple happy crimbo cards
when all of a sudden
**cRuNcH!**
i look over at max
to see him chewing on a little green christmas light!!!
now, they must be plastic, right?
he wasn't bleeding or anything,
and he was totally after having another one once that one went down.
he's part demon i think.
what cat eats chrismas lights!?!

max says:

C v’-;
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®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®
®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®
®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®
®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®
®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®®™

max's new doo

he had a long visit with the vet this friday gone past. they had to give him some drugs intravenously and had to put him asleep to do so. what they also had to do was give him this new hair cut...




poor little fella looks completely pathetic.

the good news is, max is doing great. he's into the whole catnip scene and has been playing and meowing and jumping and doing all sorts of max things ^_^ so even though he looks a bit silly, we're very very happy with how he's doing.

if it's not one thing, it's the other

a brief update on max's condition and other things pertaining:

he's doing alright. we were a bit worried monday when we woke up to a few separate piles of kitty throw up, and he was acting very tired again. the vet told us not to worry when i spoke to her, and he went in for some more fluids this afternoon. we're being very cautious with him, obviously. every move he makes we watch. both out of concern and gratitude for still having him. we want anything but to take him granted; especially now.

while max is on the slow and bumpy road to getting well, ryan is all sorts of aching and ouchy. he's in bed now, trying to sleep and had to take the day off work. i hope he doesn't have anything like what he had in february. that was a miserable month for him, and for me.

hugs for both my boyos (((max))) & (((ryan)))

as for me, i just have a little head cold - nothing that's going to stop me or even really slow me down.

and have been reading the lovely mina loy and some past simple.

yes, more about max

today he's been eating both his wet food and his dry food (yay). he didn't put up too much resistance to the pill he has to have shoved down his throat once every day. he's been a bit more active today than yesterday still. he's sleeping a bit less and seems more interested in ryan and my activities. right now he is being cute, playing with a little spring i found in the basement.
he's looking a lot less scraggly and scruffy too, which is great. he's such a handsome kitty. no pictures for this post, although i took a couple of cute ones of max and ryan watching an old bond film. i'll post those some other time.
'tis all. he's still doing well, and our spirits are high.

in other news, ryan bought the last three wii-motes from bestbuy today. wii seems more popular than nintendo anticipated? or just the retailers? i'm very much looking forward to fishing in the new zelda and bowling ^_^

kitty =^_^= update

happy saturday all. yesterday max spent 6 hours at the vet's. he got his first full dose of chemo, some more fluids, and ryan and i got given some pills to give him once a day for the rest of the week. max will be going in again on wednesday for some blood work and again on friday for his next full dose of chemo.

max doesn't has have leukemia according to the blood work done. he might have it in his bone marrow, but if that's then case (and we're hoping it's not) than there's nothing we'd be able to do for him because you can only treat the leukemia or the lymphoma, not both. just diagnosis for bone marrow leukemia is about $300, which we're not keen on having done to beginning with, so we're going with the lymphoma treatment full on and praying for the best.

also, found out that he weighs 5lbs9oz - he's so little.

when we brought him home last night he was sticky and smelly and tired and feeble. i was nervous about his condition. he was the epitome of pathetic. ryan and i just let him sleep though, and went to see my dad for his birthday. we came home and he was still sleeping.

at some point in the night max must have gotten up and ate some of his canned food, which is great. as ryan and i started getting out of bed, max came out from under the bed too. he stretched and we could tell right away that he was looking better. he seemed to have cleaned himself over night too. he'd been looking really scruffy. he looks a little scruffy still, but much less so.


max ate more food when he got up. he followed us down stairs and even had some cheese with me this morning.

he's looking pretty good. he seems well. definatly not any worse at least.


i'll continue to keep everyone updated via my blog.

as of right now, max is playing with an ant.

p.s. for poetry, go to piloteye

more on max

so my blog's turned into a journal about max, almost like a "normal" blog. this is partially due to the fact that i haven't been writing very much along the lines of poetry, so i haven't anything to post. i can't force myself to write in extremely emotional movements. i don't write poetry for therapy and i don't write good poetry when i'm sad or upset or anxious. i did write two rather unhappy poems on piloteye a few days ago. and there's still buttons up at the wet. also, for poetry-related reading, c.s. has been revealing the recidivist manifesto over the past few days... part 1, part 2, part 3 & part 4 (with more to come).

nothing as really changed with max over the past few days. yesterday i took him to the vet so they could do some blood work. they're testing him for leukemia again. i'm not sure how much will change for our situation if he does have leukemia, but i know that it will change things; there'll be that one other thing to fix.

he's quiet, tired, a little bit scruffy and he's unfriendly towards anyone but ryan and i. my sister meg was over last night along with her boyo chris and my brother mike to celebrate my birthday. when meg went to pet max he hissed at her and wet upstairs under the bed.

he is going to the bathroom regularly, which is important. he's eating. he even had some of his dry food last night. he is still spitting up a lot though, which is causing him to be dehydrated. yesterday at the vet they had to give him some liquids via injection. he's not drinking water to compensate for the spitting up. i tried to mix some chicken broth to his water, but that didn't seem to interest him one bit. maybe later i'll try beef broth. he's not like a child who we could verbally force to drink anything. max just doesn't want to drink his water, no matter what flavor it is.

so today i am to drop him off at the vet's at noon time, and he's going to get his first dose of chemo. they're going to keep him there fore a few hours to watch for any reactions (positive or negative). and so i guess i'll let you all know later today if he has leukemia or not. other than that, i don't think much is going to change right away.

lymphoma was the good news

okay, where do i start?

the end i guess... maxerodenfoe has kitty cancer.

on friday i took him to the vet to be neutered. i mentioned over the phone a few days prior that he didn't seem to be feeling very well. he'd been spitting up clear colorless bile and seemed to be sleeping a lot. because of this, instead of being neutered, the vet saw him for an exam. the first assumption was that he may have eaten something he shouldn't have... like string or a hair elastic like the one that had recently gone missing. so an x ray was needed.

i waited around, nervous as ever over max's little tummy.

once the x rays came back the vet started explaining the x ray to me. his tummy and intestines were perfectly fine. but in his upper chest there was white where there was meant to be black - fluid where there was meant to be air. at least... she thought it was fluid.

assuming what was in max was fluid the vet asked to keep max for the morning into the afternoon to take a sample from his chest to see if it was internal bleeding or if perhaps max had this awful thing called f.i.p.. i called ryan, all choked up and he came right home from work. at that moment is when we both began thinking max might have to be put down, and at such a young age (he's only just turned 7 months old). we waited impatiently, nervously, for the vet's reply by phone. more than anything we wanted to bring max home and have him with us.

my phone rang at a little before 3pm. the vet told me that she was "mystified" by max. the white in his chest was not fluid, it is a hard mass.

we went to pick max up at 4. the vet had had to shave a couple square inches of fur of either side of him just behind his front legs. he was tired, his tail was flared. he was not a happy kitty. we were so pleased to have him home though, even though we didn't know what was going on.



the vet said she would take his x rays to a clinic near by and send the small fluid sample she got out of max to a pathology lab.

on saturday morning the vet called us. she's dedicated so much to figuring out what's wrong with our little orange kitten. i already owe he so much gratitude. she called to let us know that she'd spoken to another vet. between the two of them, and having had a look at the fluid sample, they thought, despite his young age, that max might have one of two types of cancer. one of them was lymphoma. this is treat-able by drug treatments and costs only $1000 (or less) over the course of a full year and has considerably high success rates for putting the cancer into remission so that the animal can live a regular life, albeit short. the second kind was one that required radiation treatment and would cost a considerable amount more, never mind the fact that our lovely vet had never dealt with this second kind of kitty cancer.

she said, on saturday that we'd hear something on tuesday. we did. the pathology exam came back positive for lymphoma. the pathologist made a note, though, to test max for leukemia to confirm the diagnosis. it is extremely rare for a cat of max's age to have such a significant amount of cancer in his chest at such a young age, or even to get this type of cancer.

she called to find out from me if ryan and i were interested in trying the drug treatment and i told her defiantly yes.

so she's going to do some research, some talking around, and will have a word with the pathologist and give me a call back tomorrow.

max is going to start his treatment on friday as well as get his leukemia test (again... he cleared it at his first visit, but these tests ate 100% accurate).

max, right now, is sleeping nearly all of the day. he's eating, but only a tiny bit at a time. he's been taking antibiotics as a precaution against any infection that may have been introduced during his vet visit last friday where some fluid sample was extracted. he's so tired though... and loosing a little weight on account of not playing and not eating as much. he responds to being called, he comes downstairs to be with us when he has the energy, and he cuddles with us when he can.

we're hoping and praying that he responds to the treatment. it's so hard for both of us to see him like this. at lest today though, we know what he has and we know that we can do something for him.

anyone that's talked to me over the past few days knows how upset i've been and how stressed i've been over this.

... wibble passing away was even harder for me to take on account of everything that's gone on with our darling little kitten.

so your happy wishes are appreciated. just keep max in the back of your mind. he needs all the happy warm kitty vibes he can get right now.






and ryan gave this to me tonight, which i forwarded to some of you already... it made me laugh so hard i cried. and it's been a while since i laughed.
cats