donutszenmom.com

Moon day.

Last night, I spent some time at the emergency vet. The cat has been kind of up and down, healthwise — inflammatory bowel disease that may be worsening. It’s usually relatively well-controlled by alternating courses of antibiotics, special foods, and prednisone. But he’s been off since his 300-pound-man barf, and last night he was very weak and weird.

He actually was kind of woozy and disoriented, and I found him standing over his water bowl, gazing longingly, and yet not drinking. Poor bunny.

He’s the dumbest cat I’ve ever met, but one of the sweetest creatures on earth. My Gift raised him from kittenhood, and he’s always been very patient with kids. He spent a lot of time wearing doll dresses and tucked into her toy stroller. Or captured in the Lego box. Or smooshed in with all her stuffed animals, when she decided she’d teach him how to read. We had his brother, too (Donut, of Donut’s Zen Mom fame), and the kids in the neighborhood quickly learned to distinguish between Donut, who was highly impatient with kids and not the teeniest bit shy about expressing his disdain, and Scott, who was too dumb and sweet to resist their attentions.

Donut died a couple of years ago, so it’s been just Scotty, and truth be told, he’s pretty much the same as ever. Sits in a corner and looks at the floor. Faces you while you’re watching TV, just gazing and purring so hard that he sways. Scott adores The Cop and spends a lot of time cuddling up to him. After a lifetime of putting up with kids, he’s old and wants an adult to look after him, I guess.

So Scott spent the night at the emergency vet — to the tune of $750 — and this morning I brought him to the regular vet, where he is spending the day so he can have more intravenous fluids and a dose of antibiotics.

The emergency vet said the next steps would be diagnostic tests to find out if he has cancer, everything else having previously been ruled out. Diagnostics would include ultrasound, which might not reveal anything, endoscopic biopsy, which might not reveal anything, and finally a surgical biopsy, which would, in theory, be definitive. Unless, of course, it wasn’t.

I had a chat with the regular vet this morning, and told her that I generally try to avoid medical intervention, but always like to ask for an opinion about whether I am being negligent. She was right on the same wavelength with me, and asked if, should we find he has cancer, I would want to do surgery or chemotherapy. I said no. I felt guilty saying it, too, even though it is really my answer. But damn, he’s an old cat and I wouldn’t be able to put him through something like that. Anyhow, she understood and said that if I wasn’t going to want to aggressively treat cancer (if that’s even what he has) then it doesn’t make sense to aggressively pursue a diagnosis.

The bottom line is that I want him to be comfortable and happy. I know he’s old and is going to die sooner or later, and I don’t feel that it would be sensible to take heroic measures.

So no abhinivesha for Scotty. He’s free of it, so why would I add my own?

I am not unaware that he picked a Moon Day eve to fall ill. It is actually quite consistent with his lifetime of generous behavior.