Scampers and Patches

Since May, my life has had to be severely modified due to the surgery to my neck. The surgery was a success, but I am no spring chicken. To ensure the complete ossification of the bone transplants, I must wear a bone growth stimulator (BGS) 4 hours each day. The device may be stimulating the growth of bone but wearing it is tedious and depressing. The one UP side to wearing this infernal device is that it seems to attract the cats. Even Tiger, who is generally aloof, has been sleeping beside me or on my lap. The device sets up a magnetic field that is conducive to bone growth. It is also conducive to cat cuddling.

I have been mostly homebound since May, so the cat bonding has been both gratifying and comforting. In October I went to see my dad for a week and to help him celebrate his 84th birthday. (The BGS went with me, of course. I am an obedient patient.) Even my dad noticed that the BGS seemed to affect my mood. Not in a good way.

When I returned home, my baby kitty Scampers was sick again. He had pneumonia in August, an abscess in September, and now he was ailing again. He'd been back and forth to the vet so many times he didn't even resist the trip on October 27. On October 28th, he died. The pneumonia had been pneumothorax from a punctured lung. The abscess had developed from the infection from the puncture. The infection destroyed his liver and kidneys. Scampers was only 15 months old when he died. There really isn't a word for how I still feel about losing my little fellow. Heartbroken doesn't even come close.

Today I learned that my calico cat Patches is dying of kidney failure. My once Fat Kitty has been losing weight, which I actually thought was a good thing and the result of changing her diet. Two days ago, she began crying through the house. I took her to the vet. He kept her overnight, and broke the bad news to me today. She will stay in at the vet's over this weekend being treated for renal failure. She can't be cured, but maybe we can buy her a little time. And watch her slowly die at home. She is only six.

Now I feel paranoid about the health of my boys, Hobbes and Tiger. To say I am depressed is to understate my mood by orders of magnitude. I have just finished my four hours with the bone growth stimulator and I spent those hours crying like a baby. I don't think it was the device that was depressing me.