Crazy Cat Lady

Warning: as of this writing I am on my 3rd shot of gin.

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If you come to my house you will be greeted with a few things. ?The first is my crazy dog. ?Once you get past her (if this is your first time visiting) you will be offered a drink and then shown how to get your own from then on. ?The third thing that will greet you are my cats. ?Julius will be the first to greet and then maybe, if her royal highness deems you worthy, Isis will show her presence. ?Your first reaction at the sight of this cat is, “damn, what are you feeding her?” ?Kitty (what we normally call her) is fat. ?We all know she is fat. ?She always has been. ?She’s a tiny little cat, but is so blubber you can’t help but squish her.

Lately, Kitty has gotten slightly more blubbery. ?She started to get fat rolls over her elbows. ?Then she started laying down in random places. ?Then, last week, as I was trimming her nails I noticed that her skin was red. ?That last one caused me to call the vet. ?In 14 years this cat has only been to the vet a handful of times. ?She never gets sick.

The doctor asked us if she was always blubbery like that. ?She is fat and rather squishy rather than thick and fat. ?We said, yes. ?Well come to find out, the blubber (that we thought was just fat) is fluid. ?There may be fat in there somewhere, but what she’s put on in the past few weeks is fluid. ?They kept the cats (we took both for senior wellness checks) for the day on Friday and when we picked them up the Vet filled us in on her condition. ?It’s pretty serious.

There is no clear diagnosis, but the office sent out for labs. ?That is what we knew at the end of the day yesterday. ?Fluid, not good, blah blah blah. ?This morning we woke up and Derek noticed that Kitty’s whole neck and chest were all wet. ?Her front legs were also wet. ?What is happening is that everywhere they poked her to try to get a blood sample is like popping a hole in a water balloon. ?She is leaking. ?It is pretty constant and 24 hours later it is still happening.

I called the vet’s office this morning and the vet called back. ?The leaking is fine. ?It won’t hurt her. ?However, what the vet told Derek is that it is possible that she might have cancer. ?She isn’t to that diagnosis yet, but she wants to run more tests and do an ultrasound. ?All to the tune of much more money than we have.

I found all of this out about 10 minutes before I was supposed to walk out the door to go to work. ?So I pretty much moped around the store while the boys did everything they could to cheer me up. ?They are good boys (boys at the store, not my boys, but my boys are good too).

I’m very worried about my baby girl. ?Imagine your most treasured pet. ?That is Kitty. ?I love both of my cats very much, but Kitty is my little sidekick. ?The thought of something being wrong with her is slowly killing me. ?So much so that I just sent Derek out to purchase frozen dinners.