I got Tinkerbell 3 years ago this past January from a friend of a friend.   She got very sick after I got her.  A bad ear infection and parasites made her not eat.  I got her fixed up and she has become a very loyal little girl.

We have our routines.  To be honest, I’m not sure who has who trained.  In the morning on weekdays, my alarm goes off at about 6:15 am.  Once I sit up on the edge of the bed, she comes up for scratches.  She loves for me to hold my fingers in a C shape while she pushes her head through my hand.  She will do this until she satisfied.  If I don’t hold my hand out, she well smooth across my back and headbutt my arm until I raise it so she can walk through.

I come home from work to her waiting either on the kitchen chair or sitting on the digging bridge I bought her to keep her claws trimmed.  She won’t dig it but she loves to sit on it.  After a couple rubs around my legs, she will race up stairs and onto the bed.  We go through the scratches routine again often with her laying on my belly.  A nap soon follows for both of us.

At about 11 pm she will start bugging me to go upstairs.  If I don’t, she will go up and come back down every so often to see what I am doing.  Once I go upstairs, we do the scratches thing again and deploy the brush.  She hated that brush when I first bought it.  Now, She shows me which side she wants brushed whilest drooling the whole time.  She usually slips over to the far corner of the bed once she has had enough.  She will lay there until she thinks I’ve drifted off to sleep and then jumps down.

This year I’ve dealt with a lot of stress and depression.  She seems to know when I’m really down.  Without her, I don’t know if I would have made it through.  We play ball and chase the boot lace.  Well, I throw the ball.  She jumps at it then I have to go get it again.  She also loves to go bonkers in the nip box (an upside down paper box lid where her toys reside).

When I found her the other night, lethargic on the bed, I was scared to death that I was going to loose her that night.  She perked up later and has been acting better, but still not her usual silly kitteh self.  Yesterday, she started throwing up white foam and gagging a lot.  I looked up on the web what that could be because she’s never done that and neither did my cat I had back in high school.  YIKES! Nothing was good to be found about cats throwing up foam:  Poisoning, kidney failure, heart failure, infection, parasites, about the least scary thing I found on the list was bowel blockage due to fur balls.  I called the Vet’s office and gave them the symptoms.   My heart sank again when they said.  “This is not a good sign.  If she gets worse take her immediately to the emergency clinic in Girard if it is after our hours.”

Tonight when we got to the office for the appointment, the vet listened to the symptoms, checked her weight and temperature.  They brought her back in and began checking her belly for tell tale signs of some pretty serious stuff.   A lump lifted into my throat.  These things aren’t just difficult to treat.  They are fatal, sometimes very quickly.  Her kidneys are smaller than normal and hard.  This could be kidney failure OR just because she is the runt of her litter and small for her age.  She has lost muscle mass since she was last there.  Another sign of kidney failure.  She has a fairly serious heart murmur that wasn’t there last time she was checked.  Crap lady! I was expecting to hear she had a parasite… a bad tooth… or a bad ear infection.  I wasn’t expecting to hear that if we didn’t catch this in time, I was going to lose my buddy.

I know tears started to well up as she figured up how much she thought the tests would run.  Of course, do the tests.  Thankfully, the tests all came back fairly well.  Kidneys. OK.  Liver.  OK.  Thyroid.  A little high in some aspects but within what is considered normal.  She can live with that along time and it might be from some kind of infection.  The only problem is…. That leaves only one thing:  The Heart.  I was told there really isn’t a reliable test that will show heart disease in felines until it is too late to do anything about it.  Combine that with the, now present, murmur and things are pointing that way.  She also has a couple bad teeth that need fixed but that is minor at this point.  The object of the game now is to give her a 14 day antibiotic.  Watch her to see if she improves or degrades and then take the next step.

So… over all, I know her blood work is basically good.  They said they could give her an IV to rehydrate her.  That would bring the couple levels that were high down.  It wasn’t a good option because she was super stressed just from the shots and blood work.  They sent us home with direction to eat smaller portions of wet food instead of one portion in the morning and see how she does.  Overall, the vet seemed to think this was a livable situation as long as this issue didn’t get worse.  I hope so… I’ve only had her three and a half years, but she’s the only child I have.  It will tear me apart if I lose her.  I’ve had too much to deal with this past couple years to lose another loved one.

To make it all worse, Tink had never been to the vet in the 4 years before I got her.  Let’s just say…. she doesn’t care for strangers poking around and squeezing her.  Hearing her terrified screams (which I knew all too well from her first trip to the vet after I got her when she really was near death) just tore at my heart.  No, the vet wasn’t being mean to her or abusing her.  She was drawing blood.  Poor Tink didn’t know what to do.  Well yes she did.. She crapped all over them.  Upset Tink brings clear meaning to the phrase “Scaring the shit out of someone”.  I finally took a walk out to the truck.  I’m a “big tough guy”, but not when it comes to her.

Fortunately, Tink doesn’t seem to be mad at me.  She growled as I trimmed the remaining poop out of her hairy backside, but that wasn’t because she was mad at me.  I don’t think I’d want someone groping around my butt with a pair of sharp scissor either.  I’d probably growl too.  I let her alone for a bit and went to get some dinner.  I was well over due for that.  Good thing I had pizza for lunch or my sugar would have bottomed not eating til 9:30 pm.  I returned to the house to my little buddy sitting on the kitchen chair watching for me.  She’s been rubbing around my legs when I’m up.  Right now she is laying on the chair behind me acting as though she is sleeping.

Its been a rough day for the kitteh and for Curt.  I think its time to sign off and hit the hay.  Good night for now.

~Cappy and Tink  of course