Deathwatch: Cat

Here's some sad news. The poor cat, the Nighttime Howler, is kind of on her last legs.

When we came home from Shelbyville in December, we realized that she was completely deaf. She couldn't hear the kid howl and made no sign that she could hear us anymore either. Since then we "call" her by stomping on the floor.

The next thing that happened was we took her to the vet for her checkup. She had lost weight and was very thin. The vet took blood, which is a horrible ordeal for both the cat and anyone listening to the cat. Turned out she has some thyroid problem. This is on top of her existing kidney problem that we've known about for years.

So now we give her a little pill every day. At first we wrestled her down and stuffed it in her mouth. Then I found that you could just hide it in a treat and she would scarf it down. The vet said "see you in six months!", which implies of course that the cat will live at least six months.

But her appetite is very low, and she hardly ever eats her food. I wouldn't either, it is gross, but she used to eat it. She is very thin and light.

The other night she tried to walk across the room and her legs wobbled and slipped. She had to lie down and take a rest halfway between water glass and couch.

So we've been feeding her cat junk food, petting her, and letting her in the bedroom at night (previously forbidden after the broken glass incident). She sleeps all the time. I carry her to her food dish so she can eat three little kibbles.

Octuplet Dazzle got that cat when she was just eleven years old. The cat was, by all accounts, a very cute kitten. We inherited her when my mother in law went on one of her long trips to India, and we just never gave her back. That was seven years ago. So, I'm bummed out.