Brandon Fuller

Tasman

When people come to our house and meet our animals, there was usually only one animal that provoked the most special of responses from people:

If you ever had to find a new home for your pets, I would take Tasman in a heartbeat!

Nobody ever said that about my beloved dog, Dakota. Because Tasman is different. Tasman is a person in a cat’s body. He is a in your face kind of cat. Sit down with a newspaper, he is in your lap in 2 seconds. He constantly “kneads” his paws one after the other into the air as you rub him. He is our brave outdoor adventurer. He is the boss of the Fuller Animal Kingdom. When he walks in the room, the dogs move out of the way.

As Tasman aged, he started having bowel issues. Irritable Bowel Syndrome was what they always called it. We spent a lot of effort moving between diets over the years but it never really got the problem corrected. Finally, the vets started him on steroids which would make him perfectly fine for some period of time. There are downsides to steroids of course. For one, each dose seems to help slightly less than the one before it because of how the body reacts. So you have to continue to up the dosage and the frequency. Finally, you get to a point where there are just no effects anymore. The body is almost immune to it. At that point, you move off of them. We took Tasman to our top end specialist that saw Dakota. They didn’t have any breakthrough ideas. At the same time all this was going on, Tasman started into renal failure (kidneys). Just like Dakota. Actually, Tasman’s levels were much higher and worse than her’s. Apparently, cats can tolerate a much higher level of failure without showing signs.

Through all this Tasman maintained a pretty perky outlook on life. However, with those problems, a new side effect occurred: weight loss. Tasman was dropping pound after pound. His intestines apparently were not taking the nutrients out of his food any longer and he was just shrinking. He was down to a skin-and-bones 6-ish pounds. He routinely got a “that cat has a gut” back in the day for the pouch that he carried in his stomach. Now, he looked like a starved ultra-runner.

Over the last few days, we saw his condition worsen. I saw the signs of renal failure that I recalled from Dakota looking us right in the face. No desire to drink water. No desire to eat anything. Drunk-like walking. He was becoming toxic. His brain convinced him that food and water isn’t worth consuming because he will just feel bad. So I let Kim make the call. She spent a good day with him and then I took him to our vet. It is so weird driving an animal to the vet knowing you are coming home alone. They are on death row and don’t understand a word you are saying but you try to comfort them in some way but its probably more for yourself. Admittedly, I wasn’t a wreck with this one given the Dakota version from last summer. I felt like he had a lot of time with his disease and once again we put all the resources we could reasonably muster into caring for him. Its just life.

The vet came in and we got right to it. Tasman was sedated and his eyes were wide open within minutes like he was stone cold drunk. Hopefully, feeling really good inside. I know he was because he laid there on his side with his paws outstretched doing that same fucking kneading motion that he always does. And he is always purring and happy when he is doing that. I couldn’t ask for anything better. She inserted the needle into a vein on his back leg and before I had a chance to think about anything she told me his heartbeat had ceased. They left the room and I stood there once again with another member of our family that had gone from this place. It is such a weird feeling. It isn’t one that you contemplate when you are picking out that cute little puppy or rescuing that cute little kitty. But it is the end of their journey and I always like to think that we provided a great home for them while they were on it with us.

I came back home and delivered the news to Kim. She struggled with doing this all day because Tasman was still so mentally alert. I didn’t though. I had those random doubts hours after Dakota’s passing that I did it too late. As mentioned before, it is impossible to know the perfect moment. You just have to do it when you and they are ready. So while Kim probably wasn’t quite ready, Tasman’s ready moment was looming over him. I could see that and wanted to prevent any harder days than he had already gone through.

So with that, our family is one smaller today. We still have Wyatt the dog and Merced, Sully and Zelda the cats. Its not the pack it once was and these remaining animals make up such a different crew than those that we have lost already. A more docile group. But the passing of one, always brings some renewed level of interest and passion in the remaining ones which helps honor the memory of those we have lost.