cleo

Our kitty, Cleopatra, is in the hospital.

On Saturday, she threw up some tin foil and a piece of red thread, and we didn't think much of it. She was acting normally, and she's forever eating weird stuff off the floor or the sofa cushions or whatever, and she threw it up, which is much better than keeping it down.

But by Monday morning, it seemed to me that she ought to be yowling at me to fill up her food dish, only, it was still half full, exactly as it had been all weekend. She wasn't acting strangely, so I gave her a couple of treats to see if she would eat them. She wolfed them down and promptly threw them up again about 20 minutes later.

Now I was worried.

I called Allison, who works as a veterinary assistant, and she talked to her Dr. and they thought I should take Cleo to the vet. So, I did, and I left her there for them to do x-rays and blood work.

When they called at around 5:00 and told us that the doctor wanted us to come in so that he could speak with us, I knew it wasn't good.

What everyone was worried about was that there might be more string in her intestines, but they couldn't really tell from the x-ray. What they could tell is that her right kidney is enlarged and has a lot of white spots in it. Could be kidney stones, could be calcium deposits, could be something else. Her blood work wasn't good either. The first doctor kept saying "kidney failure," which didn't go over well with us.

So, we were told to take her to a 24 hour animal hospital, which we did. Now, what you have to understand about Cleo is that she is the sweetest, most lovable kitty in the world when we're at home. She cuddles. I have NEVER met a cat who cuddles as much as she does. She's just amazingly sweet and lovie. This is NOT the case when she goes to the vet. She transforms into the hell beast of doom, hissing, growling, swatting and biting at anything that moves, including us, so she has to be sedated for even the most routine procedures so that the vets and vet techs keep all their limbs intact.

The hospital doctor decided that the best thing to do would be to keep her overnight, get some fluids in her and some antibiotics, and see if her bad kindey levels went down. They didn't. When we called this morning, he recommended that they do exploratory surgery; since she would have to be sedated for any procedure, he figured they might as well do the one that would tell them the most about what was going on. They were going to check out her intestines for damage, and also biopsy her kidney to try to find out what was going on with that.

That was at 9:00 this morning. We haven't heard since.

I forced myself to wait until noon to call the hospital, but the kind receptionist said that the doctors were unavailable and would have to call me back.

I'm worried, and I want my baby back. Brandon and I aren't taking it too well, really. He's such a goober. When I first told him it was going to be around $500 for the x-rays and stuff at the first hospital, he said, "For $25 we could get a whole new cat," but when he saw her when we moved her from one place to the other, he was all kinds of worried. We just miss her and want her home and well.

Is that too much to ask?