Good Morning -We've got ourselves another dream time Virgen today, representative of the trip I took down the River Nap-time yesterday. It's not a long river, but it's deep, and the currents can pull you in and under before you can say, "I think I'll lay down and read..."
My partner is in Maryland this week, working as a counselor at gay camp (a leadership camp for college-aged gay students), so I'm unto myself this weekend. As per usual when I've got this Me Time, I created a list in my head of all the different things and errands and such that I'd do and then watched that list expire from my spot on the couch where I sat for hours thinking and imagining and pondering.
One of the non-negotiables that I couldn't watch expire on that list yesterday was taking my cat Boris into the vet. He's my oldest cat (I've had him for 11 years and we think he was about 2 when I got him) and lately he's really started to act his age. I know that's to be expected, but it's hard to watch it happen and it seems like it happens so quickly. One day he's demanding to go outside where he frolics and holds court, the next day he's stretched out on the floor, deep sleeping the whole day through.
The initiative for the vet yesterday, though, wasn't his change in energy but his change in appetite. All of a sudden about a month ago, he got ravenous and had an insatiable hunger. He's not a beggar, but suddenly he was underfoot anytime I had out the milk, or something that seemed like something he might like (even if it was really the canister of coffee), or when the fridge door was open.
More than once I tripped over him as I tried to move about the kitchen. If I ignored his begging, he'd send up the most pitiful, weak, high-pitched meow you've ever heard, loosely translated to "Really? You're not going to feed me? But I'm starving...Please?" He's not chatty by nature, so I tend to pay attention when he does take the time to express himself verbally.
His pitiful cry was enough to break my heart and have me reaching for the milk to pour a little in his bowl. Like I said, he's not the begging type, so I believed him that he really was starving. For the past few months, I've been supplementing his hard food with a pouch of soft in the morning, because he seemed to have a harder time eating the dry. This made me believe that he couldn't satiate his hunger with the dry and needed something from me to help him feel full. I didn't want to give him more pouches of wet, so thought a drop of milk would do the trick.
In the last week, though, he'd escalated from a little milk, to a little more milk, to some almost expired goat yogurt, to a dollop of sour cream. Finally on Friday when he reinstated the begging the moment he had finished whatever dairy product I had just put down for him, I knew something was not okay and I needed a professional opinion.
I turned to my computer and googled "elderly cat kidneys hunger" (we had to put down the cat we had growing up when he was 17 years old because of kidney failure and another symptom Boris seemed to have was an unquenchable thirst, which had me thinking kidneys) and found out that cats can develop hyperthyroidism in their senior years that can impact appetite and thirst. The different sites seemed to agree that a blood test can determine if the cat has this condition and the treatments seemed to range from expensive radiation to cheaper pills.
I called his vet and was able to get him in yesterday for a 9:40 appointment. Knowing that he'd resist the carrier, I gave myself plenty of time to wrestle him in (it's amazing how suddenly his energy picked right up and he was able to give quite a fight in resistance of the carrier) and get over to the vet.
Some of my cats yowl in the car so that everyone in a 5-mile radius knows of their injustice, but Boris prefers to get really, really quiet like if he's silent enough no-one will notice him and he'll be safe until he's back at home. Actors take note: it's a much more impacting performance to stare silently with wide eyes than to scream and wail for all to hear.
He maintained this poignant silence throughout the time in the exam room, only once issuing a hiss at the door from his perch on the counter. The vet checked him out and then sat quietly for a moment. Nervous of the silence, I jumped in to fill it by explaining that I had done a google search of his symptoms and, while I acknowledged that it probably gave me just enough info to be dangerous, it seemed like maybe he had hyperthyroidism (I've had to put a couple of cats down, so being at the vet always has me fearing the worst and just this side of crying anyway, so I tend to be a bit of a wreck there).
She was kind enough to smile and validate my Internet searching and agreed that it could be his thyroid. She explained about the blood test to determine the condition and then left me with the aide. Based on my blushing and the tears rimming my eyes, the aide chose to take Boris to the back to draw the blood. I might have looked a wreck, but I'm actually good in those situations, so I'm sad she decided I was too fragile to handle the needle.
Either way, he was back in a minute, and then it was paying a small fortune at the desk ($216), a promise to call me on Monday with the lab results, a stop in a drive-through for a breakfast burrito (Boris' first drive-through, which he seemed intrigued by) , and then home again, home again.
When I was waiting to pay at the vet, the woman before me who was picking up her cat paid her bill of $175 with a combination of check and cash. At first I thought it was for economic reasons, but she explained that if her husband knew how much she spent on the cat, he'd kill her, so they were going to lie to him because the cat was what was getting her through her empty nest syndrome.
The receptionist validated her actions with her own story of lying to her husband about how much she spends on her cat, which just made me sad and then grateful for the communication I have with my partner and the ways in which we handle money (we have a joint account for shared living expenses, but otherwise keep our money separate, which works for now because we both work. If one of us ever stayed home rather than working, I trust our communication would prevent the need for lying to each other about what we do with our money).
After all this vet adventure and my brunch of a sausage, egg, potato and cheese burrito, it's no wonder that my attempt to lay down to read quickly morphed into a deep, deep two-hour nap full of vivid dreaming. I gave up feeling bad about napping long ago for a couple of reasons - clearly I need the sleep or I wouldn't be asleep, and my brain clears out and works through so much emotional information when I'm sleeping that I get a lot done in that time. I always wake from these deep working naps with a clearer sense of my current Now and what the best next steps are.
After my nap, it was a little of this, a little of that, then over to a friend's for poker, then back home to bed. The big black clouds that had been building over the horizon all day yesterday finally broke while I was at my friends' house playing cards, lending a wonderful background sound to our game. It continued to rain through the night, which is why the Virgen is floating on a river.
I had asked the vet what to do with Boris until the results came back and if I should honor his hunger and feed him when he begs. With a tilt of her head, a slight "oh, Lord" frown, and a pat on his well-padded (but muscular) flank, she patiently explained that he wasn't starving and to feed him when he thought he was hungry was going to make him obese and complicate any treatments he would need.
Oh, right. I had totally accepted what Boris had expressed about his hunger and not considered that maybe he thought he was hungry, but that his body wasn't actually in need of nutrition in that moment. With that pat on his substantial flank, my vision cleared and I could once more see him as the robust, non-starving cat that he is and realize that he doesn't need any more food than he's getting.
It's hard to think that he thinks he's hungry because perceptions can be powerful and it must be hard to think you're hungry and not be able to feel full. Here's hope that the results on Monday lead us to some small, cheap pills and a stabilization of his appetite and thirst.
Here's to that. Here's to napping and here's to getting perceptions in line with reality, whether it's through a pill or through a nap.
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