So, Here We Are In 2020

It's a very science-fictional sounding year, but haven't they all been, for the last couple of decades? At least for us relics of the 20th century, anyway.

So. I'm still here, obviously. At least right now. I'm dropping the "currently" format, though, I think. It's served me well over the years as a prod to keep me posting at least something, and to open up a topic or two for discussion. But it's all feeling very old and creaky now. I may just check in here once in a while with whatever I have to say about how life's been going. Or I may not.

As for how life's been going right now, well, 2019, a year of considerable ups and downs, ended on a sad note for me. I lost my cat, Vir, right before New Year's. He was 14, and, honestly, I'm not sure I ever expected him to live this long. He's had health problems all his life. His diabetes, at least, was nicely under control, but then he started showing signs of kidney problems, and went downhill very rapidly. A couple of months ago, it was "Hmm, the blood test results are slightly worrying." A few weeks ago, his appetite started to diminish and he seemed slightly under the weather, and the blood test results were worse, so they gave me some medicine for him and told me to come back an have him rechecked in a month. A week later, he'd stopped eating almost entirely and looked very tired. They took him in and treated him with fluids -- a three-day process to relieve the symptoms of kidney disease, including the nausea that must have been keeping him from eating -- and reported after day two that he seemed to be doing a lot better and had cleaned his food dish, and I should be able to take him home the next day. Except the next day, they came in, and he was gone.

To be honest, while it came as a shock how quickly it all happened, it was also a very real relief. I was bracing myself to deal with a long, slow decline that would have been kind of awful for both of us, and for having to make a horrible decision for him at some point, and I'm glad we were spared that. And, I won't lie, on a practical level my life just got a lot easier. Keeping him on the feeding and medication schedule he needed was extremely hard on me, what with my shifting work hours. Not to mention all those vet visits.

But it's very strange, not having him around. This is the first time in over twenty years that I haven't had a cat in the house, and it's astonishing how much emptier the place feels. And it's going to take a while before I'm able to come home from work and not, for a moment, expect there to be an animal greeting me on the other side of the door.

So, yeah. It's sad. Not least because I knew him literally from the day he was born. I saw his entire life span play out in front of me, and thinking about that sort of thing can really make one feel the concept of mortality in one's bones.

One request, after all of this: Please, please, please do not attempt to engage me in a conversation about whether or not I should get another cat and whether I'm in the right mental place to make decisions about it. I have had this conversation enough in the last week that it's starting to make me angry, especially what seems like the constant parade of genuinely well-meaning people who seem determined to believe that I don't know my own mind on the subject. Thanks.

Ahem. Right, well, other than that unhappy news? I don't have much. So I'll just leave you with my traditional link to the list of books I read in 2019. Which is fewer than I would have liked, honestly, but I'm looking forward to more in 2020.

May you all have a bright, warm New Year, one that you will look back on when it's over and smile. I think we all deserve that at this point.

Upsetting Event of the Day

Upsetting event of the day: I was standing in my kitchen, and heard meowing coming from somewhere outside. I looked out, and there was a cat pawing at the doors to my shed like it was trying to get at something in there. And the meowing was coming from inside. From inside my hot metal shed, which hadn't been opened in days. I keep the doors secured with a bungee, and it had snapped, and the doors blew open in the wind. When that happens, I usually check to see if anything's gotten inside before I re-secure the doors, but apparently I didn't look hard enough. Because sure enough, there was a cat in there. Well, probably a kitten, really. I don't think it looked quite big enough to be full-grown.

I was hoping to catch it and take it to the vet. I didn't get a very good look at it, but from what I saw, it didn't look to be in great shape, and it must have been terribly dehydrated. But catching a small cat in my shed is no easy feat. It's full of randomly stacked junk with lots of little cat hiding places. And before I managed to corner it and grab it, it was out and off.

I feel terrible. Also, the inside of my shed now smells like a cat was trapped in it for days.

Man, I hope the poor thing is okay. I left some water out just in case it comes back.

I'm Sure He Would Have Very Much Enjoyed Sniffing Them, Too.

The vets sent flowers. I'm really rather touched. I almost want to cry again. But in a good kind of way.

