Armistice

This is Heidi, our eleven year-old cat, who has taken to sleeping head down forwards like this, on a cushion that has kindly been ripped to shreds by Mo. She has also adopted the curious habit of wandering about the place at night to select which of Spousie's personal possessions she will anoint with wee. Will it be the strimming gloves? Or the headlamp strap? A pair of socks? Or the ear defenders? Spousie has taken to moving more and more furniture out of reach of the counters in the belief that Heidi's arthritis prevents her from jumping that high. I have suggested that perhaps it would be better just to put things away, a suggestion met with a snort of derision. Heidi has now proven that with or without assistive furniture, and with or without arthritis, she can jump from the floor to the worksurface if that is where she wants to be. A new battle plan needs to be drawn up.

Mo meanwhile, has been having a personal armistice(*). After his dramatic asthmatic attack in July, he had a brief period of remission because of a course of steroids, but since then his coughing has become steadily worse. Last night, most unusually, he came upstairs and joined me in bed and slept there beside me the whole night. He coughed a few times but nothing noticeably more alarming than usual. It was nice to have him cuddly beside me.

This morning Spousie found him outside panting and gasping for breath just as he had been four months ago, so again, a call was made to the vet to alert her that I was bringing in an animal in extreme distress.

I arrived at the vet to discover that this is the weekend of the mass charity cat spaying and the place was awash with charity vets and cats in boxes. I was asked by a kindly charity vet if I had brought my cat in for sterilisation and I told her no, I had brought him in to be put down. I was then asked a series of questions to which I should simply have responded that my cat has been under the careful attention of the local vets and that this has been expected for a very long time, but I didn't think of that because I too was in a certain amount of distress by then.

Mo was fitted with a cannula and the charity vets who had no knowledge of Mo's history, were making suggestions of ways to help him, so it had to be explained that those avenues had already been tried. The X-rays he had taken in July were brought up on the screen and what appeared to be the senior charity vet seemed to appreciate the severity of Mo's situation. I'm not completely sure what was going on but I got the distinct feeling that putting him quickly out of his distress was not an option in the presence of quite so many angels.

Unfortunately I had to leave Mo there and was told we would be phoned later with news.

(* a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, since it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace.)