My cat Linus continues to do poorly. We’re giving him more insulin but he still sleeps by his water bowl (one of the top signs of diabetes that Linus displays). Meanwhile his new food is helping his digestive issues even as it makes him stinky and sick. He is still throwing up the first half of every day. I’ll skip kitty litter discussions.
My head cold is finally starting to clear up and I am getting more active post-surgery. I find I lack energy though.
I got Linus in January of 2000. I had been on call for Y2K tech support for New Year’s while working full time and attending community college full time in the evenings. My life was work, homework, school, and a few friendly moments with coworkers. Life was pretty scripted and getting very surreal. I lived alone. I would come home from work where I worked from a script for the phones, go to school where I worked from the script that is a curriculum, and do homework which wasn’t very challenging. I was fading into a script. I needed something by my side that was unscripted.
If I could have, if I had had time, I would have gotten a puppy or a dog. I love dogs. I always had dogs growing up. I knew the responsibility for a dog was beyond me though. I needed something a little more independent: a cat.
A coworker who was a friend drove me out to the humane society and the local pound. I didn’t have a car. She took me there several times. I was determined to get an adult female calico, short hair. The first trip to the humane society she even charmed us into the back room where a new batch of kittens were being deflea’d. They had been left in a box on the side of the highway. I didn’t want a kitten. On my third visit to the humane society I wandered the cat room and finally had to admit the medium haired tabby boy kitten sitting in the windowsill looking out at the pet cemetery was mine. I picked him up and he threw an arm over my heart. He still does this.
He was so loving and quiet and cuddly. I took him to the vet who treated him for a head cold and after he became an utter terror. We worked out our boundaries. I named him Little Linus Larrabee, my own leading man. He kept me sane through college, moved to New York City with me when I graduated, moved home to Oregon with me when that moment came. Likes it when I play video games because he knows I’ll sit still and he can perch on me.
Watching him get sick like this makes me feel so numb to everything else. He’s off his food, a first. I’m off my food. He mopes around the house. I mope around the house. He moves out of range with very little interest or energy and barely a hiss when our three year old cat wants to play. I find I have little interest in playing with my friends. We’re in this tight little circle of two, Linus and I.
His bloodwork came back normal. His blood sugar levels are only moderately high. My husband and I joke that he’s probably allergic to the high fiber food that the vet prescribed. It’s not good for his blood sugar but it seems to be worse than that and yet it fixes some digestive issues that have been plaguing us for the last two years. We really don’t know what’s wrong with him.
It’s kind of weird having a cat with a mystery illness. I am just recovering from having my mystery illness patched. A lot of people with SCDS spend years trying to figure out what is wrong and then years waiting for their quality of life to get so bad that surgery seems worth it. I jumped right into surgery. Quality of life is very important to me. It’s not what I can stand, it’s what I aspire to. I aspire to so much more than being sick.
So here I am getting better while my cat, my Linus, my leading man of fourteen years, gets sick. Yeah. Don’t feel much like talking to people, posting that much on facebook, doing that much of anything really. I wish it was his mood that was broken and not his health. I would pick him up and dance around the room with him singing while he waited for a moment when he could leap out of my arms and escape and wash himself with dignity. Linus is good at dignity.
Anyway, that’s what’s going on with me. Sick cat.
Rebekah Golden 