I've been absent from just about everything for the last couple of weeks as I've been nursing a very sick kitty back to health. Eclypse, the little calico in the picture developed a severe infection, and almost died. I noticed her acting strange late on a Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon, I knew there was something very wrong. When my wife got home that night, we took her to the emergency vet, and they determined that she had an infected uterus and needed to be spayed within a couple of days. When we got home from the vet at 11:30 that night, we spent the next two hours trying to find a place that would be able to do it on Friday, and wouldn't cost us a fortune. The emergency vet could have done it, but it would have been $6,000-$8,000, and considering that we're still struggling to pay our rent and put food on the table, this simply wasn't an option.
We finally found a place that would take her early Friday, so we dropped her off and waited. The first few nights were really touch and go because she was so sick, and she's such a little thing. At her heaviest, she's about seven pounds. It had always been our intention to get her spayed, but once she was old enough and big enough, we simply couldn't afford it, and we couldn't really afford it at this point, but letting her die was never an option. Our cats are our family, and we will do everything we can to protect them, and that includes getting fewer groceries for the next few weeks.
While it was a family effort to nurse her back to health, it mostly fell on me. For those of you that know cats, you know that when they live with multiple humans, they will usually pick one of these people as their person, and the rest are spares. Well, I'm Eclypse's person. She has always been very attached to me, and during all of this, she became even more attached, so she's been sleeping on me, and I've let her, no matter how uncomfortable it made me. At this moment, she is laying on a cat hutch right next to my chair at my desk, and she's been here since I started working this morning.
So, this has been my last couple of weeks. I'm happy to say that she is now on the mend, if we can just protect her from herself. She's a very high energy cat, and she now once again thinks it's time to run and jump on everything...but at least she's healing.
