April Update
A troubled night
I’m writing this at 9am, about four hours after we got home from the vet.
SPOILERS: THE CATS ARE BOTH FINE.
We were woken last night at about two by Milly vomiting. Just a medium-sized furball and a few biscuits. It’s fine, it happens. I go to get the kit; compost bin, kitchen roll, stuff in a bottle for the smell. When I get back upstairs however, S tells me Milly can’t walk. Sure enough, she’s dragging herself along the floor, making a horrendous noise, occasionally trying, but failing, to stand.
I call the vet immediately. I choke a bit at the price of an emergency night appointment, but what’s the alternative? Milly by this point is just lying stretched out, breathing rapidly but otherwise showing no signs of life, unresponsive. I’ve never felt dread like it.
The car’s at the garage. It went in for a service yesterday but needed work, work they couldn’t carry out on the day and so it stayed overnight. We have no transport.
My instinct is to call a taxi but S goes to wake a neighbour. I’m unsure this is best, but acknowledge it will mean we don’t have to wait. I sit on the floor gently stroking Milly, still panting, still seemingly oblivious to my presence.
Our neighbour and saviour, Bernie, doesn’t hesitate. Of course she’ll drive us. I get Milly’s box. She seems to rally slightly at this point, getting to her feet, unsteadily, and mews a few reluctant, but at least relatively-normal sounding, mews. I get her in the box, she gets out, I get her back in. Finally we go.
At the vets, they whisk her away to get her on oxygen, while they assess her. We sit in the deserted waiting room. S coping, on the surface, better than me. I’m ashamed to say she has to be the strong one while I cry about not being ready to lose Milly. Not ashamed of the emotion, let me say, just at the fact that all the time, I’m aware my wife’s feeling all the same things but is having to comfort me as well as deal with them.
We’re supposed to be driving to Birmingham for a convention tomorr… today. How can we go? If the worst is true, we can’t leave Rosie on her own. If Milly does come home but is ill, we can’t ask our neighbour to take that responsibility and just swan off for a long weekend. How can I sit behind a table selling stupid paperbacks for four days while my darling Milly is home suffering?
Finally, the vet calls us in. Milly’s fine. Let me repeat that.
Milly’s fine.
Yeah, so, sometimes when cats vomit they experience a drop in blood pressure that can make them… well, do the things Milly did. But she’s walking around fine now, look.
She is.
Nothing to give her. Could have an anti-vomiting shot, but not really advised unless she can’t stop. In the general course of things, if they’re vomiting, we want whatever’s causing it out of them. So, um, nothing. She’ll be fine, she’ll recover on her own. It’s like when we throw up, sometimes we just feel plain awful afterwards. And, to be fair, I had felt, while S was running around sorting transport out, a bit like a mate comforting another mate while they lay next to the toilet after a night of drinking. Take her home, she might be a bit quiet for a day or so, but yeah, it’s fine. Oh, and here’s your bill.
Three figures. And the cat’s, essentially, perfectly healthy.
On the drive back home, Bernie, who insisted on waiting for us, and S chat in the front seat. I sit in the back, my arms around the cat box where Milly is now laying calmly, my heart on fire with love for this ridiculous, expensive lump of fur and claws that I would do anything for.
P.S. The icing on the cake of this story is that, because it was after midnight, all of this happened on Milly’s birthday.
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How scary! So glad she’s ok 🤗