New Normal

I can't deny that, in a lot of ways, having only one cat is a heck of a lot easier. I can get up in the morning (or, depending on my shift, the afternoon), dump some food in Vir's bowl, and then just walk away. No need to stand there between two cats while they eat, thwarting their constant attempts to steal each other's vet-prescribed food. No more claws-out scuffles over who gets to sit on top of me when I'm sprawled on the couch reading or watching TV.

But it's also rather melancholy, of course. I suspect it's going to be a while before I stop thinking I hear a noise and turning around to see if it's Nova about to jump up on my computer desk, or feeling a pang when I put an empty cereal bowl into the sink instead of onto the floor for him to lick.

I Knew This Was Coming Soon. I Really Did. Still Very Sad, Though.

So. Yeah. The cat news is bad.

There's still masses of stuff in his bowels preventing him from being able to defecate properly. The vet hasn't been able to get the rest of it out at all. He says at this point, he could put the cat under general anesthetic in order to be able to get at it and get it out, but...

But, well. That'd clear him out for now, but it's very, very likely the problem would come back again, maybe in a week, maybe in a month, and it would probably keep coming back.

And... Nova is about two months shy of eighteen. He has lost so much weight that he is down to nothing but skin, bones, and fur. He seems to have lost a lot of his hearing. His back legs, which have been growing stiffer and weaker gradually over the past couple of years, have gotten noticeably worse lately, shaking and faltering under him as he strains to evacuate. And none of that is going to get better. Up until now, he's been deteriorating slowly, but has still been able to enjoy the pleasures of his life. (Which mostly consist of insisting on sitting on my lap while I'm at my computer desk until my legs go numb, or licking I Can't Believe It's Not Butter off the knife I've just used on my toast. (I don't know whether he believes it's not butter or not, but he loves that stuff.))

But at some point, though, there's discomfort and pain than pleasure left, and I fear we've reached that point. I don't want to put him through any more of it.

So, yeah. I'm going in to the vet in an hour or so, and I'm going to say goodbye. I was going to post this afterward, but I'm not sure I'm going to be up to it. I definitely don't think I could type the above stuff as easily in the past tense. And I need something to do until it's time. So, here we are.

Nova's been a good kitty. He's a sweet, beautiful, ridiculous kitty. And he's had a very good run, from that day in 1999 when my next-door neighbor knocked on my door and held out a tiny, sickly, bedraggled little kitten in one hand and said "I found this in your yard. Is it yours?" I looked down at him that day and said, "Well, I guess he is now." We've had a pretty good time together since then, I like to think. I like to think I've mostly done right by him.

I'm gonna miss him lots.

Poor Old Cat

And Nova is back at the vet. Getting another enema.

This... is not looking good for him, poor kitty.

The Joys Of Pet Ownership

Well, Nova is back from the vet. They ended up keeping him two days and letting him go this morning, saying he seemed to be doing better.

But, oh, man. You know, when I picked him up this morning, I thought he smelled kind of bad, but I was half asleep, having just worked all night on too little sleep, so, after making sure he'd had something to eat, I just staggered into bed. This morning, I got up and realized he didn't just smell bad, he smelled really bad. The treatments they gave him to get his bowels running again clearly did something, because his entire back end was covered in crap. It was awful. It was so bad that when I tried to feed them, before I realized what the problem was, Vir just hissed and refused to stay in the room with him.

And now my entire house smells like cat crap. Especially the sofa and the spots on the carpet where he likes to sit. Except, of course, for the part of the house that smells like the bleach I used to clean the tub with after I washed him off. Which, needless to say, he did not like any more than I did.

It's a good think I like these animals, that's all I have to say.

Poor Kitty

So, I did get Nova in to the vet this afternoon. (Or yesterday afternoon, maybe. Since it's past midnight now, and thus time for another post.) Poor thing. He isn't just backed up, he's very backed up, and he has a urinary infection. Which he quite handily provided a diagnosis for, as he peed on the scale a little when they went to weigh him, and the veterinary assistant immediately looked at it and went, "Oh, there's blood in the urine!" (Which I wouldn't have been able to tell, myself. It was slightly discolored, but not noticeably red.)

