I’ve got a post-in-progress in my mind about my unholy love of the Wii, but it’s just not happening right now. Hopefully I’ll get to it in the next few days.
I’m going though a lot of ups and downs right now. I have a tendency towards depression – definitely genetic, as most of my family has it as well – but usually by this time of year, I’m through it. Mine is very seasonal affective disorder, and usually the longer days are enough to kick me out of it. We’ve been getting a lot of days of rain in a row this spring, so maybe that has something to do with it. The grey skies bring me down, and then I’m prey to whatever bad thoughts come along. Those thoughts are mainly about my cat Joe these days.
If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you know my cat Joe is not exactly a spring chicken anymore. As near as we can figure, he’s 18, turning 19 at the end of August. Joe hadn’t looked or acted his age, well, ever, and I had pretty much decided that the bitchy little guy was going to live forever. Or at least until age 25, like Rick’s brother’s cat Maynard. The plastic incident changed things for Joe. At the time he swallowed the plastic, he was still a fairly respectable 12 pounds. I’ve called him my linebacker kitty for years, and he’s always been solid. I guess those three days without food while we tried to figure out what the hell was going on took their toll and his body started to live off its reserves. He’s gotten thinner and thinner since then. Today, he’s about 8 pounds, and I can feel the bones in his spine and his knobby little knees.
He’s also started to have a fair amount of problems with arthritis. His hips especially bother him, and he went from jumping up on things to trying to jump up but missing, to not even trying to jump. We put up a stool at the end of the bed so that he can get in and out without injury and sleep with us when he wants, but he much prefers us to carry him.
The past couple of weeks, he’s not really shown much interest in the dry food he’s always eaten. I’ve given him wet food, but that leads to diarrhea, and a cat with arthritis in his hips doesn’t need to be squatting in the litterbox every five minutes. He doesn’t have the energy even to move his feet out of the way when he pees, so we’ve been cleaning litter balls out from between his toes a lot. This morning I found that he was so exhausted from a night of diarrhea that when he had peed in the litterbox, he had apparently gotten his tail in it, so there were litter bits stuck there as well.
All of this sounds bad, and when I’m really depressed, I think he doesn’t have much time left with us. I hope that he can make it the next three weeks until my mom comes up for a visit so that she can see him before he goes. But on the other hand, he’s still very interested in the wet food and in treats (most of the time), he always makes it to the litterbox, he still loves to sit beside me and purrs like mad when I pet him, and he played with Rick a bit the other day, swatting at Rick’s hand and eventually biting Rick when Rick wouldn’t quit touching Joe’s paw. So I just don’t know.
I’m talking to the vet this evening, getting medicine to stop the diarrhea, and I’m going to tell her what’s going on and ask her point blank if she could tell me if we’ve reached the point where we’re going to have to put him down. I’ve never had to make that decision before, and never been around when my mom had to make the decision for two of her cats. I like this vet immensely and she likes Joe a lot, so hopefully she can tell me if I’m just being pessimistic or if we’re getting close to the end.
In the meantime, I would really like to see some sunshine instead of grey skies and rain.
I went through the same thing with my cat, Shadow, a few years ago. He was almost 21 and went from being his normal self to being a very old cat in a matter of weeks. Hopefully the vet can give Joe something to stop thr diarrhea. If Joe can keep food in his body he will probably see a bit of his energy return.
Good luck! *hugs*
Maybe instead of giving him straight wet food, mix it in with his dry food? It might also help with the diarrhea while also getting him to eat and put on some weight.
I hope the vet can tell you something good and positive and also give him something to help with the arthritis.
Also, I’m with you on wanting to see the sun again! I suffer from SAD also and grey days start to get old super fast.
Grace~He’s got glucosamine that I mix in with the food, but it’s not doing a lot. I try mixing the dry food in with the wet and the little bastard eats around the dry food. He always was too smart for his own good. Last night I caught him laying in the litterbox, so I think the end is close, but this morning he was following me around the house and talking and purring, so it’s hard to tell.
Perp~This is so hard to go through – definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with. My biggest fear is that I won’t know when to say goodbye, that I’ll wait too long or worse, jump the gun. I talked to the vet about it last night and she was really good about explaining things to me, so I’m just trying to take it day by day.
We went through a similar thing with our kitty, except she had a really bloated stomach. And then stopped eating and finally drinking. It was a slow but dignified death, up until probably the last day. Very hard on all of us.
Hopefully things will turn around a little, but I’ll be thinking of you. Even though I never liked that animal, I miss her.
This is never any easy process, assessing, 2nd guessing, re-assessing. My experience has been they will let you know – can’t really explain it, but they do. Big HUGS!