The Runt is coming home!

After two days in the vet hospital and every test known to man, the vets are basically stumped, but the Runt is doing better and he's coming home!

Early Wednesday morning, The Runt threw up. If you have cats, you know that's not unusual - cats are champeen thrower-uppers. But he also refused breakfast, and was acting really logy.

When I got home from work Wednesday night, he had thrown up again, and was laying on the bed not moving. I picked him up and he let out a pitiful little mew. I put him back down and called the vet's, because here's the thing about cats: By the time they are showing signs of being sick, they are almost always desperately ill. Cats hide their symptoms; it's a way of avoiding becoming prey in the wild. So when The Runt was acting sick, I knew there must be something really wrong.

We made a rushed trip to the vet's, where they determined that his vital signs were all stable and there were no obvious reasons for his distress. Oh, and there is a new vet at the practice: A newly minted Cornell grad! I think she's about half my age, which made me feel really, really old.

Anyway, The Runt was dehydrated, so they wanted to keep him overnight to get some fluids in him and run some blood tests. Oh, and if you're squeamish around needles, you DO NOT want to be in the room when they draw your cat's blood, because that needle is BIG. And it has a crook in it; I shit you not.

By this morning, I was heartsick. I hadn't heard anything in two days, and I was bracing for the worst. So when the phone rang and the caller ID revealed the vet's office, it was hard for me to pick up the phone. Keep in mind that I had been through this with another beloved cat not all that long ago, with heartbreaking results.

The vet must have known what I was going through, because his first words were, "The Runt can come home today". I think I went a little limp.

It turns out, as it sometimes does with cats, that they don't really know what happened. All they know is that he has his energy back and is eating, and seems to be past the crisis. They are going to do an x-ray before he comes home, just to make sure he didn't swallow something funky that got caught in his gut, but other than that, he's good to go.

Sometimes things turn out okay. The Runt is coming home.