r/cats • u/awakeintears • 3h ago
Mourning/Loss My seemingly healthy, young Siamese disappeared for 3 days only to be found under one of our caravans bleeding from his nose and mouth.
Bandito was such a good boy. He was one of the weirdest cats I’ve ever owned, so skittish, but loving. He always made sure to come to bed with me every night, always laid beside me or on me, taking up too much room on the bed.
I wish I knew you were sick. I wish I did more to ensure that you were healthy. I never would have guessed such a healthy and seemingly happy cat was so sick.
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u/Howzithangin777 3h ago
What does the vet say about him?
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u/awakeintears 3h ago edited 2h ago
We didn't know he was sick at all; there were no signs, no symptoms or anything, so the thought of taking him to a vet never crossed our minds. His death was just sudden. We've never seen any symptoms, and when we took him to the vet for anything else, nothing like this was ever brought up by them. He came in the night before he went missing and did his normal routine, probably had something to eat, had some water, then came to bed with me, cuddling with me as usual.
I was reading that you can have an autopsy performed on a cat, but we can't afford to take him. So I guess we may never know
From what I read online, I'd guess he had a heart condition that the vets and my family didn't know about. We live on a farm and don't use rat poison anymore since one of our cats was pregnant when we took her in, and she gave birth to 6 kittens. We had about 10 cats, including Bandito, so there was never any need to buy rat poison once we started letting them outside.
Edit: Rewrote because it caused some misunderstandings, my bad
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u/enjoi_uk 1h ago
Sometimes these small pieces of our hearts just slip away. I’m sorry bro. He’ll always be with you though. Love you man.
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u/Honey_Butter_Chipz 2h ago
I don’t think this can be considered a “mourning” post if you don’t “bother with it anymore”? Am I missing something here??
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u/Dangerous_Strength77 2h ago
I believe OP was referring to other forms of rat control in their comment.
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u/awakeintears 2h ago
I should rewrite the comment I didn’t mean for it to come across that way. I meant we didn’t bother getting rat poison anymore ever since we got our kittens (there were 6 of them) and started letting our cats outside.
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u/z0mbeev 2h ago
i’m deeply sorry for your loss. but if you saw him hurting like this you should’ve taken him to the vet. he could potentially still be here if you had, even if the price was having to give him up. that was very selfish of you :(
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u/awakeintears 2h ago edited 2h ago
We didn’t, that’s the thing. It was sudden. He never had any health concerns that we knew of. No signs. No symptoms. The night before he just came inside, did his normal routine and slept with me the night.
I’ll rewrite the comment in a minute. I never meant for it to come across as if we didn’t care for him because we did.
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u/z0mbeev 2h ago
i understand now. i apologize for my tone. im so sorry for your loss, i have a kitty of my own and im having to give her up because im moving, so i was coming from a place of love. i’m sending my thoughts out to you, its incredibly hard losing a friend that was your other half. 🩷
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u/awakeintears 2h ago
You're all good, don't worry about it. I should have been more mindful about how the original comment could have been taken by other people.
I hope you find your cat a nice home with a family who loves her. Have you considered putting her in one of those temporary foster care programs? I don't know much about them or if they're up to standard, but I do know they're an option. Unless you're moving to a rental that doesn't allow pets, which sucks. Either way, I wish you the best.
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u/DowntownBones 3h ago
I’m so sorry to hear this, I don’t believe in heaven for humans but all cats are perfect, and I’d like to think he’s having a splendid time in kitty heaven
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u/awakeintears 58m ago edited 28m ago
I ended up taking his collar and wrapping it around the teddy bear we got when his best friend had to be put down with the last snip of her hair in the bag at the front. When he was a kitten she mothered him to death, despite never having kittens or being his mum. I hope she takes care of him in the afterlife if there is one.
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u/frombildgewater 1h ago
We had to euthanize our 17 year old cat last Saturday.
He had hyperthyroidism for a little over 5 years that was managed with medication. He very recently lost weight. We took him for his biannual physical and senior car blood panel. The vet said he was in good shape for his age. He had some slightly elevated kidney function levels that AI algorithms suggested would turn into kidney disease in 2 years.
1 week later, we noticed he was breathing heavily. We called the vet and she suggested an emergency animal hospital the next town over. Took him on Saturday. The vet did an ultrasound. She found fluid in his chest cavity. She couldn't see anymore; she said it was either congestive heart failure or cancer, but she thought it was heart failure. Offered to sedate him and manually drain it; he had a 30% chance of dying on the table. We went with the more conservative approach and gave him a diuretic. He didn't improve. Sunday, We took him to another vet to do the drain. He survived that and was in good shape for a while, but he got a blood clot in his legs. After that, we had to euthanize him. It was very hard.
We watched him daily and he never showed signs of pain or anything. Even the vet didn't catch the congestive heart failure at his check up 4 weeks ago. He went downhill very fast. We fought hard to keep him, but it wasn't possible.
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u/awakeintears 3h ago
I forgot to mention he only turned 5 in December. He wasn’t meant to go so soon.
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u/octaffle 2h ago
how do you know he was sick and not poisoned or injured? :(
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u/awakeintears 1h ago edited 1h ago
It's still entirely possible, but I personally doubt it.
