The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-Volume 63: A Cat Tale
This blog is about my cat Brunhilda (Bruni) and her ability to repeatedly defy death in her almost 18 years of existence. Maybe it is strange to write about a pet, but she is a part of the family and recently, when I thought it was the end, I realized how much life would be different without her. And when she went blind suddenly, I realized how hard it was to watch and how hard it must have been for people to see me after my accident. In a strange way, she is kind of a cat version of me. So, her eventful life is the focus of this blog. But first………………………
My WTF of the week is the fact that people are cheating on trivia night. I recently attended a trivia night that was also a charity event. The median age of our team, Half J/Half G (which stood for half Jews, half Gentiles) exceeded the other groups by at least 15 years. Let’s just say I could have been the mom of many of the trivia players. But was the group with the most wisdom and collective knowledge winning. No, we were not even close. Some of the groups of youngsters were kicking our butts and seemed to know answers to questions that there was no way they could have known. I was thinking maybe it’s because they are in college and just remember more. After feeling humiliated and a little stupid, one of the Jews made the rounds around the establishment and came back to proclaim that most of the tables were cheating by using their smart phones to Google stuff. We were not. We were honorably using our collective brainpower. We even had a librarian in our group and they tend to know lots of trivia stuff. Alas, we are no match for twenty-something’s with smart phones. This week I am out for another trivia night, and instead of trying to win I will feel good about myself because am coming up with answers without cheating. And I can live with myself. Although, if there is a cash prize, I could change my mind.
This week I can’t get enough of taking a “chick-cation”. It is like the man-cation, but for women and is sometimes known as the girlfriend getaway (but I dislike that term). Our chick-cation destination is Costa Rica for its combination of beaches and adventure activities like zip lining and rafting (which I am sure are totally safe for the visually impaired). We picked Costa Rica because it is also a popular man-cation destination and the women going are all single. When looking at hotels and reviews I found myself shying away from those in which the reviews used the words family, children or kid. Single moms do not want to go on a vacation and stay in a place where there are kids. I prefer an adult oriented resort (not like in a Hedonism way, just no kids). I am beginning my bathing suit readiness plan now.
I have a mostly black with white markings American shorthair named Brunhilda. I saw Brunhilda be born in a drawer in June of 1994. About two weeks after she was born her litter mates started dying. She was the only cat who survived past three weeks, at which time her mom stopped feeding her and I took over. I fed her formula in a baby bottle and put bits of food into her mouth until she was strong enough to get to food. I wiped her to stimulate her using the bathroom just like her mom would have and then I taught her how to use the litter box.
At 6 weeks old she was accidently stepped on by my boyfriend at the time. She was rushed to the ER and had a collapsed lung. They told me she had a 50/50 shot at surviving and hospitalized her and told me to call in the morning. I stayed up all night (mostly giving my boyfriend hell) and at 8am found out she had survived.
When Bruni was two she started running a fever and would not leave my side. When she was laying on me I noticed there was white pus coming out of her, so I brought her to the vet. They misdiagnosed her and sent ne home, but I just knew they were wrong, so I came back in and said their diagnosis made no sense. They said the only other thing it could be was a uterine infection, but that could never happen in a spayed cat. Well, even though she had been there two years, what they did not seem to put together was that she had not been spayed because I was a poor graduate student and she was an indoor cat. So she was rushed into surgery to have her uterus removed, which the vet showed me in a jar and said “another two days and she would have been dead”.
Then at 3 Bruni choked on a chicken bone. I had eaten chicken for dinner and placed some bones at the bottom of the trash and went to take a bath. When I came out she had knocked over the trash can and was eating and choking on a bone. I started throwing on my clothes and shoes to take her to the ER but then realized I should try to get it out of her throat or perform the Heimlich maneuver, which I did and somehow managed to get it out.
Bruni has tried to escape the house hundreds of times. She is not at all convinced she is an indoor pet. And she has made it out a handful of times. But for some reason she never gets lost. One night I did not realize she had slipped past me and gotten out and when I returned home a few hours later she was sitting on the stoop with a look of “where the hell have you been, let me back in the house”. One time she got in the attic space at my current house, which has a door off a hallway. Again she slipped past me (this seems to be a theme) and walked into a part of the attic where the floor boards are spaced widely apart and could not figure out how to get back out. I was looking up the number for animal control and calling friends while trying to coax her out afraid that she was going to fall through the cracks. Again she got our unscathed-another crisis averted.
Up until she was 15, Bruni was convinced she was an attack cat and did not care much for anyone but me. She would get this look on her face when anyone other than me tried to pet her of “you are not my mommy, do not touch me” and she would bait them by acting as if it was OK and suddenly begin biting really hard. She also attacked my niece, who still has a scar, when she and my sister came into the house when I was not there.
Bruni has mellowed in her old age. She did not really want anything to do with my daughter until a few years ago. I think at first she thought “this little thing smells funny and makes too much noise”, but now she loves her. She also lets people she knows pet her without retaliating. For the past year or so Bruni has had kidney disease, which means I have had to try and shoot pills down her throat. My cunning cat held the pills in her mouth and later spit them out in corners because she knew I could not see them. She also drinks water out of your glass, which is annoying as she often tips them over.
Last week in the middle of the night Bruni tried to jump on the bed and missed and hit a side table. I woke up and found she was trying to walk but could not use her back legs and kept flopping over. Thinking she had broken her back or possibly was dying from kidney failure, I called my sister and we went to the ER. I was completely panicked and realized that even though I knew we at best had a year or two left, I was not at all ready for her to die. I cried all the way to the animal hospital. What we found out was that Bruni was completely blind and was also suffering from compression of the spine and arthritis, all common in older cats. The theory was she went blind, had a jump and miss ad tweaked her already problematic spine. Some of her drunk like walking was due to sensory deprivation because of the blindness. The next day her vet called me to say he feared the blindness was caused by an antibiotic she was on for her kidneys and it had only happened twice in his forty years of practice and should have not happened in the low dose she was on. He also told me it was permanent. For two days I had to carry my cat to get food and water and watch her walk into walls and struggle to keep her balance and it just broke my heart. I thought about how I must have seemed to others when I came home from the hospital almost totally blind and having to be led around. It must have been hard for others to watch. I don’t think I appreciated that until I saw my cat struggling.
After two days Bruni, in another miracle recovery, regained her sight and began acting like her usual self. We still have to deal with the kidney’s failing, but she can see and get around and seems to be happy. Bruni has overcome so many crazy situations. She is a survivor. And so is her mom. I know losing her will change me. But for right now I am enjoying her company and doing everything I can to prolong her life.
Keep Moving Forward,
Beth (BLOVI) Medlock
No comments:
Post a Comment