My beautiful Gia.
He came to me as a result of my friend sharing a post to me. I could see from the photo that a very sick kitten needed to get to the vet so I got him immediately the next day.
At first I thought he was a girl so I named him after my friend that shared the post. When Dr Floyd said he was a boy and I told my friend we had a great laugh because my friend is trans. She said "How appropriate!" We thought it was hilarious! (derogatory comments about this WILL get you banned forever)
Gia was a bottle baby and very sick. His first crash was at 2am when he was about 6 weeks old. Vets thought he had pneumonia. More antibiotics and he had 2 more incidents of respiratory distress. Vets started to think he had a collapsed lung. But he still continued to grow and act like a normal kitten other than the breathing.
Around 2 months old he showed that he was more than just a cat but actually a baby goblin. He did goblin things like tiny paws attacking from under the bed and under the bathroom door when humans are at their most vulnerable! He began goblin training to improve his skills at scaring us. He excelled in his goblin nature!
By 5 months old he had a surgery scheduled to remove his entire left lung because specialists had determined that it was most likely collapsed and would never function. It was causing repeat infections and had to go. But Gia crashed hard 4 days before and ended up having emergency surgery.
He came through with flying colors and during pathology of the lung it was found that Gia was born with a very rare congenital birth defect; his lung never inflated. He was contained in a pen for several weeks during recovery and continued to heal and grow.
Having one lung didn't affect his desire to be a goblin and have zoomies! But we soon discovered that the one lung had asthma. It was also enlarged to compensate. His first episode of running crazy resulted in open mouth breathing and landed him in clothes to prevent overworking himself. We also had to contain him to the bedroom because he wanted to be alpha and his body wasn't equipped to be that bossy.
For the rest of his life he reigned supreme in his world. He loved his brother, Ambrose. He was a treat monster! If given the opportunity he would inhale a giant bag of Temptations. He took over the page when Tuxie made his journey and was an adorable source of baby talk and poor grammar at times. He was a mentor to little JessiKat when she showed her goblin skills.
Last year, after doing so well for almost 3 years, he crashed hard and was in ER for 24 hours. He made it through and began oxygen therapy at home. After a while he was back to normal and had no issues other than the occasional problems because of weather changes. He took 2 inhalers daily and didn't complain.
On Monday, July 8th, a Cat1 hurricane took out power for over 2 million people here. By Tuesday night Gia was in respiratory distress from the heat. All we could do was keep him in carrier with a fan on him (we have a generator) and my youngest stayed up all night watching over him so that I could get some sleep. I took him to the vet the next day because they had industrial generators and air conditioning. His respiration was at 50...30 is normal.
He stayed for 4 days and his respiration was normal for him; around 40. We got power back and I waited 24 hours to make sure it stayed on. I picked him up on Sunday but within minutes of being home his respiration went up to 64 and I rushed him to the vet specialist ER.
There's only so much that could be done. No magic medicine. No surgery. The only treatment was oxygen. Twice they tried to wean him off and his respiration went over 70. His heart was being damaged and the only thing keeping him alive was being in an oxygen chamber.
On July 16th, the 2 year angelversary of little JessiKat, I let my precious goblin fly away from his broken body to be free forever. I held and his last breath was gentle, relieved.
The world is surreal without him. No barking for treats. No goblin paws grabbing feet from under the bed. No big, blue eyes telling me he's hungry.
Let his story give you inspiration to live in spite of physical limitations or issues.
Live like a cat! Or, even better, live like a goblin!
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