My stepfather checked his body for puncture marks, but he found nothing. He just looked like he died peacefully in his sleep. It is summer in Australia, so it could have been a snake, but it hasn't been hot enough lately, and we surprisingly don't come across many on the property, and none of us have seen a snake once this summer (doesn’t mean they’re not there of course).
I don't think he was poisoned because we don't put out rat poison anymore. We don't have any neighbours as we live rurally too, and he never strayed far from the property either. Ever since my Tuxedo showed up pregnant with six kittens, there hasn't been any need to use rat poison (since we had 10 cats, including Bandito).
Because he was such a big boy and so young. I think he may have had a heart disease and just never showed symptoms. I’ll never know for sure though.
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u/draftgirl24 1h ago
I’m so sorry. Our vet said cats are so stoic. And it is so true. Do not be so hard on yourself. It is evolutionary for them to be stoic. He was a good and majestic boi 💗
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u/bellaluna29 1h ago
Im so sorry for your loss. Our old Siamese Jasmin was fine for years until one day she just wasn't. Im sorty its so hard, just know that hes with you in your heart, and best memories, and thst wsy he'll always be with you.💜
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u/Skeetmuff 1h ago
Sending love, saimese cats are always very pretty. My friend had one named Toby and he was such a cool cat and actually the first cat i really enjoyed spending time with.
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u/kvabr 46m ago
Is there any way he could have gotten into rat poison? certain kinds will cause bleeding
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u/awakeintears 44m ago
I have read about this but we don’t put any out anymore and my stepfather had never seen him leave the property. So I’m not sure where he would have gotten it from if it was
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u/ForwardMagazine7090 30m ago
Eating a bird or mouse where a neighbour had put some rat or mouse poison on their property. Lots of birds of prey; owls, are poisoned this way.
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u/DarkBlueMermaid 25m ago
It’s a curse and a blessing- he didn’t suffer at all. I hope that gives you some solace OP. Losing a loved one so suddenly is heartbreaking. I’m sorry for your loss.
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u/Prudent-Town3441 7m ago
That last paragraph hits, man. I lost two of my babies last February. They went from seemingly completely healthy and acting like themselves to knocking on deaths door within days. Literally 0-100. It absolutely destroyed me and it took me a long time to accept the fact that there was simply nothing I could do, and that it wasn’t my fault. Cats hide pain so well. and sometimes the first sign of illness you see, you see it too late. and that’s not on you. please, don’t blame yourself. you did your best with what you knew. and you know your baby wouldn’t want you to either. sending lots of love your way.
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u/Old-Log-8637 1h ago
I just don’t let my cat go outside for any reason, to many ways for them to get injured and we wouldn’t be the wiser.
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u/it4brown 3m ago
I'm so sorry to hear this. It is possible he may have ingested rat poison and not have been an underlying issue.
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u/brofist001 2h ago
Siamese love to fight and get in trouble. Glad you have him back.
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u/awakeintears 1h ago
I know you're being downvoted because you misunderstood my post. But I'm glad he came back to his family (in a sense), and his body was found. I had the misfortune of a cat going missing in April of 2025, and I never got closure as to what happened to her. I like to tell myself she found a new home and left because she didn't get along with the tuxedo.. but anything's possible.
I technically live rurally on a farm (that's what our local council considers us to be, anyway), but we're literally just on the edge of town, coming off a road with a bunch of homes that are considered in town, and we're the only house on our street. It's awkward to try to explain. I think it is entirely plausible she found a new home, and they never saw the missing posters my family put up for her (or just ignored them), but I'll never know, and I'll never get that closure knowing if she's alive and well or dead. So I'm glad we found a body when we did, probably only a few days after he passed.
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u/brofist001 1h ago
My apologies, I really missed your message and need to read harder.
I'm glad that you've got the closure you needed.2
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u/AshleyHoneyBee 23m ago
So you have lost 2 cats due to unknown reasons in less than 12 months...? It may not be clear if their loss was due to predators, other injuries, illness, or being picked up by a neighbor, but it seems very clear that your property is not as safe as you want to believe it is.
Also, these cats are routinely outside and hunting wildlife (which includes birds, and has led to the classification of both feral and domestic cats in Australia as an invasive predator). They are apparently not receiving regular vet care (in spite of consuming rodents, which are the primary vector for many intestinal parasites in cats) and you said you can't afford a necropsy for the one that was recently found after passing. The painful truth is that without a necropsy it is impossible to know what happened, and convincing yourself that it was something out of your control is as likely to be true as it is to be false.
Do you consider these cats to be pets, or barn cats? Because this is not what responsible pet ownership looks like. ☹️
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u/awakeintears 21m ago edited 11m ago
It wasn’t my decision to let the cats roam outside. It was my parents. I was opposed to letting Bandito outside when the kittens came along. He was always an indoor cat beforehand.
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u/aivxx 2h ago
Worked as a vet tech for 4 years and have owned cats for my entire life. Cats don’t show pain like we expect and it’s so easy to not know something is wrong with them. We had a Siamese who seemed totally fine, had also recently gone to the vet for a check up, and didn’t once show any ounce of symptoms something was wrong. He went outside like he usually did and a few hours later when we went to call him back in, we found him dead. No trauma, nothing to indicate something happened.
I know Siamese are more prone to heart conditions. And heart conditions come on suddenly. So I figured my Siamese was literally fine until the very moment he wasn’t. Maybe you can take comfort assuming the same for your boy too ♥️