In early June I took Jessie into the vet because she had been wheezing and coughing a lot. After an x-ray of her chest the vet opined that it was asthma (possibly seasonal or regular, she wasn’t sure) and sent me home with two weeks’ worth of cat steroids. Gave them to Jessie, and she definitely perked up and felt better. But her cough never completely disappeared.

Fast forward to this weekend, when the cough came back with a vengeance. I went in Monday to get more cat steroids and gave them to her Monday and Tuesday, but her wheezing and coughing grew worse and very wet sounding. Wednesday morning she kept throwing up her food in little foamy puddles, so I brought her back into the vet who took another chest x-ray. Apparently there was something odd in the one from June but she wasn’t sure if it had been Jessie’s arm.

This time the picture was clearer, and the upper lobes of at least one lung and most likely the other one were pretty much opaque. The vet said that this was most likely one of two things—some sort of mass on her lungs, or congestive heart failure. Since the only way to make sure would be an expensive ultrasound and a mass would mean Game Over, we decided to try treating this as CHF and start Jessie on a diuretic, with heart meds to be added if the diuretic worked.

She gave Jessie a shot of the diuretic and I took her home. She had a relatively good night—she drank lots of water and peed her brains out, had a bowl of tuna, and we loved on her every chance we got. She went to sleep in my office with a water bowl at her side. When I woke up Thursday morning, however, her breathing was still incredibly rough and she was occasionally opening her mouth to gasp. Clearly this wasn’t CHF as the diuretic would have improved her breathing, which meant it was the other thing.

So we said our goodbyes and I brought her in to our vet. Jessie relaxed with painkillers and oxygen, and passed peacefully while I stroked her and told her how much we loved her. I like to think she’s currently hanging out with Uncle JJ and Uncle Jordan while my father feeds her tuna and tells her what a pretty girl she is.

The vet said we did the right thing—she took another look at the X-rays last night since coughing isn’t a common symptom of CHF, and realized that the dark patch we saw on the x-ray was in the right place for thyroid lymphoma, which is rare in cats but does happen. One symptom is coughing, and part of the chemotherapy protocol is steroids, which is why they made her feel better in June then stopped working. If I hadn’t called them this morning, the vet was going to call me and tell me to bring Jessie in.

It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, but it is what it is. So my sweet silver girl Jessie is off on her next adventure, and we will have to get used to the hole she left in our lives.