Our Cat Haiku

Way, way, back in the infancy of this blog, I posted the following picture.

This is Haiku, a ten year old cat our family took in when she was about two from a shelter.  She came as part of a package deal, her son Yami (a black cat four pounds heavier than his mother) came along for the ride.

We were told that Yami was going to be friendly and social, and that Haiku might be a bit distant and weird.

A shelter has never been more wrong.

Haiku is, by far, the friendliest animal my family has ever owned.  She will jump into the lap of anybody and curl up, or sleep on their chest while they're in bed.  She will slowly scoot herself forward to rub against their face, and for many years would even wrap around the top of their head on their pillow just to be near "her people."  She will purr at the drop of a hat, and if she sees you lower your hand down and make a "scratching" motion from two rooms away, she'll prance and trot right over to you so you can pay attention to her.

Yami, on the other hand, needed five years to get comfortable around me to want to sleep on my bed when I'm still in it.  He'll still run away if you approach him too quickly, regardless of who you are.

She also has constant sinus problems, sometimes simply major congestion, sometimes she'd get infections and need an antibiotic.  A few times she needed steroids to help her through her infections and cols.  There was a rather serious incident where her soft palette completely sealed itself up, requiring surgery.  She wasn't able to eat (she'd take in air while eating and just throw all of her food back up), and could barely move.  She wound up down to four pounds before her surgery.  She's now back up to a (slightly more than healthy) seven point two pounds.

This problem, even after her surgery, left Haiku with a signature snort/snuffle every time she breathed.  At least, every time she moved around while breathing.  If she was asleep, she'd have no problems and would occasionally just have a little wheeze as she snored, but most of the time she was silent.

However, it wasn't easy to have the vet look at her.  Haiku loves to ride around in the car, and likes to hang out at the vet, but hates having any tests done.  Early in our time with her, a technician picked up Haiku to take a quick blood sample from her.  My father, who was there at the time, advised she might want help.  She gave him the most "you must be kidding" expression and said, "Sir, we do this for a living, I can handle this."

Two minutes later the tech was back in the room with blood all over her arm putting Haiku down, at which point she said "I think I'm going to need to get some help."

I am convinced she believes she is a dog (alternatively, that all dogs are actually just big cats).  Her best friend in the world is my parents' goldendoodle Pinot.  Our neighbors had two dogs, a black lab and a golden lab, both trained for hunting.  They would regularly visit our house because they know cookies reside here, and at one point Haiku sneaked out the door when they were visiting.  Immediately the golden lab, spotting something small and furry, dashed over to her and ... started sniffing.  Haiku sniffed the golden lab back.  Then Haiku rubbed against the dog.  The dog started licking Haiku's face, which drove Haiku nuts and made her want to go back inside, but from that point on any time the dog saw our cat, its tail would wag and it would want to shower Haiku with affection.

Needless to say, this surprised and bothered our neighbor that his great hunting dogs were turning out to be real softies that just wanted to make friends.

Haiku has proven herself to be a true survivor.  She has managed to escape to the outdoors without anybody seeing her twice and promptly got lost.  This, we've been told, was because her sinus problems prevented her from being able to smell her way home.  

In a lot of suburbs, this might not be as much of a problem, but it's rather wooded where I live, and it's not uncommon to find out there's a fisher, raccoons, foxes, owls, and even the occasional black bear lumbering around.

Once she was only gone for a day when the weather was still warm, causing me to miss work to search the neighborhood for her, until a group of the neighborhood kids (and a small dog accompanying them) discovered her under a stump two houses away.  This was the day I decided I seriously didn't like one of our neighbors, since I was handing out fliers with her picture, and his reaction after looking was to look me square in the eye and say, "Well, she's probably dead."

Jerk.

The second time was a bit more severe, because it was winter.  There wasn't much snow on the ground, but temperatures were extremely low.  I was watching the house for my parents who were out of state, meaning I was also keeping an eye on my sister (who is Deaf and has high-functioning autism).  I spent hours that night searching the woods for her, without any sign of her.  I didn't get a wink of sleep that night, and the next day was out again searching high and low around the street for her.  As time went on, I was convinced she either froze or was taken by an animal.

