fredlet

Sunday we spent the day at Mikey's having the pre-birthday celebration for Tex (cupcakes and puppy dog noses trying to get in the cupcakes) and was a pretty good day. We got back to the apartment and fed Bunny, who was acting pretty normal, though she started slowing down about an hour later and then her front leg seemed to fill with fluid very quickly.
She wasn't acting right so I carried her on to the bed to pet her.
Her leg was tender, it was swollen so it would be tender, but I couldn't find a break or a cut. But she also wasn't putting much weight on it, so there was something wrong.
She started acting disoriented, but not in pain and it was one of the things animals do before they die… I really couldn't deal with THAT decision right then, so I tried to get her to settle and talked to her to keep her calm.
I thought I was losing her.
I turned up the warming pad in her bed to keep her comfy and just talked to her for about an hour. I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was going to lose her at that point.
When she finally  stretched out on the heating pad and sighed a little Bunny sigh, I figured we were out of the woods. Poor little kitty doesn't have very much blood as it is, when she gets cold I supposed it gathers center mass and leaves her brain to its own devices. Also, her leg drained nicely and she rested for a while as long as I stayed there. So I didn't move.
I fell asleep sideways on the bed and woke up about 3 am with my legs killing me (from hanging over the side of the bed) and had to pee like mad. When I got up, she stood up, all perky-like, meowed and hopped off the bed as neat as you please to go to the kitchen for her 3am snack.
I was still worried about her the next morning even though she was moving around well, eating like a little lion and generally acting her normal self. Tex was home all day Monday, so I went to work and left her in his care (he was a wreck at this point). I called the vet and told them about what happened and asked my vet to call me back with a yay/nay on bringing her in for a look-see and also what her test results were from last time.

Eventually, my very tolerant and long suffering veterinarian calls me back and says that her numbers are improving, that we should keep all her medicines at current levels and to keep doing what I am doing. He wasn't as concerned about the fluid build up in her leg as it had already receded. He did agree with my theory about her getting cold and her internal pumps going a little cattywampus.
Then he said he really didn't need to see her for another 6 months.
*blink*
This kind of floored me because I got the impression from his last visit, because he didn't give out a year’s prescription on the fluids and needles, that he didn't believe she had that long left… and she had lost a little more weight last time, I thought she was starting her final decline.
Such relief that I get to  be around her a lot more.
She's such a sweet little cat. She's smart, she's hilarious, she loves me and frankly after 18 years of having her around, I don't know what I will do without her. I was basically a different person when I got her.
So, I still have my little kitty and I'll do every thing I possibly can for her while she still wants to be here.
Punto; full stop.

Have I talked about her lineage?
I worked at a bookstore in Austin and worked with some seriously awesome people. Melvyn (his nickname, I have a thing for nicknames…you may have noticed) and Amy were roomies before Melvyn became my roomie. Amy had Peanut the cat who was a dark brown calico. She had a litter at one point and one of those kitties went to her brother Marshall in San Antonio. Marshall had a problem with not spaying his cats, so lucky for me, she had kittens; I asked for the runt and got Bunny.
She's part siamese, I believe, and part calico. I always hear that she is the most beautiful cat… and she is :) . She started off with dark ears and tail and the rest of her was white with cream spots. Gorgeous then and gorgeous now that she darkened up over time (that's siamese trait)  to dark brown, caramel and tan (calico markings). Silky fur and blue eyes…not to mention the siamese talkative thing. She's got quite the vocabulary. She even has special meows for different people; ring tones effectively.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredlet/tags/bunnycat/

I've mentioned before what weird luck I have. In fact, I wouldn't call it luck per se, but more along the lines of balance put upon me.
Something horrible happens and then something offsets it.
Bunny seemed like she was dying, then she was ok and I find out her numbers are actually very good.
or then what happened MON night…
My car's Check Engine light came on and I find out its just a little hose that we replaced summarily with a minimum of jostling… and I don't even have to use up my spare $100 part I keep in the car for the more common failure.

At 150k miles, the beast is a work horse. I love this car.
Its comfy, it gets reasonable gas mileage and its of a vintage that its still repairable by a non-dealer mechanic. (Even more awesome is the fact that Tex's nephew is my pet mechanic and we bribe him with computer parts and keep his machine going). I even have a spare ignition coil to fix it on the spot when I get that particular code showing on the code reader. However, it turned out not to be the case in this one. It was the mass airflow filter that we'd replaced a while back, and I didn't have a spare one of those…but Michael looked at it and said "Hmmm, this hose feels funny."
He replaced it and so far, so good. 

So, Bunny still trotting around nicely, the tension levels (well, Bunny related tensions) in the house have calmed (ants are back…grr. I don't want to move but Tex is insane when the ants show up. We'll see what happens.(read:if he wants to move my apartment full of crap, he'll get off his butt, go find a place and organize the money to do so himself. I'm busy taking care of Bunny and the rest of life right now.)) and I think I found a reasonable option for keeping her warm when the radiator is off. Summer is coming and in NorCal is COLD.
I got one of those pop-up dog crates. I turned it on its side so that one of the vents was under her, the other one, now on top, I covered with a dishtowel to keep the warm air in and then covered the whole thing with a beach towel for insulation.
Her warming pad and current towel I moved in wholesale and set it all on the couch.

She was not amused.

She walked in and stood there with her tail swishing in that I'm-irritated-with-you way and didn't move for a full minute. Then she turned around, walked out and then climbed all over me (I was sitting in the chair where her bed used to be.) and gave me The Look several times.
After about 45 minutes, she got in, turned around and lay down, but still gave me the look telling me that this wasn't over yet. (I called it "The Oven"… obvious joke of "The Bun is in The Oven" followed shortly after.)
I think that it will hold enough heat to keep her a bit more comfy, but I'm sure we'll tweak the setup over time and see if she starts to get used to it.

So, the plan for the next six months it to keep her weight up. We're talking ounces, so a regular scale is useless, she's not featherweight so a kitchen scale is too wimpy, and some of the larger scales seem overkill.
My fabulous find? A travel luggage scale. Works in ounces and is compact. I'll just stuff her in a carrier for a few minutes every few weeks and weigh her; I'm sure she'll love that.