Wednesday, June 15, 2005

waiting

I've had a pair of shocks the last couple of days. Our poor little kitty has apparently gotten very sick and had to go to the vet (and this is a stray cat who adopted us 7 years ago and only very very recently began to feel safe enough to stay in side the house for any length of time and therefore has never had any trips to the vet for any reason, before this) and... we've just discovered that the cat we've long thought to be a female... is actually a male cat!

I know this may sound ridiculous but in our defense, the vet didn't actually know for sure until she shaved the cat's belly and discovered that she had been neutered.

In any case, we are waiting the test results, but I may well not be around so much. The vet agrees that our cat is probably at least nine years old and since he has essentially been an outdoor cat and never had any vet treatment of any kind for most of that time, he has probably been exposed to everything under the sun. I'm having to face the fact that he may be very sick indeed and there is a very high probability that we can do little or nothing about whatever may be wrong. Needless to say, our family is very sad today and very anxious to hear back from the vet so we know what our game plan (if any) can be.

Male or Female, he was an angel who found us when we were still freshly grieving the loss of our first family cat, a beautiful (indoor) Manx kitty, named Miranda (she was 16 years old and we lost her to stomach cancer). It took alot for me, the control freak extraordinaire, to learn to accept and respect this beautiful cat's need to be independent. But I learned it. Learned to swallow my fears and accept that he was a free agent and he could conceivable disappear from our lives as quickly and as seamlessly as he entered it. That was the the deal and the price I knew we might ultimately have to pay for giving our hearts to him. It was a no-brainer that he was worth every bit of that price. The truth is that the heart really never has a choice anyway.

But over time, he became more and more willing to become a real member of the family. Though he was always in our front or back or side yards, it was only in the past year that he finally spent as much or more time inside the house as he ever did outside. Even so, we knew he would never willingly submit to a trip in our car...anywhere, and that most certainly included a trip to the vet. So we all kind of knew that the day might very well come when we made that trip; but if we did, it would mean that things were very serious indeed. That day finally came and now we wait for answers. I'm praying for a positive outcome...


Groucho on a lovely day basking in the sunshine and soaking up the warmth of the sidewalk
Posted by etherealfire :: 12:51 PM :: 0 Comments:

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