All Nine Used Up?

Faraday was generating cat puke faster than I could clean it up, and when I started finding blood in it, I took her to the vet today. Dubby recommended I take her to a different vet this time, one recommended by our good friend Martha (the farmer's wife, who often looks after Faraday while we're off on trips).

The little kitty's obviously not well. She has been moaning and howling every couple of hours like she's in great pain, but then she'll be happy and perky for a while, too. Last night, she didn't even want to get up to run down the hall to chase her nightly treat, so I knew something was wrong.

We were at the vets for about two hours while he ran all kinds of blood work and other tests.

Bad news. Faraday's kidneys are failing, as in her pancreas and liver.

Technically, at 15 years old, she is approaching the equivalent of a 90-year-old human. While some cats do live to be older, the typical indoor housecat lives to be 12 to 15, according to the vet.

The doc gave her four shots, including some antiemetic, antibiotics, megadose vitamins, and cortisone, to ease her discomfort and as a last ditch effort to give her body time to heal itself if it's going to. He also pumped her full of fluids since she is badly dehydrated. The meds will last about a week or two. Once they wear off, if she's well, she might be good for a couple of months or a year or more. But there's a 50/50 chance once the meds wear off, she'll be right back where she is today, in which case the only thing to do is to recognize that she's lived out her ninth life.

As lint monkey might say: Sadness.

On another subject: after getting stuck in Houston (...again...) Dubby is throwing in the towel and coming back home, giving up on getting to SLC. This is why I never fly standby: you really can't count on getting where you're going. I can't blame the airlines... they really do need to keep making money.