I Must Confess, I've Had a Difficult Weekend...

Oliver, the kitten we rescued, has refused to consistently use the litter box. The final straw? He came into the dining room as we were cleaning up from a birthday dinner for a friend last night and POOPED right on the rug by the table! It was horrible. Here we are, having a birthday celebration and we had to stop everything and get out the carpet cleaner to clean up POOP! I should have been embarrassed, but I was just too mad!

To make matter worse, I discovered that he'd been peeing on some curtains. So, after a month of trying different things, I could think of nothing else to try. We made the difficult,but necessary decision to return him to the vet's office. (If you recall, he'd been abandoned there, and we said we'd take him.) I felt terrible for the kids, but I just couldn't handle elimination issues.

So, we loaded him up in the cat carrier and took him back to the vet's office this afternoon. I'm sad that it didn't work out, but I have to admit to being relieved that it is all done. He was super cute, but I don't have to head downstairs with trepidation each morning. I know he'll find a home where he'll be happier. (I think he was marking to try to out rank our 7-year old cat, Sam, but it wasn't working, so he was escalating. Otherwise, I don't know what he was doing.)

What else could I have done? What would you have done?

One Lucky Baby and Difficult Decisions

One Lucky Baby was found in our backyard, frozen and starved in December 2005. We really didn't think she was going to pull through, she was so thin. I guess we found her in the nick of time because she did pull through. She's a tiny little thing even though she's about six years old. She's our only house cat, by her choice. She just prefers to stay inside or on the deck. She's just one of those cats that is always around, but not a big deal.


She never liked Tuck because he bugged her constantly. I thought she'd be the only one thrilled that he's left. It didn't turn out that way. I guess all the stress of the past few weeks has caught up with her because she's very sick. We came home from our trip Sunday night and she was super, scary thin. Since I got her to eat numerous times during the day, I thought we'd be okay and she'd be fine, but she wouldn't eat this morning and would barely drink, so off to the vet we went. Bad news: They think Lucky has stress induced liver failure (there is some complicated name for it, but that is the gist of it). So, she's hooked up to i.v. fluids and having a battery of tests run and tomorrow, after the results come in, we'll know our next step. It sounds stupid, but these tests and this 24 hour period are going to cost $1200 and I agonized over what to do. We don't have $1200 lying around. We went forward anyway. Why do them? Because how can I tell my children we didn't give her a fighting chance? If she has cancer or cat hepatitis or a host of any other things, we'll have to put her down, but if she doesn't, we'll try to save her.


What else could I do? What would you do?

P.S. I'm not having a good day.