A Goodbye to Mellifluous

Keep some sorrow in your hearts and minds
For the things that die before their time.
– Counting Crows “Mercury”

What will today bring? That’s what we ask ourselves every morning.

Thursday, December 19^th, started with a man walking past our windows in the morning darkness, before the shelter was open. In his hands was a cardboard box. We went outside to offer assistance and he told us he had found an injured cat the previous night. He said the cat couldn’t stand up or walk.

Officer Winn brought the cat inside, settled her into a warm kennel and checked for a microchip. Good news – she had a chip. She ran the number in our database and found out that this was one of our own…she had come to us a stray in August and we had named her Mellifluous. She was adopted on August 21. What had happened to this sweet girl?

Mellifluous in her kennel on 12/19/19

Officer Winn contacted the adopter who said they had left her with a relative who had made her an outdoor cat. What!? Mellifluous was declawed prior to coming to the shelter and now we learn that she had been put outside, unable to defend herself. Officer Winn asked the adopter if they would like to claim their cat. They did not. She then asked if they would like to relinquish her to us. They chose to relinquish her to us.

We brought her canned food which she tried hard to eat but she struggled – biting the paper food bowl and chewing on the towel when food dropped on it. After managing to take some big gulps, she settled on her bedding to rest.

As soon as Dr. Wilson, AACC Director and veterinarian arrived, she examined Mellifluous. She suspected that she could not see because she had no “menace reflex” when she put her fingers near her eyes and had no pupil response. She was also unable to use her rear legs.  Based on these symptoms, Dr. Wilson knew further diagnostics were required, such as x-rays, to see if there was injury to the spinal cord.

Because we are not equipped to provide this level of diagnostics at the shelter, we contacted one of our rescue partners, Kitty and K-9.  They responded almost instantly – picking her up from us to take her to their veterinary clinic.

But here the mystery deepened. The examining veterinarian found that she had no broken bones but there was “central nervous system involvement.”  Mellifluous received supportive care and then went to a Kitty and K-9 foster home.

We hate to see any animal experience trauma but it is always harder when the animal had been one of our own – we had cared for Mellifluous and were happy when she found a home. And we always discourage adopters from letting their cats go outside. We warn them of the dangers, (cars, predators, ingesting toxic substances, etc…) and remind them that it is illegal in the Municipality of Anchorage to allow cats to roam. And it seems that those dangers had caught up with Mellifluous…what had happened to her outside? We wish we knew.

We also wish Mellifluous’ story had a happy ending but it doesn’t. She passed away at 10:30 pm on 12/19.

We are so grateful to the Good Samaritan who had the compassion to pick up an injured cat, shelter her in his home overnight and then bring her to us. We are also grateful to Kitty and K-9 for taking her under their wing and to the veterinarians for their care. In the last 48 hours of her life, Mellifluous knew love.

Mellifluous
? – 12/19/19

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