It's not bad enough that I have stitches(healing well, by the way) and am gimping around. Yesterday, the boys started showing signs of illness so I had to take a half day off from work to take the boys to the vet.
This one just needed his first vet visit, but some strange litterbox action had me a little
worried. The prognosis: After the vet manhandled his junk, and basically forced the second testi to descend, he's good to go for neutering. He's had his shots, he's FIV and Leukimia free and his fecal test - which involved me coming home, following him to the litter box and going back to the vet to drop off a test tube of something I really didn't want to be closeto- came out normal too. He's about as healthy as a kitten can be.
This one (shown here enjoying Christmas) is a different story. He's been grooming himself bald on most of his undercarriage for more than a year. However, since the arrival of the little brother, it's been getting much better. This week, however, he picked a spot and groomed it so much he actually broke skin and gave himself a sore. He now has prescription drops I have to apply three times a day. He also got his shots and routine exam and is now under the bed hiding. The bad news is, however, that his heart murmur seems to be getting worse with age, and he now really needs an echo cardiogram. Yeah. It's as expensive as it sounds, but we'll know if he can be helped by meds. I'm crossing my fingers for yes, because if not, he may have a dramatically shortened lifespan, and no one wants to deal with me if that happens. Finally, a little bit of good news- he's lost 1.4 lbs since last year, which is a lot of weight for a cat, and will probably help out his ticker quite a bit.
I felt so bad about being a bad mom, that I needed a pick-me-up. A mani/pedi worked pretty well. The first pedicure of the summer always does wonders.
of the EKG show conjenital Hypertropic Cardiomyopathy. I have no idea if I spelled any of the above terms correctly, but yes, it's as bad as it sounds. Terminal, in fact. Right now, he's in the early stages of this volitile disfunction, and we're hoping to lengthen his life with medication (we'll know about that on Monday, after the bloodwork shows whether or not his body can handle the meds). The doctor said worst case, we have less than a year with him. Best case, maybe five. I am a wreck. Maybe that's silly, but it's how I feel. I know that in the end this will be positive, because we won't have to watch his health decline year after year, and hopefully we'll have warning when it's getting bad so that we can be with him, and make it as painless as 
possible. Still, there's nothing easy about having something you love hurt or damaged, and this is made worse by the fact that I can't explain it to him. For now, the tears have to stop and I have to enjoy the time I've had and the time I've got left. He's my best feline buddy and always will be. We've been quite a pair since the beginning. The above picture is the day I brought him home in April 2001, and the other is of him napping (a favorite hobby) last year.
