Zoe’s little cat Ebi died this morning.

Ebi was a sickly cat from the moment Zoe found her out front, tucked behind the saddlebag of one of my motorcycles. She had some kind nasal obstruction that prevented her from breathing properly, so she could only mouth-breathe and always sounded like she was snoring. Except, for her, snoring was never really an option because she never ever really got to sleep — she had to have her head tilted a certain way to breathe clearly, and if she deviated from that then she simply didn’t breathe. So when she fell asleep and her head drooped, she’d stop breathing, and she’d wake up gasping for air about a minute later. This poor little kitten suffered from extreme sleep apnea her entire life, and she also had developed some kind of mucus build-up thing that made her breathing challenges worse, and it was getting worse and worse toward the end.

And then this morning she choked while eating her breakfast. We feed the cats on top of the washer/dryer and I had just given Ebi her breakfast — a fried egg, because we were trying to find a food that didn’t contribute to the mucus problem. A few minutes later I heard a thud — she had fallen off the dryer and was convulsing on the floor, struggling for air. I tried to give her some kind of mouth-to-mouth, trying both to blow air into her lungs or suck out whatever the obstruction was, but it was no use. She never took a breath and her heartbeat slowly faded and her pupils dilated until she was gone. It was a horrible, horrible way for her to go.

She was a sweet little kitten and deserved a more peaceful end. Watching her go out like that was really hard.

Zoe’s at school now. She’ll be devastated when she gets home and finds out.

Ebi and Zoe when Ebi was new to us.

The last picture we have of Ebi. This is from mid-December.