Missing You

The Tweeb has pulled through! I didn't have to force-feed her (much) this time--once she got the idea behind the rich fatty food, she couldn't get enough of it. There were a few trying moments (especially when she pooped on the bed) but after Friday morning it became pretty clear that she wasn't in any more danger of passing prematurely. And by Friday evening, her squawking had resumed its full volume and frequency. She even demanded a treat.

It was a relief to see that the Tweeb was back in form. It's a bit strange, when you think about how much we grumble about her, and her demands, her ugliness (let's face it, she's not exactly pretty), how far out-of-the-way we have to go to get her food, her vet bills. Why do we love this cat? Is it because, or in spite of, these things?

Back when the Tweeb was Tabitha, her adoption page said that she was "a bit clumsy but full of personality". Her picture? A black cat with a pink cast and her face in a food bowl. I wish I could say it was love at first sight. But it was more like, "Well, we'll see if she gets along with Shadow." And then sort of quasi-hoping that she wouldn't.

Truth be told, she never did--she got along with me. She and Shadow will roughhouse from time to time, and play kitty-ping-pong, but if there's a quiet moment, she will come and sit on our laps, and in the morning, it's her anxious little face we see, peering at us from our stomachs, asking if it's time for breakfast yet.

I wish I could pinpoint a reason as to why we put up with her, and her demands, and her tendency to poop on our bed when she's unhappy. But really, we're just glad she's okay, and that she's just as demanding as ever.

Oh Sh*t

So much for getting back to blogging...the Tweeb is sick again--horking and dripping tiny bits of diarrhea, with her limp being ever more pronounced. We'll be dragging her to the vet's as soon as they have an opening, but in the meantime, well, let's hope that she'll be okay.

EDIT: I called the vet shortly after posting this morning, and they said to bring her in, and leave her with them for the day. So I did, and went home, and started cleaning up the myriad little gushy-poops that the Tweeb had left. All. Over. The. Apartment.

The vet called back earlier today and said to come pick her up. They couldn't figure out what was wrong (not a surprise if it's viral) and the basic labs they ran showed that she might have liver problems on top of her kidney issues. We're hoping that the high reading is stress-related, but, well...it's the Tweeb. If anything can be explained that simply she'd just be any other cat.

Finnessing the Cat

One of the mistakes many dog owners make is to treat their dog like a child. I can hear Cesar Milan's voice, saying, "When you take things out of nature, they become unablanced." Happily, cats take to being treated like a human child the way a duck takes to water: it's their prerogative, after all, being the true lords of the universe. The Mayans were right--the world will end on December 21, 2012. Because the Tweeb will die that day, and take her true form as the Goddess of Fickle.

The Tweeb has been on a prescription renal diet for the past two years. She eats both kibbles and wet food, getting about two tablespoons of kibbles for her breakfast, and a packet of wet food at night. We cheat a bit--she'll get some fish when we have it, and every night I lace her wet food with some of the normal kibble because otherwise she won't eat it--but overall we're pretty strict about making sure she stays on the prescription diet.

About two weeks into the regime change--we didn't change her food until her blood values remained elevated for two tests in a row--she started getting, well, bored with the food. And every night since has been a comedy of errors, to try to convince her to eat her food. It comes in two acts, repeated over and over again: the suspenseful build-up of squawking increasing in both frequency and volume; and the granting of said food. The last requires you to act like a teenybopper who's just been kissed by God Justin Bieber, and getting her to eat it required administration of constant praise and occasional--but not too frequent--pettings.

It took us a while to work out the twisted map of the Tweeb's psyche. OK, I exaggerate. It's quite simple, really: CAT-MOMMY MUST BE WITH ME ALL THE TIME OR ELSE. Cats were once revered as gods--and while I'm an atheist, frankly...well, given the Tweeb's ability to break glass with her voice and throw temper tantrums, the "or else" bit is probably best left undiscovered.

Babies and toddlers eventually grow out of this stage, I'm told. This must be why we've started discussing children.

Kidney Kitties

Yesterday morning, rather than breakfast, Noodle got ambushed and keel-hauled to the vet's, where he got his teeth cleaned. Dentals are all-day procedures, so we'd also booked a late-afternoon checkup for the Tweeb, with the idea of bringing both cats home at once. Cost was rather--and surprisingly--modest, given that Noodle needed pre-anesthesia blood-work done, and that the Tweeb got some antibiotics (she's been having this weird little cough that makes us worry about heart failure).

One of the things the blood-work revealed is that Noodle is also on the brink of renal failure. His kidney values, while still within the normal ranges, are approaching the point of worry, and falling in the "high normal" range. Right now, the plan is to monitor him, which means keel-hauling him to the vet AGAIN in six months for another blood test.

