Eldest cat has his ultrasound today. He's been blind most his life, became deaf the past few years, and then got a heart murmur. The vet declared "no more surgeries" because he might not survive them.
Over the past year, he's lost almost half his body weight. The past few weeks he's hardly been eating anything. He's 18 years old at this point and I've been preparing on and off for the past few years for the fact that I will lose him. It hasn't helped. When the SO and I got to the vet's office, we heard her tell an appointment "Sorry. We're backed up today because of two unexpected euthanasias."
My heart lurched. I hadn't seen my cat yet. I didn't know if he was still alive.
She called us back, telling her assistant to bring him up from the back. I heaved a sigh of relief. Then she got to the bad news. Mass in the abdomen. Start of renal failure.
My cat has had four or five tumors over his life time. None of them cancerous. The last one we haven't been able to excise because "no surgery." And now he has something in his belly that we can't identify because "no surgery." I almost made it through the visit without sobbing. Almost. Because I know what comes next. She gave us an antibiotic and steriods to see if it will improve his appetite and his quality of life, but basically we have a few months at most. Probably not even that. Especially not that if we can't get him to take the drugs this week.
My heart is in shreds. This cat kept me sane during some of the worst moments of my adult life. I really don't want to lose him. And this all happens right as I'm trying to write a comic short story. How the hell am I supposed to be funny when I'm grieving?
But that's what we writers do. We compartmentalize, and then we mine the crap out of our emotions. I wonder what this story is going to look like when I'm done with it. Will it still be funny? Will it be dark?
I'm only going to know at the end of it. In the meantime, eldest cat just had his first dose of meds and was extraordinarily unhappy about it. He went to hide in his carrier. And I went to hide in my office.
To write and grieve.
