Tigger update

I’ve been giving Tig sub-q fluids at home, but I was worried about him the last couple of days. He seemed to be doing poorly again. So I brought him to the vet today. The vet did more bloodwork. Tig’s red blood cells are up, but all of his other numbers are worse. He says if I just showed him the numbers and he didn’t see Tig, he wouldn’t believe it was coming from the same cat. I get the impression that my vet thinks that Tig should be lying feet-up on the ground about now.

He told me that he doesn’t think Tig is going to make it through the next month. It’s highly unlikely he’s going to turn eleven on March 15th. I’m finding it hard to think of coming home to an apartment that has only one cat in it. Gracie is my Sweetness, but she isn’t Tig. She doesn’t come into my arms for a “snug.” She doesn’t sleep on the pillow next to me and irritate the hell out of me at 3 a.m. by deciding it’s time for me to wake up and pet her. She doesn’t do goofy things to make me laugh on a daily basis.

Come to think of it, there hasn’t been much laughter around here lately. Tig’s been sick, and grumpy, and growling, and swatting and hissing. I tried to get him interested in a wadded-up paper napkin last night, formerly his favorite toy, and I couldn’t get much more than a single swat when I tossed it to him. Tig used to fetch them. I’d throw them across the room, he’d pick them up in his mouth and bring them to me. Or he’d drop them in my sneaker, push them to the bottom, and then leap on the sneaker and stick in his paw to fish them out.

There haven’t been many bellyrubs lately. One, last week. He doesn’t like rolling on his back anymore. He’s lost too much weight. You can feel every single vertebrae in Tig’s spine when you pet him down his back.

Well, at least he still naps on me when I’m sitting in my chair. He doesn’t roll down my belly and land, upside-down, in my lap. Instead, he climbs on me, takes about five minutes to decide if he’s going to settle down, and sort of lies vertically across me. Or he rests his head on my shoulder, sometimes, if I get too annoyed waiting for him to make up his mind whether or not he’s going to sleep on me. He spends a lot of time lying on the bookshelf behind my chair. For some reason, he no longer cares for the ottoman or the sofa. Or my bed. Or the kitty condo. Or anything else that’s soft, except for me, apparently.

I can’t decide if I want him to go fast, or to hope against hope that he hangs on. We’re not in a good place right now. His quality of life sucks about half the time, and is okay the rest. But he’s a pale shadow of what he used to be. I can pick him up with one hand. One hand. That’s how skinny—and light—he got.

But he’s looking at me right now with that loving expression. He’s blinking at me as he falls asleep. I really don’t want to say goodbye to my Tig. I want him back.

Update: Check out the latest. There’s hope.