The thousand dollar cat.

I had a nightmare on Friday morning. I was with my mom and trying to call our vet on a cell phone. I kept trying to dial the number, but my fingers were too big, or the buttons were broken, and it took forever. When I finally got the vet on the phone, he informed me that it was all too easy to see that Mimi had been so severely mistreated, so much so that it appeared that she had been abandoned by cruel and ignorant owners. As a vet, he could not live with himself if he placed this cat back in our home and under our supervision. I cried and screamed into my phone "give me back my cat! IT'S. MY. CAT!CAAAAATTTT!"

I woke up and immediately called our vet. I'm calling to check on my cat, she had surgery earlier this week? Stine?

Oh, the yellow cat? The big one? She's a nice kitty, a real sweetie, said the vet tech.

I don't care if they are coached to compliment people's pets to garner repeat business, it felt good to hear that I was still the owner of a sweet kitty. I finally went to pick her up after a several days at the vet and her second surgery within about five weeks. Turns out that Mimi had the cat equivalent of kidney stones. They were big and painful, and explain why she's been extremely lethargic for the last few months. Tim, the more sensitive of the two of us, had been in tune with Mimi and noticed her attitude change. I, the horrible parent, had excused this as an effect of the heat.



This makes me very nervous about all grown up decisions I have made lately. Too self centered to notice your cat painfully stepping in and out of her giant, dry litter box? Probably not ready to start looking for a house. Happy to excuse any behaviour as NATURAL, because cats are part of NATURE? Perhaps I should reconsider volunteering as a pro-bono consultant for arts organizations.



Mimi is home now and has a stretch of bald stiches running up her stomach. Her stitches come out on Wednesday, and we're doing our best to keep her little plastic neck cone on, but she keeps pulling it off. On Saturday night I could hear her wandering around our room, desperately trying to rub her head on the side of the bed, the nightstand, and the door ways. Unfortunately, that cone just kept getting in the way (bump, scrape, bump, scrape, meower).

We're also still spraying her backside from her recent anal gland surgery. It was as pretty as it sounds. Poor Mimi. The one thing I take comfort in is that I never once considered an alternative to moving forward with health care. When we first got the cats and I learned that they could live to be 20, I was a little nervous to take care of someone for that long. Also, my farm mentality started creeping in----well, they're supposed to live to be 20, but they'll probably only be a round for a couple years. But after three years with this kitties, moving them to Chicago, and saying good night to them, I'm hoping they're around for many many more winters. Meow.