I’ve been uncharacteristically silent of late.  Not because I had nothing to say (I doubt anyone who knows me would ever believe me if I asserted that) but because a lot has been happening that is difficult to talk about.

Our cat Zoe had been having intermittent urinary-tract problems for quite some time.  She’d seen four different vets and had every test imaginable and no one could figure out what her problem actually was.  A few weeks back, she wasn’t eating well, but I thought it was just because she didn’t like the food we were giving her.  We tried all kinds of different foods with no success, and then all of a sudden her breath started smelling like decay.

Naturally, this happened on a Sunday when our vet office was closed, so I took her to my daughter’s vet office which does have Sunday hours.  By that time, though, she was very sick indeed, and ended up staying at the vet office for several days, with IV fluids, antibiotics and everything else they could think of.

We brought her home with instructions to give her antibiotics, a phosphate binder, and subcutaneous fluids.  I learned how to administer the fluids, a process which both Zoe and I hated.  But it seemed to be helping.

She spent about two weeks hiding in various places in the house and not going to any of her usual favorite places.  Eventually I made a “nest” of sorts for her under a table in the office and she was quite happy there.  We put a cat box here for her so she wouldn’t have to venture out (and so we could see whether she was using it).  Slowly but surely she began coming out.  She re-established her favorite place as the cat tree.  She would sit in the tube most of the day, and purr if we reached in to pet her.  That in itself was unusual.  She was what I call a “stingy purr” cat, in that you could pet her and she’d only purr if she felt like it.  As opposed to an “insta purr” cat like our other one who will purr if you look at him.

Finally, she started sitting on our bed during the day again and acting as though she felt well.  Life was good.

And then…   last Monday, I woke up at 5:45am with the feeling something was wrong.  Zoe was curled up on the couch and when I petted her it was clear she was in pain.  I took her to the vet office as soon as they opened up.  The news was as bad as it could be.  Her kidney values were dismal and she was still in pain.

There was really only one choice.  She was purring almost to the end.

It has fallen on my shoulders to make these decisions for every pet we have lost.  It gets more difficult, and more difficult for me to recover from, every time.

Whether it was connected to that or not, this past Monday I had an attack of vertigo so bad that I ended up in the ER getting my head CAT scanned (and, as the old joke goes, they found nothing).  It was after 1am when we finally got home, and of course sleeping on the waterbed was out of the question.  So, for two nights, I slept on an air mattress on the office floor, which was surprisingly comfortable.  The vertigo didn’t really go away till Thursday.  I have medication to keep with me for the next time (and undoubtedly there will be a next time).

So that makes me a dizzy granny in a one-cat house.  Where’s the fun in that?

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