A Tale of Two Cats

I have mentioned my cat, Willow, in previous blog posts. She was my cat for several years before she went to be my grandmother’s cat for several years, and has now been back in my care for over a year. In November of last year, she got very ill. The following events are what led up to her illness, but I can’t pin down her illness to the events that preceded her illness. I mentioned she had gotten tape worm and had gotten treatment for that in the summer or early fall. She recovered from that and then experienced gastrointestinal symptoms that I had never seen. No matter what I fed her, she had diarrhea. She lost a lot of weight, and when we took her to the vet in November, they did a battery of tests to attempt to determine the cause of her distress. The veterinarian was very thorough, patient, and did their best to determine the cause of the weight loss and diarrhea.

We attended the consultation with the internal medicine specialist. The differential diagnoses they listed all required invasive tests that might or might not be treatable. We decided to do what we could to treat her symptoms and see what would happen. She’d had a lot of blood drawn at the primary vet’s office, an ultrasound, and an X-ray done. Those tests had taken almost 5 hours, and she had been exhausted. The ultrasound-guided biopsy required sedation, which came with its own list of risks. The testing was expensive, and it would be lying to say that wasn’t a concern at all. What concerned me the most was that I wasn’t able to talk to Willow about what she wanted. It might seem silly to some, but I spent a lot of time thinking about what Willow would want, what makes her the happiest, and what I could do to make her the most comfortable. It bothered me that I couldn’t explain to her why we were going back and forth to different doctors’ offices and what was going on. I expect that, if I were her, I’d rather be left at home in peace and quiet to eat the food I like, not in a car going to places I don’t like.

We left our primary care veterinarian with a referral to a specialty vet and with the suggested diagnosis of some kind of cancer that hadn’t been seen on the imaging they had done. The blood work and imaging had come back normal. Since she was still having diarrhea, I called back and asked for something, anything, to just make her more comfortable. She didn’t enjoy having her paws cleaned off, and I didn’t want to have to bathe her. Her primary vet provided us with an antibiotic and a daily probiotic. Once I got her to take the medications, they worked wonders, but getting her to take them was a battle. Anyone who has ever attempted to get a pet to take pills can tell you, it is not easy. On the first day, she ate the food with the liquid antibiotic squirted on it. The second day, no dice. It didn’t matter if the medication was hidden under or in the food; she wasn’t touching it. It was only a two-week course of antibiotics, so I sat her on my lap, and shot it into her mouth. I had never seen her perform more dramatically. There was coughing, spitting, and drooling. This was all because she wouldn’t eat the liquid treat with the medicine mixed in. I did feel bad afterwards, and I knew this was the least invasive treatment for her. We were both relieved when she had swallowed the last syringe full.

Because the vet had suggested that cancer had been a possible diagnosis and the weight loss had been so substantial, I added a high-protein wet food to her diet. It took a few tries to find one she would like. I must have tried four or five different wet foods before we settled on one that I could buy regularly and that she would eat. There was an expensive pulled chicken dish and a broth-based dish from a local pet store that I was sure would be a hit with her. She would like all the broth out of the cup, but leave the meat, which was deeply frustrating because I was trying to improve her protein intake. I would rush back to the pet store for more wet food or a different kind. Eventually, I decided I needed an affordable option that she would like. We eventually settled on Blue Buffula, and she’s still eating it. At first, when I got her, I worried she was too heavy; now I feed her as much as she wants.

I started joking that I was running a kitty cat hospice. She would simply look at me and meow, and food would appear in front of her. At one point, she was eating six cans of wet food a day. Because the vet had said that she probably only had a few months left, I was letting her sleep in the bed with me, and she also was so ill she couldn’t hit me in the face with her front paws to wake me up anymore. She found that sticking her wet nose into the corners of my eyelids was much more efficient. Every night we went to bed together, I was afraid she wouldn’t have the strength to jump into bed with me. I would lie down and wait to see if she would be able to jump into bed with me. Every night she jumped up and lay down next to my head. I cannot count the number of nights I cried myself to sleep because she was just so sick, and I didn’t know how much time I had with her left. I would drag myself out of bed every morning, not wanting to leave my apartment, wanting to spend the days on the couch with her. My thoughts were never far from the apartment, and I was hoping she wasn’t having a difficult day. Instead of crying on my couch or while lying in bed, I would cry while sitting at my desk, trying to work.

All of this was happening during work’s busiest time of the year, so it was a lot of balance, but we made it through. As she inhaled can after can of cat food, I could feel her vertebrae through her fur less easily. She started to venture onto the countertops again and had to be shooed off again. The stinging underneath my eyes that had been a constant for weeks started to go away as my cat seemed to be on the mend. I called the vet, and she was cautiously optimistic. She told me that if Willow was still doing well into the new year, to bring her in for a weight check, and if she was doing well, then she could get her rabies vaccine. I bought a pet scale, and it showed that she was gaining weight regularly. Her appetite stabilized, but she was still eating a healthy amount; her gastrointestinal symptoms had ceased. She was running around the apartment, playing.

While all of this was going on, another cat in my family needed a home. After careful consideration and after she stabilized, we brought in the second cat. That was a whole other adventure. Before the two cats could even meet, we had to collect the second cat, a male oscicat. It took about an hour to get him into his carrier, and then there was about a week of keeping them separated so they could get used to each other through doors and screens. Willow was eager to set the tone that she was top cat and would not be unseated. I was able to keep them separated until there was no hissing except for one fateful evening. He had pushed past the barrier, and she chased after him. I quickly separated them, and it did not happen again. I would spend time with Tigger, the second cat, in the bathroom where I was keeping him after work, petting him, just trying to get him used to me. The first few days, he just hid from me. It took him a day or two to stop hissing at me. I would put treats by him and just wait for him to come over to me. I’d talk to him and say I understood how scary the change in setting was. When I would come out of the bathroom. Willow would be waiting for me outside. She must have been confused why I was spending so much time in there with him, but he needed attention, too.

It’s been very rewarding and entertaining to see their relationship develop over the past two months I’ve had them together. I would say Willow is still the bossy older sister, and he’s the more docile younger brother, but they’ll antagonize each other if they want to play. They’ll both paw at each other to start a game. Each of them knows where different containers of food are stored and will enlist the other’s help to try to get into the storage area to get to the food. I’ve walked into the apartment to see each of them sleeping next to each other on the couch, which is sweet. I’m also relieved that each of them seems to have their own areas of the apartment they can go to for some space. Willow had that weight recheck with her primary vet, and it turns out she didn’t have cancer because feline cancer patients don’t recover the way she has. She got her three-year rabies vaccine. Every morning when she shakes my door to wake me up, I wake up smiling and grateful she’s still alive to do so.