Anyway, they're keeping him overnight, at least, and will give him antibiotics, and an enema, and some fluids. Poor baby. With luck, he'll be looking up a little in the morning, and I'll be able to take him home when I get off work. But we'll see. He's so old, and in such poor shape generally, that it always seems possible to me that any blow to his health might end up being the one that knocks him out for good. Which... well, it worries me, but given that I'm honestly surprised he's made it this far, my feeling about such a possibility is more resignation than fear. And he's in good hands for the moment, at least.

It's Possible This May Be A Long Month.

See, the problem with blogging every day is that if I come here and tell you about what's in my mind, you get to hear about my cat's constipation.

Because poor Nova kitty is all blocked up again. I've been seeing him straining in the litterbox, which is not good, and straining outside the litterbox, which is even more not good. But no poop emerges. Poor thing is poopless. Or, rather, he is too poop-full. I've been giving him laxatives, and am taking him to the vet tomorrow.

Gosh, what an exciting life I have.

Stuff And Things

I feel like I should really talk about things other than Doctor Who here once in a while. Like an update on what's going on in my own life. It's just that the answer is "not much." Well, let's see what I've got:

Had kind of a bad night last night, due to some... let's say "gastric distress." I woke up about 3 AM, threw up, and immediately felt a lot better, so it was almost certainly something I ate. But, man, it's a bad thing not to feel well when you've been reading about nasty diseases. (I'm most of the way through David Quammen's Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.) One headache or abdominal twinge, and some completely irrational part of your brain wants to diagnose yourself with Marburg. (Marburg is, of course, a much cooler thing to diagnose yourself with than Ebola, because fewer people have heard of it.)

It looks like the city finally fixed the leaking fire hydrant in my front yard, after at least five phone calls, and it worsening to the point that it was threatening to turn the rest of the street into muddy swampland and not just my yard. Yay.

After years of taking a small amount of hormone for my mildly underactive thyroid, the latest doctor in the local clinic's revolving stable of doctors is insisting I should have an ultrasound done of it. "What do you think that's likely to tell us?" I asked. "Probably nothing," she said. OK, then, doc. At least we'll have another pretty picture of my insides!

I've given up trying to weigh Nova at home. To say that he is uncooperative is putting it mildly. I think I'm going to take him back to the vet in a couple of weeks and let them re-weigh him. He tends to go very still and quiet when he's there, possibly under the belief that veterinarians hunt by seeing movement.

I just checked the weather report to see if we can finally declare the rainy season over, thus removing my excuse for not going out and re-sealing my gutters. (Hey, I don't want to take the chance that it might rain before the caulk dries!) It looks like the answer to that might be "no," but in the course of checking I also discovered that it's supposed to get down below freezing on Thursday. Nooooo! I am not ready for winter! I mean, I don't want to be caulking the gutters out in the cold, do I?

Yeah, that's probably about it for now. Whee, what an exciting life I lead!

Skinny Kitty Update

Just got Nova back from the vet after having him checked out for his weight loss (as mentioned last time in the currently meme), and... they basically couldn't find anything wrong with him. His thyroid levels were good (which reminds me, I'm overdue to have mine checked). His creatinine levels and white cell counts were outside normal range, but only the eensy-weensiest smidge, so the vet thinks that's probably noise rather than signal, meaning his kidneys are probably fine and he probably doesn't have an infection. They also x-rayed him and didn't see any tumors. Which doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any cleverly hidden ones, but, OK, he probably doesn't have cancer, either. The vet thinks mostly likely it's a gastrointestinal problem, and he's not getting full value out of his food. So they just gave him a vitamin B shot and switched him over to a higher-calorie food. I'm going to keep an eye on his weight -- I actually own a pet scale I originally bought to monitor the fat cat -- and take him back in in a few weeks if he keeps losing weight.

So, for the moment... No news is good news, I guess?

More Cat (Much More Cat)

By request: a picture of Vir. Although he wasn't being anywhere near as photogenic as Nova, I'm afraid.

It's What The Internet Is Made Of.

I got nothing today, so have a cat picture I took while trying out the camera on the new phone:

Awwwww

I've been pretty terrible about updating this blog regularly lately and do not, at the moment, have anything I particularly want to say. So instead I offer you: children reading to cats.

