Joey the cat was his owner’s shadow.
“He was a big mama’s boy,” Sidney resident Michelle Sopczak told Global News.
“He (was) about 16 pounds. He would wait for me at the door when I got home from work or wherever. miaowing just like a dog. He cuddled with me all the time. He purred instantly when I would pat him. He had this amazing big purr and he snuggled with me at night.”
Sopczak adopted Joey when he was nine months old and had him as her constant companion for almost seven years.
But Joey had to be put down last week after Sopczak said he ingested methamphetamine left lying around the neighbourhood.
Last Tuesday, Sopczak said Joey had gone outside in the evening but the next morning she noticed something was wrong.
“He was at the gate, the backyard with his mouth open and panting and looked stunned,” she said.
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“He wouldn’t come into the house. So my husband went out and picked him up and brought him in and he was really distressed, panting and crying and really delirious. And his pupils were dilated.”
Sopczak said they thought at first it might be the stress of being locked out but after only 30 minutes, they rushed him to the vet.
“They did the blood and urine work and put him on fluids and then they found methamphetamine in his urine,” she said, adding she was hit with grief and anger at what had happened.
“What I saw my cat go through was pretty difficult to witness,” Sopczak added.
Joey spent three days in the ICU at the Central Victoria Veterinary Hospital and his fever did come down.
“I didn’t get my hopes up too high at that point,” Sopczak said.
“And then when I got him home, I noticed that he could barely use his back legs. And he was trying to walk and his back, it was just, it wasn’t working.”
They took Joey back to the hospital and that’s when they found out that the methamphetamines had contributed to a blood clot in his legs and there was no circulation.
“His paws were turning purple,” Sopczak said.
“At that point, we decided he’d been through enough. The prognosis was not good.”
The vet bill stands at $3,200 and Sopczak said she started a GoFundMe to try and help with some of those costs. She said she has received a lot of comforting messages from people as well.
“It definitely takes the edge off,” she said.
“You know, it doesn’t really mend the broken heart that I feel. But it’s amazing to know how many people were affected by this story.”
Sopczak is now putting up signs in the neighbourhood reading ‘Meth poisoning killed my pet’, warning people about what happened to Joey to avoid that happening to any other pet or child.
“I think that our laws regarding drug use are lenient and need to change,” she said.
“And we’re being complacent. So I really want to petition for a change in our in our laws allowing open-air drug markets and people being allowed to do their drugs for wherever and whenever they want.”