The Catinator

It’s a snowy Friday, so in the tradition of “Friday cat blogging” elsewhere, I will provide a cat health update since I’ve gotten a few questions about an oblique reference in a previous post.

This is Tet. He’s not radioactive:

However, he’s proportionately had enough steroids in the past two weeks to turn him into Arnold Schwarzenegger. I am certain that he would be a better governor for California. I can see the signs already: “a can of salmon in every pot.” Okay, maybe he needs better political advisors.

Tet’s been through a lot of medical treatment in the last couple years. And he’s now had two brushes with death. In both cases, he looked into death’s jaws, raised his paw and extended his tiny middle finger. I’m starting to believe the 9 lives thing because he’s on #3. #2 started last February when we thought he had panceatic cancer but it turned out he had a benignly inflamed pancreas. #3 started just under two weeks ago. He’d just come home from five days of hospitalization for an unexplained low red blood cell count. The vet there told us to take him home to die (your red blood cell count can only drop so far…). A call the next morning from his regular vet and a hurried trip to her office produced a bottle of prednisone, which we administered to him. After what can only be described as a hospice-like regimen, he’s now producing red blood cells again. He’s still on the steroid, though, so we aren’t out of the woods yet.

To say that we were emotionally wrecked when we thought he was about to die would be an understatement. This is one of those places where there is just a big gulf between pet owners and non-pet owners. He’s a member of our family and as long as he’s got the will to live, we’ll help him out as best we can. We owe him that much — even when he was at death’s door he was as affectionate as ever.