aroraborealis

The day after my last post, Kitty developed a new unsteadiness throughout her body, which escalated noticeably in each 12 hour stretch, and she was losing interest in food at about the same rate. I arranged for the vet to come on Friday, trusting my gut that waiting until next week would be too long, took the day off, and spent one of the most perfect mornings of summer in the front yard with her.

She had been shortening our snuggle time recently, part of that drawing away I mentioned in the last post, but that morning, she let me give her a good belly rub, and she gave me lots of purrs, and it was super sweet. She had trouble eating even her treats, but had a few, and then staggered over to nap under the hostas.

Later, M came home, and we all sat in the yard together, but doing our own things. A few minutes before the vet was expected, Kitty came out, had a drink, and curled in the grass under my chair, resting her head on my ankle. M came over and had a little scritchfest with her, too. Soon after that, the vet arrived, we discussed, and then we agreed that it was the right time, all things considered.

It was exactly what I wanted for her: she was able to purr all the way until the sedation took full effect, after spending the perfect summer morning in the yard, and before her death was a struggle.

It was also exactly what I wanted for me: I gave her as good a death as I could, and I was able to recognize when it was time to make that choice. I was really afraid that I would miss that, or something emergent would appear, and she would die in pain, or confusion.

I went away for the weekend, which was a really good choice. I'm home now, and seeing little ghosts of her everywhere. It's bittersweet, but mostly sweet.

We had a very good life together, and I'm going to miss her a lot.

My cat takes two medications each day, twice a day, in pill form.

It been like chasing the red queen to find ways to deliver it into her body without a giant fight, because I'm really not up for the poke it down her throat method.

I used to be able to use pill pockets, but then she bit through one when she was on a different extremely unpleasant tasting medication, and now she rejects all pill pockets completely. Her normal dailies aren't so flavorful, so for a while I was able to crush them and mix them with a tuna slurry, which is also good because she gets extra water.

But one of them is flavorful enough that over time, she's stopped being so into tuna, so she'll often leave about half of it still in the bowl, which is a real problem for dosing.

I can tuck the pills into a little slice in a chunk of chicken or steak when I have one of those, but I don't always.

Recently I've been packing a little tuna pocket around each pill, which worked pretty well for a couple of weeks, but she's cottoned onto that and started licking the tuna off, leaving the soggy pills on the floor.

Over the weekend, I got some ground beef to pack little meatballs around the pills, and that worked well a couple times, but then she figured out again to lick off the beef and leave the pills, again, in a tiny soggy pile.

SUPER ANNOYING

As of this evening, I've escalated once again by popping the tiny pill-stuffed meatballs onto the tip of a toothpick and toasting them over the gas flame on the stove, since cooked meat is more coherent.

It worked! But this leads to a few questions:

1. Am I really going to toast tiny meatballs twice a day for my cat??
2. How long will this work?
3. How do I explain this to pet sitters when I'm away???
4. What do you mean "crazy cat lady"?

While I was in California at the end of May, my awesome cat slipped out of the house and went missing. It sucked a lot to be far away for that, as it made it impossible to do a lot of the things I would have done otherwise, especially wander around the neighborhood calling her. She's pretty responsive to me and that might have worked. I got home just shy of a week after she first went missing, and though I did go calling around the neighborhood a bit, it felt a lot less useful, because I kind of felt like, well, if she's nearby, surely she would have found her way home?

So, my first week back, I spent as much time outside around the house as I could, a lot of it talking, so she might hear us, but I was feeling like it was too little, too late. I also contacted Somerville Animal Control (they're super, super nice), and kind of decided that probably Kitty had been taken in by a family nearby.

Then, this Wednesday, out of nowhere, Kitty returned! She sauntered into the house while amber_phoenix was home and longueur and I were off running Poly Speed Dating. WTF? and YAY!! So, that's three weeks she was gone, and she has definitely lost weight, but she isn't skin and bones, and she's totally still herself. I'm SO HAPPY to have her back, but more than ever, I wish she spoke English, because I have so many questions! Where did she go? Why was she gone so long? How did she find her way back?? WHAT HAPPENED?

I'll never know, but ultimately, that's okay, because her purr is as good as ever. Maybe better.

I'm going to have to refigure my whole idea of Sundays so as to properly prepare for the ass-kicking Mondays this semester are handing me. I'm in the last bit of down time before my 6:30 class starts, and I just want to crawl into bed and sleep for 12 hours.

It doesn't help that our cat, who threw up a couple of times yesterday, also threw up in the middle of the night, all over my bedding, so it was both gross and worry-inducing, and, of course, I'm out of the house all day, so I can't really do the kitty care that I'd like to, even though the internet suggests keeping her off food and water for 12 hours, and, really, it's just as nice not to be around for her no doubt constant whining during that period. Poor kitty :/ Also, because this is my lj and it's all about me, it meant that I got a lot less sleep than I'd hoped.

Also not helping is the jaw pain I seem to have developed, relatively suddenly and mysteriously, which is making me feel not only cranky and in pain but also like my mouth is not my own. Consulting the internet again gives me a series of home care approaches to solve the problem, so I'll try those for a week or so and see where that gets me. Again, being out of the house all day puts a wrench in any plans I might have formed to get started on that, though.

In brighter news, both of my daytime classes today were very good and engaging. Ethics is down to four people rather than six, which makes for a very different sort of class than it would be if it were bigger, and while I think we would benefit from a larger group for discussions, I also feel like having such a small class is going to lead to some pretty personalized instruction, which is nifty. I've talked to a couple of you about this class and you've expressed interest; I asked the prof today how he'd feel about my bringing a friend from time to time, and he said that would be welcome, so let me know if you're interested and we can look over the syllabus together to see if there are particular sessions you might like to hit.