Hello! Meet Cranberry. A little over 9 years ago, we found her as a kitten in the bushes behind my bus stop. She was all alone, and her back-right leg was completely limp and nonfunctioning. We took her to the vet, where they declared that it must be a "neurological issue," as they couldn't find anything physically wrong with her. They were planning to amputate her leg. Having already fallen in love with her, and feeling like there had to be more we could do, my family adopted her. Over the course of a few months, we managed to nurse her back to health, and before we knew it, she was standing and running around all on her own.

Fast forward to nearly ten years later, and up until recently, she's been a very happy and healthy cat.

A month ago, I started my first job. Her behavior in the first couple of weeks appeared pretty normal to my family and me. Little things that were easily explained away as typical Cranberry-isms and general cat behavior.

It wasn't until about 3 weeks in that it became clear that something was very wrong. Over the course of just a few days, she looked like she'd lost so much weight. Her fur was ratty and oily, as if she hadn't been grooming herself. She'd throw up almost every day while I was gone, and it'd always be clear and liquidy. She shared her food bowl with our other cat, so tracking specific eating habits was hard, but we were beginning to think she wasn't eating at all. It definitely looked like she wasn't using the litter box as much. We got her new treats in her favorite flavor, and I'd watch her pick them up in her mouth like she wanted to eat them, just to drop them back on the floor and leave them there. And yet she'd still cry to me for them and for her moist food, like she wanted them so bad. But no matter what we gave her, she wouldn't eat it. And even if she did, she'd throw it up later.

It all felt so sudden and urgent, that that Friday I stepped into the backroom at work and called the animal clinic to schedule an appointment for Saturday.

We took her in, and after a whole day of blood/urine tests, x-rays, and examinations, the results came back with liver dysfunction. It was so critical that we left her to stay for 3 nights on IV fluid.

It'd been a month now of syringe feeding her 3x a day and intermittent trips to the clinic to be given subcutaneous fluids or be put on IV for a few days. In recent blood tests, we'd found that the IV appeared to improve her levels when it came to her day-to-day health, but the chronic level continued to rise.

We exhausted everything we could do without a diagnosis on the actual root of the issue. The vet explained that there were few results we could get from the biopsy that would be treatable, though none of them were a guaranteed cure.

They also explained that there is a very high risk that Cranberry wouldn't wake up. The anesthetic used to put her to sleep is metabolized through the liver, and the weaker she is, the harder it'd be for her to come out of it.

Despite the incredibly low chances that the biopsy would change anything, I signed off on it anyway.

If she didn't wake up, at least I'd know she went peacefully. And if she did wake to bad results, at least I'd have the closure of knowing I did everything I possibly could.

Around 8pm on March 13th, the clinic called us. It was cancer. Cysts in/around her gallbladder and liver. It was inoperable.

They sewed her back up and were kind enough to let us come in as soon as we could, long after office hours, to see her and say goodbye. They gave us some paw prints of hers to take home and will be cremating her for us.

I had been working on this posting when they called. I was supposed to have it done weeks ago, but it was just so hard. I'd gotten enough done that all I had to do was add the pictures, but then they called while I was sorting through it. I thought maybe I'd just delete some parts, write a new end. But I wanted to keep more than I thought so I've had to change it all to past-tense. It's so much harder.

It feels wrong to say that anything about this was "lucky" or "good timing," but I'd just gotten my first paycheck that Friday. It'd always been my top priority to take both cats to the vet once I was working, because my family hasn't had the funds to do it for years, but god. Any "silver linings" are simultaneously as painful as they are comforting.

And while vet visits had been a must, they weren't the only thing on my cat to-do list. I wanted to get them a new cat tower, new scratching posts. I wanted to replace beloved toys that've worn down. I wanted to get them new ones that I know they'll go nuts over. I was so ready to try out new treats and moist foods; to find options they'd both love that were healthier.

I was so excited to just improve her quality of life. The last 7 or so years were an incredibly rough time for me. Through deep struggles with my mental health, family issues, and grief, my support system was practically nonexistent. I've never felt so isolated and alone in my entire life. It's only been in the last 2 years that I've been able to make the moves to claw out of this rot.

After 2 years, I am finally more independent than I've ever been. I'm working, I'm making my own money. I've reconnected with old friends that I didn't think I'd ever get to speak to again. I'm working on getting my driver's license.

The last nine months is the happiest I've felt in seven years.

And on my worst days, all I could think about was what it would mean for Cranberry when we made it. Admittedly, she has never been the most emotionally intelligent creature, but she had been there. Every day, it's been the two of us. She wakes me up patting at my face for treats at ungodly hours of the morning. I get up for a single second, and she's taken my seat, sprawling out to take up as much space as possible. She sits outside the door and screams while I'm in the shower. If I'm talking about her in another room, she knows it, and when I turn around, she's there. The corners of my laptop are covered in scratches from her aggressively rubbing her face on it. When I get up, she gets up. When I have dinner, she eats dinner. I've been taking allergy meds every day for almost a decade, because she cannot stand to be in a different room from me for more than 15 minutes.

Suffice to say, she's been my life for so long. Some days she was my only reason to try at all.

I want to give back to her everything she's given me. I think I gave her a pretty good life. She would have been 10 this August. And, to me, she seemed the happiest she could have possibly been. I wish I'd had more time to give her all the more I had planned. I wish she could have been here for when I do get my license; for when I'm completely free by my own definition.

As it stands, she isn't. She won't be. But at the very least, I'd like to honor her memory and remains as best I can.

I am the only one financially contributing to Cranberry's medical expenses. I work as a full-time pharmacy technician, and I'm paid biweekly, but it's not enough. I have my own medical expenses and medication costs. I applied for CareCredit at the beginning, just to pay for Cranberry's bills, and I was denied. The vet was gracious enough to bill the biopsy as an exploratory instead, since they didn't have to get very invasive to see what the problem was. It's made a big difference, but there's still so much to pay off.

And after that's done, there's an urn I found on Etsy that I'd like to get. And a suncatcher for the window she always sat in. And a plant for the sill now that I don't have to worry about her trying to eat it. And a myriad of other little things.

But I need help.

So please, any donation at all would be greatly appreciated. And if you can't donate, please share the link to anyone, and anywhere, you can.

Thank you Cranberry. I love you.