There’s never a good time for your cat to become sick (er) but certainly not a few days before you are going on a trip for a week.
Maybe I’ve been noticing the past few days that Chloe (follow that link for some background if you don’t remember) has been deteriorating, but yesterday morning she barely ate, and then by last night she was simply hanging out in her litter box. (This is the one with a puppy pad in it, so arguably she thinks it a bed she gets to pee in.) She was still responsive, but very stumbly and wobbly, and she did eat some treats from Louie’s hand. We were worried that we’d been giving her too much insulin and maybe she hadn’t eaten enough…I don’t know. Since she’s already old and sick even on her best days, we went to bed hoping that maybe things would be better in the morning, but we decided we’d call the vet first thing.
She was perhaps a little better. She seemed to still be in her litter box and had maybe been there much of the night, but she managed to climb up to her food perch. I fed her some wet canned food and she ate that with apparent hunger. Then she returned to her box, where she’s mostly been all morning. She looks at me when I stop by and enjoys being petted on her head.
Louie’s brother is going to be taking care of her next week while we’re gone. We just don’t want him to be stuck with a hard decision or be put in a really tough spot, but yet…you can’t put your cat down before her time just because you’re going on vacation. I was supposed to go to a luncheon/concert this morning for the music association, but I needed to help with this, and by the time we got things settled it was too late. I feel like I’ve missed a lot of things for the animals, but maybe that’s okay. And I feel better knowing that I’m here for the morning, and then I’m teaching, and we are still waiting on a call back from the vet in regards to her insulin dosage. What I know is that she is still responsive, and she’s not my cat, she’s Louie’s. Ultimately he has to do the decision making, and this is a really hard thing.
The internet gives hope and information, and tells me that some people would have put her down long ago, and other people would make her comfortable, and other people would argue that we are only making ourselves comfortable. The best I can tell is that there is no wrong answer right now, but there’s also no right answer. We’ll see what the vet says (and he’ll see her tomorrow—they could have done a drop off appointment today but we didn’t want her to wait around in a strange place) and maybe then we’ll have a better idea if this is something that can be treated. Or not. We don’t want to run a bunch of tests. We’ve already done that. We don’t want to add a regimen of medicines, or make her life more complicated. We just want to make her comfortable. And it is just terrible timing, since we are flying out in about 50 hours…but when it is a good time for your cat to be sick?
A few weeks ago I would have been a little annoyed at her for sitting too close to me on the couch while I typed this. Heck, even a few days ago! This picture is from May 2…
I’m trying not to be too sad. I’ve been sad, off and on, for months. It’s hard to see her suffering. And I worry about what the end will bring. I’d worried it would be her skin…but that’s been okay, and no new issues. Maybe this is it, or maybe it’s just that her diabetes can be handled a little better. I guess time will tell.