So, yes, An Update [TW: animal sickness/death]
I will, soon, be writing up a mostly flailing* review of The Recruiting Officer. I will be recounting the Adventure Of Jen Having A Conversation With Tobias Menzies. Also to which I will add a brief summary of What It Is Like To Be In An Experiment For BBC's Bang! Goes The Theory. Plus sundry other adventures.
But at the moment I'm in a slightly unwritey place because tomorrow, in the midst of my split-shift break, I will be going to the Vets to say goodbye to my cat of 13 years.
My folks picked me up from the train station last night, which was a bit unexpected but welcome because by the time I got off the train my left foot was killing me (to be explained in Jen Goes To Westfield), and I sort of had a feeling something was up.
"There's something I need to tell you." Mum says, patting the couch. "I'm getting a bad feeling." I say, apparently just missing the full Star Wars cliché.
The long and short of it was: whilst I was away Riley, my cat, had stopped eating and was simply drinking and trying to pee. Note the trying. She hadn't been eating properly for a while but at her last check-up, only a little over a month ago, she had come down to a decent weight and the vet said everything was okay; she was probably just mourning for Q (who died last year).
I've been worried about her for a while, because she just. Didn't seem right. My folks took her to the Vets on Wednesday morning and they did some tests and the verdict was: renal failure. And I've seen enough episode of House to know that, no matter what sort of creature you are, renal failure means imminent complete organ failure. Particular when they were estimating the failure at around 60%.
There was something they could try, to do with IVs and stuff, and Mum said they had to try because I was away and she couldn't take the decision to put her down without me getting to see her one time. The hope was that this treatment would give us a couple of weeks and I would stay over at my folks' this weekend and spend some time with her.
But today: nothing has changed. She still isn't eating. It's been accepted that, at this point, she's not even going to get that little bit better. So Mum's waiting to hear from the vets tomorrow morning and if she still hasn't changed over night I'm to go to theirs after my afternoon shift and we'll go along to the vets and I'll at least get to say goodbye to her.
I'm remarkably detached about it bar two things: thinking about how I first got her (a "gift" from a friend's family - quotation marks because they basically decided I should have her without my folks' permission) and thinking about the picture I took of her curled up on the back of Mum's chair on Sunday night, the last time I saw her.
Mum was dreading telling me all day Wednesday - because I rang her off and on a few times throughout the afternoon and as she put it "Each time you rang it was with a new brilliant thing that had happened" and all she could think about was having to tell me this horrible news when I'd just had a pretty epic 36 hour period. "But at least-" she said "-at least you have the good memories to get you through."
Which, yes. As I said to my boss this afternoon: I'm basically living in the memory of Tuesday night and keeping my mind away from *hands* the whole thing. Because I cannot even, with this cat. She's the only cat that's actually been "mine" rather than a cat which was given to me but liked my Dad better.
So on Tuesday night when my heart was beating eight to the bar and I went into survival mode shutdown (which, thankfully, is both coherent and smart) whilst talking to Tobias Menzies I never thought I'd be using the memory of it, and his wonderful wonderful face, to keep me from falling apart over my cat.
So, yes. I could do with things of a cheerful nature (though, obviously, not things to do with cats) to buck my spirits. Tomorrow isn't going to be a fun day.
*Times That I Actually Flailed: 1, early on in the second half, before resorting to further desperate clutching of my coat in an effort to stop myself.
This entry was originally posted at http://jennova.dreamwidth.org/5798.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
But at the moment I'm in a slightly unwritey place because tomorrow, in the midst of my split-shift break, I will be going to the Vets to say goodbye to my cat of 13 years.
My folks picked me up from the train station last night, which was a bit unexpected but welcome because by the time I got off the train my left foot was killing me (to be explained in Jen Goes To Westfield), and I sort of had a feeling something was up.
"There's something I need to tell you." Mum says, patting the couch. "I'm getting a bad feeling." I say, apparently just missing the full Star Wars cliché.
The long and short of it was: whilst I was away Riley, my cat, had stopped eating and was simply drinking and trying to pee. Note the trying. She hadn't been eating properly for a while but at her last check-up, only a little over a month ago, she had come down to a decent weight and the vet said everything was okay; she was probably just mourning for Q (who died last year).
I've been worried about her for a while, because she just. Didn't seem right. My folks took her to the Vets on Wednesday morning and they did some tests and the verdict was: renal failure. And I've seen enough episode of House to know that, no matter what sort of creature you are, renal failure means imminent complete organ failure. Particular when they were estimating the failure at around 60%.
There was something they could try, to do with IVs and stuff, and Mum said they had to try because I was away and she couldn't take the decision to put her down without me getting to see her one time. The hope was that this treatment would give us a couple of weeks and I would stay over at my folks' this weekend and spend some time with her.
But today: nothing has changed. She still isn't eating. It's been accepted that, at this point, she's not even going to get that little bit better. So Mum's waiting to hear from the vets tomorrow morning and if she still hasn't changed over night I'm to go to theirs after my afternoon shift and we'll go along to the vets and I'll at least get to say goodbye to her.
I'm remarkably detached about it bar two things: thinking about how I first got her (a "gift" from a friend's family - quotation marks because they basically decided I should have her without my folks' permission) and thinking about the picture I took of her curled up on the back of Mum's chair on Sunday night, the last time I saw her.
Mum was dreading telling me all day Wednesday - because I rang her off and on a few times throughout the afternoon and as she put it "Each time you rang it was with a new brilliant thing that had happened" and all she could think about was having to tell me this horrible news when I'd just had a pretty epic 36 hour period. "But at least-" she said "-at least you have the good memories to get you through."
Which, yes. As I said to my boss this afternoon: I'm basically living in the memory of Tuesday night and keeping my mind away from *hands* the whole thing. Because I cannot even, with this cat. She's the only cat that's actually been "mine" rather than a cat which was given to me but liked my Dad better.
So on Tuesday night when my heart was beating eight to the bar and I went into survival mode shutdown (which, thankfully, is both coherent and smart) whilst talking to Tobias Menzies I never thought I'd be using the memory of it, and his wonderful wonderful face, to keep me from falling apart over my cat.
So, yes. I could do with things of a cheerful nature (though, obviously, not things to do with cats) to buck my spirits. Tomorrow isn't going to be a fun day.
*Times That I Actually Flailed: 1, early on in the second half, before resorting to further desperate clutching of my coat in an effort to stop myself.
This entry was originally posted at http://jennova.dreamwidth.org/5798.html. Please comment there using OpenID.