Where’s Waldo

I know I’ve been gone for a bit. There was a lot going on. Just life stuff. But then the good news: Michael got a temp job. It was perfect timing, too, just a few weeks before the end of the federal matching of unemployment benefits. He started his job and then…a week later, we had to go into “quarantine”. 

We are fine. We got an email that we may have come into contact with someone who came into contact with a positive covid-19 case. So to be safe we pulled Logan out of preschool, Michael worked from home for a week, I was already working from home. It was a rough week. Logan did not want to be home. He wanted to be with his friends at school. It was incredibly hard for both parents to work full time jobs and try and pay attention to a bored toddler.

Thankfully, everything turned out well. That other person was negative. So life got back to “normal”. (LAUGH). It was a stressful week for sure, though. You start thinking about all the what ifs.

Anyways. Amidst all this stuff, my kitty, Stevie got sick. Like REALLY sick. One Sunday night he seemed a little “off”. The first sign is usually that he doesn’t sleep in our bed at night. He likes to sleep in the middle of the bed. LOL

Monday morning, he was acting even more weird. And I was finding some vomit (not hairballs) around the house. He was not eating. I took him into the vet. A few hours later, his vet called that he had a blocked urethra and it was life threatening and he had to go to the hospital.

So I picked him up and took him to the emergency vet hospital in Tualatin. Because of covid, processes are all different. You have to call to check in, do everything over the phone, wait in your car, etc. I dropped Stevie off and then went home to wait.

Long story short, I had to make a life or death decision that night. He had blockage and needed a catheter and meds and there was no guarantee it would work and it would be VERY expensive. Considering Michael JUST started his new job and we were trying to recover from unemployment, I wasn’t sure what the right decision was. Pay thousands of dollars when there’s no guarantee?

I decided to try and Stevie stayed at the hospital for the next 6 days. He was supposed to come home Thursday but when they took the catheter out, he re-blocked, which was the risk. He also had a UTI, so now he was on antibiotics too. It was one of the most stressful weeks and one of the hardest decisions. When he re-blocked I seriously wasn’t sure what to do. My hope of him coming home was dwindling.

They put the catheter back in and we decided to give it another day or so. By Saturday he was doing better and able to pee on his own, without the catheter, and no re-blocking. I picked him up Saturday afternoon. He was clearly still sick. That weekend was really hard. He was on a LOT of medication, not eating, I had decided to start hand-feeding water so he’d be hydrated. 

Monday morning he went back to the hospital. He wasn’t eating. I was worried. They checked him, he wasn’t re-blocked, but he was dehydrated. They gave him anti-nausea meds, appetite stimulants, fluids and he came home. That second week he started to perk back up and his regular vet gave him more meds and now he’s doing a lot better. 

He sleeps with us, he plays, he’s eating more, drinking on his own. He will be on special diet food for the rest of his life. Urethra blockages happen in cats, but are more common in boy cats. 

It was a scary, stressful time. I’m glad we got through it. I made the right decision, but it was hard. And expensive. And it is truly awful that for a lot of people, having pets can become a barrier because of money. I think having pets is so beneficial mentally and (if it’s a dog!) physically. Pets just make their owners happy. I’m glad Stevie was doing a lot better. 

Then this weekend he was acting a little weird again. We went back to the doctor and he had a bladder infection. Thankfully he wasn’t reblocked but he was still sick. So more medications, back on antibiotics. It sucks.

That’s basically been our life lately.