A Kind Thought for Shad

Pets, man — they open your heart, enrich your life, and then they scare the living shit out of you.

See the fluffy gray guy perched like a little king on Carole's knee in the above pic? That's Shadow. Last night, when that pic was taken, he seemed perfectly fine and happy. This morning, after going about six years without any major medical problems, he started repeatedly scritching around in the litter box and crying, as well as doing several other things that made us believe he might have a blockage of some sort. Carole took him to the vet this afternoon, where they ran about $700 worth of tests and scans on him and found no evidence of a blockage, though they did discover that he has a heart murmur. Great...

The blood and urine tests won't come back until Monday or Tuesday, so maybe we'll know more then. In the meantime, he's back home, a little dazed from his ordeal (as well as from the "calmatives" we're supposed to give him to help counteract whatever stress or irritation is causing him to freak out in the litter box) but once again watching the world go by from his favorite window seat. We're delighted that he didn't have to spend the night in the hospital, but we're also pretty exhausted from all the stress and worry. It's flashing me back a little too hard to all the crap we went through with our much-missed Mentos less than a year ago.

So if you pet lovers out there can send kind thoughts and good vibes Shadow's way, I would definitely appreciate it. He's absolutely the sweetest, gentlest, most good-natured cat I've ever known — if also the most quirky and unusual — and we just want our little guy to get well and feel good again as soon as possible.

Comments

[moondog]

Good luck there Shadow!

-Max, Frank's cat.

[Greg Barbera]

hang in there buddy!

ps. send castor oil for my kids...

[Sarah Parker]

Shadow--good, good thoughts sent your way.

And quit scaring the bejebus outta your mom and dad!

[Stuart Shea]

Thinking good thoughts for your sweetie.

[Vinnie Park]

Be well, Shadow. May your days be filled with love and heaps of catnip...