elfs | The veternarian delivered the bad news yesterday

Dinah Kitty

Ever since the food recall, Dinah (The Bloody Cat™, The Burning Cat™, Frankenkitty™, The Cat With the Pop-Top Head™) has been off her feed. We've been worried about her, because a cat her size is supposed to be eating between six and eight ounces of food a day, but she's been eating less than two daily. We've tried everything, gone through two dozen different brands, refreshed her water more than twice a day. She's lost a lot of weight in the past three months.

We took her to the vet twice in that period, and both times the vet said, "It's probably the feed. Cats her age are picky. Just keep trying." So we did. We've found that she likes chunky food, and she's big on poultry. We're using some high-end brands now.

On her second trip to the vet (after Dinah had what looked to Omaha's inexperienced eye like a seziure) (remember, Omaha's only ever seen one seziure: I've seen over thirty) they took blood samples and the results came back. We got them yesterday.

Dinah's not eating because she has elevated stomach acid, which means that eating gives her nausea. Surprisingly enough, there's a cure for that: Pepcid AC, 1/4 tablet a day. But elevated stomach acid in a sixteen-year-old cat happens because the kidneys are no longer removing from the bloodstream the hormone that causes stomach acid production.

Dinah has early-stage chronic renal failure. The veternarian said she has between six months and a year, maybe two if we were aggressive about it. It's one of those things where you have to question just what you're after: the cat's comfort as geriatric decrepitude starts to take her, or putting off your own pain of her mortality as long as possible.

To our relief, Dinah took well to the kidney diet; a low-acid, low-protein, high-potassium diet. She's always tolerated medicines well, and I'm dissolving the Pepcid in a syringe and shooting it down her throat so she can't easily retch it if she's feeling nauseus. We're having to alternate the kidney-diet food with a high-fat food that taxes her kidneys but now that the acid-blocker is working she needs to put some weight back on. We also bought her a water recirculater that aerates and filters her drinking water, since she needs more water to push wastes through her failing kidneys.

Omaha and I have had Dinah longer than we've had the kids: since 1992. She's a wonderful cat, tolerant, loving, sometimes desperately needy for touch. I'm just not handling this well; I get teary when I think about it too much. And, grief, what am I gonna tell the kids?