Another Monty Python skit was about herding cats. If you've ever tried to get a group of people to all pay attention and follow you, you know how well that works.
And speaking of cats, my cat Grace used up another life last week. She had been doing remarkably well for a 17 year old cat in chronic kidney failure - eating well, active, shiny, alert, all that. In fact, at 2:00 a.m. on New Year's Eve, she sensed I was awake, and did her normal 'step on my face until I pet her' routine.
So around 7 when I woke up for real, I expected her to greet me the same way; happy to see me, butt in my face, pet me, feed me.
But she remained curled up at my side seemingly asleep, and although she was awake, she didn't seem to be able to raise her head. I got up, knowing something was horribly wrong, and started preparing myself for the worst.
After a couple of hours, I heard a noise, and realized she was out of bed using the litter box.
"That's a good sign", I thought, until I saw her. Her head was tilted funny, and she wasn't walking right. Before I could scoop her up, she went to her favorite hidey-hole behind the gas fireplace, under a built-in cabinet.
If you didn't already know it, cats tend to hide or go away to die. So I knew that Grace had done just that. So I tried to pull her out of the 6 inch hole, but she got away from me and went under the cabinet floor where there was no way to get her short of cutting out the cabinet bottom. Yep, that's my new Dremel saw, and the first project I got to use it on. Hope the new owners of my house don't open that cabinet!
I was able to reach in and get her, covered in saw dust by this point, and rushed her to my Vet's office, 9 minutes before they were to close for the holiday. Her blood tests showed that her kidney tests weren't that bad, but she definitely had something neurological going on. My choices were to take her to the 24 hour animal emergency hospital, or put her down.
Here's what my Vet said that made my mind up.
"Age is not a reason for not treating her". I had thought that at 17, she was old, and since twice before, a Vet gave me the option for putting her down, it was time.
I was 50/50 at this point - I didn't want her to suffer, thought she had a stroke and wouldn't recover, but didn't want to lose her either. The Vet warned me that the minimum I'd have to spend at the hospital was $2000, and could go to $4000 or $5000 easily.
I will gladly go into debt to save her life, thought I. So I drove down to the animal hospital where they were waiting for me. They took her from me immediately to take a look. Finally, the doctor came out and told me that they recommended that I hospitalize her for 48 hours, on IV fluids, antibiotics, etc. with no diagnosis or prognosis other than "animals tend to recover quickly, or die" from this type of thing.
I swear, the hardest thing I ever had to do was leave her there, even though they said I could come anytime, 24 hours a day to visit.
I called that night, and she was "stable", but no change. The next morning, I called to set up a visit and check on her, and the doc told me that Grace was doing super. She no longer had the head tilt, and if her kidney results were okay that afternoon, I could take her home a day early. The tears of fear and sadness from the day before turned into tears of joy at that.
She's been home 4 days now, and every day is better and better. She's pretty much back to normal as far as her alertness and behavior. She's not eating as much as she should, but she's doing better.
She has been milking the attention though. I ran out and bought her a new cat bed, and she's covered in a blanket I'm still crocheting. She now sleeps in the dead center of the bed, so I have to curl up around her, but I woke up this morning to a furry face pushing against mine, and a foot in my ear, so I guess I'll learn to deal with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment