It's amazing how quickly a weekend can go by. Part of me is glad that it went so fast, because it means that tonight is that last night John will be away. I had been looking forward to some quiet, reflective time, and I did get some, just not as much as I had planned. I spent much of the weekend doing the regular things that need to be done to keep life moving along: going to the market, doing the wash, vacuuming up the hairballs. Today, I mowed the back yard and finished expanding our herb bed. I even gave the kitty room a thorough cleaning, emptying the litter boxes and giving the floor a good scrub. This is a necessity in any cat owner's house, but especially in a house where one of the feline residents feels that the entire laundry room floor is his toilet. Wouldn't you know it, almost on cue, I hear Simon scratching, pretending to cover up the mess he just made on my sparkling clean floor.
I feel that I must provide a little bit of context to explain why this behavior hasn't gotten the cat booted. And before I begin, I will add that we have two cats, both of which moved in with me when John and I merged households. John was never really a cat person. He's actually allergic.
Anyhow, here we go...Simon, the floor-pooping (and sometimes floor-peeing) cat, had a very rough beginning. I rescued him from a troubled household at a very young age (this is another story altogether). I was in college, and home on summer break, so I brought him home to my mom's house. I had gone to the bathroom when I heard the loudest kitten cry. I came out to find little 4-week-old Simon on the floor, in shock, blood pouring out of his nose. Apparently, Simon had gotten too close to the family dog's water bowl, and the dog showed Simon who was boss. I feel awful, awful, awful telling this story. I know I should have been more careful, but I really had no idea that anything like this would happen.
It was a Sunday afternoon, so I drove Simon 30 minutes into the city to the closest emergency vet. The vet took a look at him and said that he had suffered massive head trauma and had fractured his skull, and that they didn't think there was much they could do. Amazingly enough, he made it through the night. For the next couple of nights, I carted him back and forth from the emergency vet at night to the regular vet during the day. Thankfully, one of the staff at the regular vet took a liking to little Simon and offered to take him home with her at night so she could monitor him and check on his IV. Within two weeks, he was ready to be back in my care. I fed him with a bottle, taught him how to walk in a straight line, and helped him use the bathroom (I'll spare you the details). He still walks with a swagger, but over all, he's doing pretty well for a cat who suffered severe head trauma at 4 weeks.
Things were good for Simon until it was time to get his annual vaccinations when he was one. Everything seemed fine, until I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed that he was panting and had some white foam around his mouth. I was almost home, so when I pulled in the driveway, I took him out of his cage, thinking that he might have been overheating in the car. He started vomiting blood, so back to the vet we went. It was a Saturday morning, near noon when the vet closes. They gave him a shot to stop the vomiting and told me to take him home. Later that afternoon, he began vomiting blood again, so we headed back to the emergency vet. He was having a severe allergic reaction to the vaccines (although I'm still not sure which one). Again, they told me that there was a good chance that he wouldn't make it. Thankfully, he pulled through.
I hope you can understand my attachment to this cat. We have a little history.
Despite my deep love and devotion to Simon, the floor pooping and peeing really gets to me, and you can only imagine how John feels. We've tried everything I can think of: different litter, different litter boxes, more litter boxes... I really think he's trying to tell us something. We just can't figure out what.
Simon's habits of have been a bit of a sore spot between John and I. I relinquished my litter-box (and floor cleaning) duties last summer when we decided to get pregnant. We figured he would stick with it until I had the baby (which would have been the middle of June). Needless to say, John has been stuck with cat duty for almost a year, and there's no end in sight. It's really frustrating for both of us (but certainly more so for him).
So, this weekend, I realized that this week I'll be starting some heavy-duty antibiotics, which I figured would kill off any kitty bacteria I might encounter while doing cat-duty. With John gone, the litter boxes hadn't been cleaned really well, so I decided to just give the whole room a good scrub. Hopefully, I won't be doing that again for 10 months or so.
I had logged on to write about the little ceremony I did yesterday morning, but now I realize I've written a short story about my cat and probably bored you all half to death. Besides that, I'm pooped, and I'm calling it a night.
Tomorrow morning, I'll call the RE and hopefully have more information about my anticardiolipin levels, clomid, and all that jazz. Until then...