I’ve been having a remarkably blah run of days. I’d like it to stop. With a change for the feeling better, please.

I took Maggie into the vet yesterday to check for a UTI and unexpectedly ended up having to leave her overnight, which mildy traumatized me because the last two times I walked out of the vet without a cat it was for good. The vet called me a little while ago, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that she doesn’t have a UTI. The bad news is that the sample they took from one of her kidneys is showing an abnormally high level of some sort of enzyme, and they’re concerned it may be indicative of something not good. (Hey, it was a lot of technical jargon; I just know my cat’s sort of okay but maybe not, and it’s probably not fatal, and she’s old, and old cats just start to break down, and sometimes it can be fixed and sometimes it can’t, and sometimes it’s not worth fixing for the quality or length of life that will be left to them anyway.) So we’re putting her on a ten-day course of antibiotics to see if that helps, and if not, they want to take x-rays to see if there’s stones in her bladder.

Gah. The money for that I do not have, and I don’t know what to do if things don’t get better. I’m lucky I had the money to cover this first battery of tests. It means that the CD player for the car has to wait until mid-September when my cheques arrive, which sucks because we wanted it for the Labour Day drive out to Toronto, but I don’t think anyone will complain about where the money had to go instead. (And if you want to, allow me to direct you to my husband, the official Complaints Department of the house, and I’m sure he’ll handle your complaint with the sensitivity it deserves.)

The annoying thing is that according to the general check-up the vet did, Maggie is officially in remarkable health for a fifteen year old cat. Except for this odd kidney enzyme thing, and the urinating in places not-the-litterbox. If it ends up being a behavioural issue, again, I don’t know what we will do. I don’t particularly want to think about it right now. I’m going to focus on the antibiotics targeting the mystery problem instead. She’s been my best feline friend for fifteen years; heck, she’s been my best feline friend ever. She was the first cat I got when I moved out. Maggie has been with me through thick and thin, and after saying goodbye to two other cats in the past ten months, I’m just not ready to do it again. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. But give me maybe three more years with her, and I’ll be more prepared.