Cat Update (updated) (updated again)

Cypress is back at the vet, getting another transfusion. Something caused her to crash this weekend, and she spent Sunday night lying on the bathroom floor with me while I petted her and tried to let her know she wasn't alone and we love her. In retrospect, I should have taken her to the emergency clinic that night, but she was basically depressed, and seemed like she'd given up, and was panting, and I was afraid to move her and didn't want her to die in the car, inside the stupid box she hates. She's had an okay life, she's been my best friend for so damned long, and I love her and am not yet ready for her to die. But I'll probably never be ready for that, and if she has to, I don't want her to be alone and afraid. And since I'm the only creature on the planet whose presence apparently precludes "alone and afraid" even sometimes, it hurts like hell to let her have to be with strangers in a place she doesn't know, even if she has to be because I can't care for her. I'm not a life-at-all-costs type, if she's miserable most of the time it's a horrible thing to keep her going despite that. And right now they don't know. She's got another mass in her gut, which they suspect is another lymphoma mass, and they suspect internal bleeding, and she's badly anemic and cold and listless and not eating and she has low blood pressure. They're trying her on another new chemo drug, and here's where I fucked up again, they gave her the first dose of it yesterday around four and the clinic personnel all go home around six. She's got a bad habit of responding poorly to new meds, and I didn't want her there all alone all night, so we moved her to a 24-hour emergency hospital for the night. We brought her back to her vet this morning, and she was looking okay when we got her into the car, but the trip there left her wailing and gasping for breath, and we really shouldn't have done that. I think she'd have been better off on the whole if we'd left her alone all night at the first place, since she didn't seem to have any problems with the new meds anyway. So we got her back, and they spent today getting her stabilized and breathing okay and warmed up again, but her blood cell count has gone way down since yesterday, and they're doing a transfusion now. I'm supposed to call them in an hour and a half and see how it goes, and then she'll be there alone again all night tonight. They don't want to give up on her yet, and I don't want to give up on her at all, but I'm so obviously making such horrible decisions for her just trying to keep her safe, so I'm trying to just let the doctors tell me what's best and agree to that. But they don't know how much to do or how little, and I think they're hearing me try not to get my hopes up and deciding that I want to give up much sooner than they do or than she does, and I had to try to explain that today. I don't want to let her go, but it's not really up to me, so maybe I shouldn't be trying to make these decisions.

And last weekend she seemed to be doing really well. This sucks. Maybe you guys out there could pet your own kitties for Cypress and me, and spare some good thoughts for her.

It's not the biggest thing happening in the world, and it's not the worst, but right now it's important to us.

Update: It's over, or it will be in a couple of hours. They think she's going to die on her own today or tomorrow. We're going to be with her as soon as my partner can get away from work and get here to pick me up. The transfusion didn't help, and they don't want to try anything more drastic for her unless I really want them to. I said I don't. She's my little girl, and I want her to be okay more than almost anything on earth. But more than that, even, I don't want her to hurt just to drag this out a couple more days. She deserved so much better than she ever got from us, and I wish I could just let her know, before she goes, how much she meant to me, how good it felt to have her go to sleep by my pillow or on my feet, how much I loved having her just come in and curl up by me wherever I was sitting, just content to be there and be petted. Since I'm home most of the time, I don't have to regret that I couldn't spend enough time with her, but I know I'll regret that we didn't get more years with her. No matter how much time we had together, it wouldn't be enough. She's my baby, and she'll never be forgotten.

I'm not ready to hear about the Rainbow Bridge yet, and I think she'll reincarnate rather than go to kitty heaven or whatever, hopefully she can be a big cat that gets to eat people with impunity or something. Hopefully she won't forget us, who knows. And since I've just ruled out anything useful anyone can say to me, please don't feel like you have to say anything. I know there are a few people out there, and I know they wish they could find just the right thing to say to make everything better; I know because that's how I feel when someone else's beloved cat or dog dies. And I know that those magic words don't exist, and there's no point in trying to find them. Just... scratch your own friend under the chin or behind the ears for Cypress, and don't feel like you have to say or do anything else. If she can know, she will. And I'm going to go do the same for her. Hopefully she won't have to be alone and afraid at the end. She didn't want too much out of life--mostly for me to get rid of the other cat, feed her on demand, and just to be with me. So I'll try to give her that at least.

Update 2: We didn't make it in time, my partner is feeling guilty about that but there wasn't really anything anyone could have done. She died just a little before we got there, while we were still in the car. The doctor says he was holding her at the end, and that she didn't suffer. I'm going to believe that. He also says he doesn't think we could have done anything different to give her more than a couple more days in pain, and to not feel guilty about it because we "really went above and beyond for her". I don't know if I'm going to believe that yet. He also said he knew we'd tried magic with her, though he was referring to the transfusions, he doesn't know I did try real magic. That didn't work either, but then maybe it did, some. Everybody did the best they could for her, and they gave me another year I didn't think I'd have with her.

Somewhere out there is a crone goddess who's going to love her. Possibly even Hecate, if Cypress doesn't beat hell out of her hounds, which I wouldn't put past her. I really fucking miss her, but I wouldn't give up the time I had with her to have avoided how I feel now. She was my favorite, and I wish she knew that, but I suspect she always hated Iala because she thought she was getting less love from me because of her. Not even close, but how do you explain that to a cat? Cypress was beautiful, and smart, and brave, and special, and I hope she understood that we felt that way.

Note To Someone

Sunday Secrets. I just wanted to say: If it was you who wrote that, I want to tell you that it was actually that I wasn't good enough. I still don't know why you never figured that out.

It's probably why we'll never be friends, and I almost regret that.

Breakfast!

Break out the wok, we're cookin'!

You're gonna need eight eggs or equivalent egg product. You're gonna need a couple boxes of frozen pre-cooked sausage links, any flavor, or a can of Spam, or the GNP of Bolivia's worth of microwavable bacon. You're gonna need a bag of frozen tater crowns (the flattened tater tots), or frozen seasoned potato chunkettes, or frozen hash browns, up to you. You're gonna need a bunch of green onions, chopped. And you're gonna need a bag of shredded cheese, you can pick the flavor/blend. Your grocer will provide.

You're also gonna need a couple of friends with minimal standards in food. Depending on how minimal, exactly, you can also have on hand chopped dill pickles, leftover white rice, grits, english muffins, Tabasco, sour cream, and catsup. Arguably you can use hot dogs in place of the meat, but that's kind of tacky.

You want everything in bite-sized pieces, basically. Then you dump some vegetable oil in your wok, and start with the largest pieces. (Eggs last!) This will generally be the potatoes, unless you're using sausages or shredded hash browns. The hash brown bits require less cooking time, the sausages more. You know how this works. As each ingredient becomes fully cooked, add the next sized item. You can move your stuff around to keep some of it from getting overcooked, but there's a limit to how well that works.

My wok is an electric wok, with a nonstick coating. I love that thing, and if it could make conversation I'd have already thrown over the SpotBot for it as Household Appliance I Would Most Like To Marry. So it's ideal for this sort of thing, and you may have more problems with the final step, which is urgently-whisked eggs or egg product, delivered in a hurry over the other items. Stir! It's a wok, that's what you're supposed to be doing! You should have just enough time to add a little pepper and maybe some salt before the eggs start to cook hard, and then you need to keep stirring so the other breakfasty goodness gets well distributed in the clumps.

Yummy, scrambled eggs with all the fixings! Apply cheese or condiments to taste, and wait for your friends to say something like "Hell, this is actually edible, what gives?"

Or you can always add food coloring.