Don't Forget the Pets

Austin, our kitty, is sick. He was acting funny all day on Thursday, and then in the evening he had a few seizures. I took him to an emergency clinic at 11 p.m., in a thunderstorm, to get checked out. He spent the night there, and in the morning we took him to his regular vet for more testing. More than $1,200 later (eek!), we still have no answers. The vet's best guess is that poor Austin has a brain tumour, and he suggests that we simply wait until he has another seizure and then bring him in to be put down. So sad. He's been fine since we brought him home on Friday, and hopefully he will continue to be fine for a good long time to come. He's 12 years old, which is a decent age, I guess, but I always thought cats tended to live much longer.

Now here's where the guilt comes in. Shortly before the baby was born, Austin started living in our storage closet. He continued to spend all his time in there for weeks after the baby was born. Even when he eventually returned to his normal hangouts, he wasn't getting much attention from us. (You have to understand: he's a very temperamental cat. You can't just pet him whenever you want to; he has to come to you. But he has a talent for choosing the most inconvenient times possible, and more often than not he came looking for affection when we were busy with the baby, and so we pushed him away.) I wonder if stress and depression could have triggered the seizures — could have activated the brain tumour.

We're trying harder now to make sure he gets a daily dose of affection.