Soooo…hey! Hi.
It’s been a minute.
You know how you mean to do something and then you don’t and then so much time passes that you think you shouldn’t because at this point it is just ridiculous and absurd. But then you start to feel sad because you really wanted to do the thing and you miss it. But then other things come up and a whole bunch more time passes. Right? You know how that goes.
We are all good. Mostly. Alfie the kitty isn’t well. He got sick around Thanksgiving. He started tilting to one side and walking in circles. He got pretty bad, pretty fast. His vet thought it was an ear infection and treated him with antibiotics and steroids. He got a lot better. For weeks. But as soon as he went off the steroids, all the symptoms returned and he started having seizures. Randy, Joey and I made the decision to let him go. I left that morning to go to work in tears. Randy and Joey were both home with their own tears.
You know how the universe plays super funny jokes sometimes?
I got in my car that morning in December and heard half a song on the eighties station I had it tuned to when the disc jockey came on. Wait, are they disc jockeys still? There aren’t any discs.
Anyway, the guy is on the radio and starts telling a story about his daughter’s cat named Harry Potter. And I’m there with my cheeks still wet thinking, fucking really? A cat story? He proceeds to say that sadly, Harry Potter got sick and died.
OMFG are you kidding?
Then he says that when they were burying Harry Potter, he had music playing. He said “I am not kidding you. This song started playing while we were burying my daughter’s cat.”
Then he played Pet Cemetary by The Ramones.
We named our kid after Joey Ramone. The whole thing was so on the nose. I did laugh a bit, because that was well played.
Anyway, Randy gave Alfie a steroid that morning. And around lunch he called and said Alfie was almost back to normal.
When I called the vet, my only conversation was going to be to make arrangements for Alfie, but when I told her how the steroids seems to cause a rebound, she suggested upping his dose and seeing what happened. She said that cats tolerate steroids very well and he could be on them for a very long time without worry.
Well, that did the trick. It’s been months and while he isn’t exactly the same, he was almost his normal asshole self.
Until about a week ago. We’re seeing his head tilt. Just a little. So, whatever this is, the steroids are starting to become less effective. He’s still fine right now. His tail is up, he’s eating and grooming and doesn’t seem to be in distress at all. But we are seeing the head tilt. Not every day. But it’s happening more often. It could be a brain tumor. It’s definitely neurological.
We’re just glad we’re getting the days we’re getting. But I suspect that fucking shitty decision will have to be made again sooner rather than later.
The rest of us are fine. Normal life bullshit, but good.
I guess I just wanted to stop in and say hi. See how you all are.