Feral Kitty MIA

I have not seen my resident feral cat -- Mickey and Newt's mother -- since just before Thanksgiving. I've been putting food out regularly, anyway, and it does eventually disappear, but I've only seen birds eating it. It's been terribly cold lately, and I'd like to think she's found somewhere else to shelter from the weather, but sadly I suspect she has likely succumbed to it instead. Especially as the last couple of times I saw her, I didn't think she was looking particularly well, as if she barely had the energy to get up and run away when I came too close to her, the way she usually does. Or did. I'm not sure how long I should keep putting food out until I give up, but I fear it may be getting to about that point.

It seems this has not been a very good year for cats.

Goodbye, Happiness

I have fewer cats now, and I am sad.

I had thought I'd write this whole eulogy or something, but, really, I don't feel up to it. I'll just say, she was a good kitty, and I'll miss her.

Poor, Poor Kitty

Happiness update: I called the vet this morning when I got home from work, and she said that Happiness did seem a little better, that she'd been eating and urinating, and was behaving "more like a cat." Unfortunately, when they ran her bloodwork again later in the day, the results were actually a little worse. And now she's started to go back downhill again. I just went in to see her and she did not look good. Although at least she seems to be able to sleep, which is no doubt the best thing for her right now. They're going to keep her on fluids for another day. It might help. But let's just say I'm not necessarily expecting much.

Poor Kitty

My elderly cat Happiness is not doing well. She vomited a few times over the past few days, which isn't all that unusual, but she seemed to be eating even less than usual, and the last time she threw up, it was just thin, watery yellow liquid. So I was worried about her, wondering whether I should take her to the vet. And then when I got home from work this morning, she just didn't seem right. Lethargic and weak, and just not behaving like herself. She purred when I petted her, and even that sounded wrong, somehow. So I took her in to the vet.

Apparently, her kidneys were failing. Not good. They have her on fluids now, and are going to keep her through the weekend. I went in to see her this afternoon, and she did look a little better. They also said she had eaten some, which is encouraging. Mostly, though, she seemed very quiet, like she just didn't want to do anything but rest. They've got her on a nice, cozy cat bed with a hot water bottle, so at least she's resting comfortably.

The prognosis is, well, uncertain. The vet says she has sometimes seen cats bounce back from this sort of thing after being treated with fluids, and be pretty much okay for years. But Happiness is old and frail, and already has a thyroid condition, so... Well, we'll see what happens. Poor kitty.

Eastward Ho!

I'm leaving on vacation in a couple of days, so if you try to get in touch with me next week and I don't answer my home phone or my e-mail or whatever, that would be the reason why! I'm going to this family reunion thingy in Delaware, having been told my presence this year was non-optional. We're also going to take a road trip down to Washington DC to visit the Air and Space Museum. Which makes this my second space-themed vacation this year, a trend I thoroughly approve of.

I'm looking forward to that, but also feeling a bit trepidatious, as, honestly, I've been feeling even more un-social than usual lately, and, no matter how much I love them, spending a week in the 24/7 company of my relatives may just break my poor introvert's soul. And when I get socially over-stimulated, I unfortunately get kinda snippy. So, uh, wish me luck. Or wish my relatives luck, maybe.

I'm leaving on Saturday, but I've already dropped Vir off at the kennel. He's being boarded along with Happiness this time, so that he doesn't eat all of Nova's food as well as his own, which he will do if unsupervised, and gain even more weight. But he had to go in a couple of days earlier than Happy, because there's a possibility that he'll just stress out and stop eating entirely, and if he does that, he's at high risk for spontaneous liver failure, thanks to the obesity that's also the reason I have to board him in the first place. Sigh. Personally, I think he's unlikely to not eat -- of all the reactions that cat has to stress, that's never seemed to be one of them -- but it's best to make sure before I just take off and leave him there. But, aww, I miss him already. And I think the other cats are slightly nervous at his disappearance, wondering whether they're going to be next. (One of them is right, of course. And the other is probably going to be lonely here by himself for a week, but I'm pretty sure Nova would freak out and refuse to eat if I stuck him in a kennel.)

How Come I Keep Hearing Arnold Schwarzenegger's Voice In My Head Now?

Now that I'm watching my money more carefully, I've started playing this fun new game called "What unexpected expense will there be for this paycheck?" This week's winner: $66 to the vet to reassure me that the weird brown spot on Nova's eye is probably not a tumor. Stupid expensive cats.

Still, on the upside: probably not a tumor! Yay!