Again, that night I had no sleep as I couldn't stop picturing all the horrible ways the family's cat had died under my watch.  I barely ate anything all day and was doing my best to stay strong for my sister, who was getting particularly upset.

The next morning, around seven thirty, the phone rang.  I answered it groggily, and someone said "hey, I think your cat's under our car."  My heart immediately sank because I figured a neighbor hit her.

After a moment of silence, the voice said "Um, do you want to come get her?  She won't come out for me, I think it's because my dog is barking at her."

I don't even really remember getting dressed, I was just out the door, in my car, and driving down to the neighbor's house (five houses away, across the street) and crouching under their car.  Haiku trotted right out and immediately wanted to be held.  She was cold, wet, miserable, but happy to be found by her people again.

Last night, Haiku was walking in a hallway when we suddenly heard her screech in pain.  I moved to investigate, and I tried to pick her up, which made her screech again and she bolted towards a cardboard box she liked to curl up in.  I managed to gingerly scoop her up without causing her any pain, and set her on a family member's lap where she stayed calm until someone tried to shift her, then she would cry out in pain again.

I spent several hours last night with my father at the emergency vet having her looked at.  They couldn't find anything wrong, and believed that it could be a pulled muscle or a cramp.  They gave us some pain medication and sent us on our way.  Haiku spent all night in her carrier box on the floor near her food.

This morning, I tried to draw her out of her carrier in case she felt better, and was greeted with more cries of pain.  Something was seriously wrong.

We took her back to the emergency vet, and after a few x-rays, there was no clear answer to what was causing her pain.  She was rather seriously blocked up, intestine-wise, so we had the vet perform a couple of enemas to flush her out (under sedation, of course).

We got her back home tonight, but the pain still seems to be there.  We can pick her up, and she can walk a little bit, but too much walking (more than a couple of steps) and she's crying out again.  We called the vet back to find out if this might just be residual pain or if we needed to bring her back in.  

Here's the breakdown of the conversation.

The emergency vet said that they didn't see anything on the x-ray to indicate any skeletal problems, and all of her internal organs appear to be fine.  

At this point, the next step would be a CT scan to try to figure out if it's a muscular or nerve issue, such as something getting pinched.  It's also possible there's a hairline fracture causing her problems.

There's also one other possibility, something that a recent dog that visited their hospital had:  a cancerous tumor on her spine.  

At this point, we don't know what's wrong.  The vet recommended we call our regular vet tomorrow to see if she has any ideas.  Obviously a CT scan is expensive, and we really hope there's nothing seriously wrong with our cat, but right now we have to seriously look at some options, including "what would her quality of life be if she needed surgery?"  "Does the cost justify how much work it would take to make her healthy, and even then, how healthy would she be?"

I think right now my major problem is that we just don't know what's wrong.  I don't know enough about pet biology to even start to guess what's happening.  If it's a nerve issue, can it be resolved without surgery?  If it's a tumor, what are the odds she'd be without any pain after removal?  If it's a fracture, what would be involved in helping the bone heal?  And again, what are the odds of each one?  

I really hope I don't come across as stingy, but while I love our cat dearly, I know that spending several thousand dollars just to determine the humane thing to do is have her put to sleep is... I'm not sure what the word is.  I just don't want us to throw money at a problem that can't be fixed, especially if it just means she spends more days in pain before we're left with only that choice.

On the other hand, I don't want us to make that drastic decision just to find out later it was a broken toe that the vet missed and she just needed her foot wrapped for a few months.  Or that it was still a constipation issue, and we just needed a bit more laxative to get it out and solved.

So right now I'm barely holding it together as I type this, because writing manages to engage my brain and let me put off having to deal with emotions keep my focus together instead of dwelling on what's still unknown.  My whole family has a long night ahead of us, and only tomorrow will (possibly) give us any more answers.