It's one of the cardinal rules of owning cats, that the ones that need to see the vet most often are the ones that are the most problematic. The Tweeb, for instance, has taken to piddling on me when we put her in her carrier. Noodle just hates his carrier--in fact, he infinitely prefers the vet to his carrier, and I strongly suspect that the only reason they could get him into his carrier yesterday was because he was so strung out on ketamine. Shadow, on the other hand, goes to the vet about once every other year and is as pretty and as perfect as a picture, and always goes in her carrier with a minimum of fuss.

What's so daunting about the prospect of Noodle having to see the vet as often as the Tweeb, then, is not the cost--it's unpleasant, but affordable. It's the emotional toll that comes from dragging a whining, howling cat to the vet and back again. It's figuring out how to outsmart the cats and get them to a place where you can catch them. It's waiting for the vet to call and tell you that the Tweeb is still normal/better/worse than she was the last time. Costs may increase in a linear fashion for every sick or borderline-sick cat, but dread goes up exponentially.

Describing the Tweeb

On Friday, we met the cat-sitter, an interesting experience, as neither of us had ever used one before. We've got a trip to Scotland coming up next month, and after buying the tickets, we started working out the kitty logistics. The last time I traveled extensively, Karel had stayed at home (well, he was working, but the fuzzbutts still got their usual care). They're accustomed, to some extent, to having us disappear overnight, but we've never left them alone for more than 36 hours.

Most of that is because Noodle is a snarfer. He'll eat himself into an explosion if we'd let him. We've slimmed him down since his adoption, but that was only by sheer force of will, feeding him twice a day and strictly regulating his diet. Needless to say, leaving food out for the whole weekend would not be good for him.

The second, not-insubstantial obstacle was the litter box issue. The boxes are scooped every- to every-other-day, the better to encourage the cats to use them, and not, say, our sofas. We've had a few piddle-and-poop incidents, typically involving cat carriers and trips to the vet, but when one has renal failure and the other is a boy (male cats are more susceptible to urinary issues), you really want to make sure they can pee freely whenever they want.

Our vet has a few flyers in the waiting room from people offering pet services, so I took one and followed the directions to arrange the initial meeting with the cat-sitter. It was late in the afternoon, when they were more-or-less awake and somewhat more active, so some actual introductions were possible. The first thing she did was ask us to describe the cats, because then she would know what was normal for them. Now, Shadow and Noodle are pretty typical cats--i.e., their lives revolve around finding the perfect sunbeam, swatting at each other, and food. They are perfectly healthy, perfectly pretty, and, couch notwithstanding, very well-behaved.

But how do you begin to describe a cat that looks like a very large rat that was cut up and glued back together with Elmer's? A cat around whom we've built a separate vocabulary....whose physical, psychological, and medical needs could fill a book...it was at that point that we realized what crazy cat people we'd become. I mean, we've always loved cats, but when you care for the Tweeb, you get sucked into her world. There's no getting out of it--you're in it, 'til death do you part. Makes getting married look like a breeze.

The Hell of Small Cats

Our cats, despite being spoiled rotten, are actually not terribly-behaved. They shred the couch and our bedframe, but have left the antique-y furnishings alone. They will not go up on the dining room table, save to explore new things left there. And they will eat just about everything, from raw meat to the most exquisite canned food. Their favorite is raw beef--God help us if Shadow ever tastes lobster.

There is, in fact, only one thing they do that we absolutely cannot abide: skittering through the apartment at 5 in the morning. Every. Morning.

We theorize that Noodle, who sleeps in the living room, gets hungry at around 5 (which is expected), and thus goes to the bedroom to whinge at his humans to feed him. Alas for him, the bedroom is deep girl-country, the domain of Shadow (under the bed, windowsill) and the Tweeb (top of the bed), so she chases him out, to the living room, which is his part of the apartment (having staked out some kind of presence on all of the sleeping surfaces there). Then he chases her back, and we have kitty-ping-pong, at five in the morning. Usually this is resolved when I close the living room door.

For the most part, the Tweeb is left out of this civil strife. She has staked her own claim on her humans, and barks commands for food, attention, and turning on the heater independently of the other two. However, this morning, she decided to be somewhat more imperious than usual, and took to jumping on the bed and yelling at us.

So I banished her from the bedroom.

Banished from the bedroom, barred from the other kitties, locked in purgatory between an empty kitchen and the empty bedroom--the cat who can make stones weep blood when she cries for me when I leave to get groceries. Hell can be many things, but for the Tweeb, I would imagine that this might just come close to hers.

Never fear, though: the Tweeb exacts her vengeance in many ways--some of them stinky. At the bottom of our pantry this morning, next to the potato sack, a tidy lump of Tweeb-turd.