My cat Willy had a stroke Monday morning. He was throwing up something fierce, and stumbling around like he had no control of his hind legs. I took him to the vet who, among other things, determined that he had an enlarged heart that was probably the root cause of this problem.
I was pretty tore up about it, and as I was sitting in the waiting room at the Vet clinic I mostly stared at the floor trying not to cry. One of the things that came through my mind was how much more emotional distress Willy's condition was causing me than dealing with the '04 Tsunami cleanup during my deployment. The most emotion response that work created within me nausea and a little fear during certain events. But that fear passed rapidly and didn't really cause me distress. How is it that I'm emphasizing more with my cat than other human beings?
As of today(Thursday) Willy has recovered quite a bit, he's returned to jumping up on furniture and many of his previous mannerisms. That cat has already gone through like 8 of his lives, and it's frankly amazing this 14 year old animal has made such a recovery. He's still stumbling around a bit, and I wonder if that stumble will ever go away, but the worse appears to be over. I don't know what I would have done if the Vet had started to say stuff like "he's in a lot of pain". Probably would have done what was best for Willy, but it would have killed me a little inside.
1 comment:
I'm so glad your kitty is doing better! He is very lucky - in humans, it takes a long, long time to recover as much as he has in less than a week. I'm sorry you had to go through all this... I know first hand that it's so hard to see your animal suffer health challenges. It's like - no it truly IS - one of your family members going through tough times. I'm glad your cat has such a caring owner as you!
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