Apparently, I'm harboring some guilt over Zoe's current medical status. I've had horrific nightmares the past few nights about her dying and me being directly responsible for it in a variety of ways. I've woken up in tears and haven't had a good night's sleep in several days. I got a whole whopping three hours of sleep last night. My conscious brain knows that it's not my fault her health is slowly starting to deteriorate. She's going to be 15 this year (so is Josie, who is several months older even), which means she's somewhere around 73-77 in equivalent human years. They're both at a stage in their lives when serious and terminal health problems can and will start to develop - no matter how often I take them to the vet or how much we medicate them. It's. Just. Life. I know that. I tell myself that over and over again. I thought I had myself convinced, but, given the way my subconscious is refusing to reconcile it, the guilt is still there. I guess I'm having the biggest problem with the fact that she's not acting sick. She's still lively. Her eyes and coat are bright and shiny. Her behavior hasn't changed. She's just wasting away before my eyes. In general, she's a large cat. She can nearly touch the kitchen counter tops when she stands up on her hind legs. When she was in her prime, she was a force to be reckoned with. When we would be in the kitchen, she would stand up with her paws on a cabinet door, rub against/push on my leg, and she would nearly knock me down. Now, when she does the same thing, I hardly notice she's even there. Picking her up is like picking up a piece of paper. It used to strain my back. There's just nothing to her now. She's barely 8 lbs and weighs less every time we take her in to be weighed. She's always been lean, but I've really noticed she's starting to look scary skinny lately. It's certainly not for lack of feeding her. Goodness, we give that cat all the food she'll eat. There's just something going on inside her that's not allowing her to maintain her weight. And, apparently, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I wonder sometimes if it would be easier if she were acting sick. If she were lethargic or lost the gleam in her eye, would it be easier to accept the fact that she may not be with us for much longer? I'm obviously having problems with the current state of things. It's hard to watch her running around and playing like she's still a kitten knowing we may end up having to put her to sleep because she simply got too skinny. Could I have done more to help her keep her weight up? Different food? Getting her on medication sooner? On the outside, she simply looks as if she's starving to death and, if that were the case, I would be completely to blame for it. However, she's not malnourished. Far from it, actually. The vet said she looks great for a cat her age - aside from the whole weight loss thing, of course. I guess my subconscious is just having trouble reconciling what my brain knows and my eyes see. That certainly would explain the nightmares and my recent inability to sleep at all. Ultimately, however, one of my babies is dying and I have a big problem with that. I'm not sure when or if I'll ever be able to reconcile that. And, I'm not sure I want to. |
