As mentioned previously, my tuxedo cat, Simon, had taken a turn for the worse. On Friday, he stopped eating any solid foods, eating only baby food or the gravy from some kinds of wet cat food.

On Sunday, he stopped moving around, preferring only to sit in one place on the bed, and I knew then it was time.

So yesterday afternoon, Kristen and I took him to the vet and he was put to sleep. I wanted to have it done as soon as I could, but they apparently do not perform this procedure until the end of the day.

The vet told us that this was absolutely the right thing to be doing. That the kind of weight loss he'd had was beyond anything behavioral: it was absolutely medical in nature (which means that Clementine didn't starve him out). I asked him if it could possibly be FIP, but he said that "dry" FIP doesn't present this way. I told him that Simon's feces had been almost black (I first saw them like that yesterday, just before we left). That seems to be even more evidence that he had an intestinal cancer of some kind.

He went quietly.

He was a good cat.

My cat, Simon, has taken a turn for the worse.

About a year ago, he started to get skinnier - losing weight. At the time, the vet said that it was likely behavioral, since there were no obvious signs of illness. He was banned from eating plastic bags and other things that made him throw up, and I had hoped that this would clear things up and allow him to gain weight again.

However, the weight loss has continued, and, as near as I can tell, increased in speed. I brought him to the vet last week, whereupon he was subjected to many tests and x-rays. I was told that they didn't know what was wrong, but that (in a cat his age) the likely cause was a stomach cancer, but that, again, there could be environmental issues.

Specifically, that the other cat, Clementine, may be playing "domination" games and preventing him from access to the food dish. I was advised to feed them in seperate rooms, and only in the morning, for half an hour. This would train them to know when they could eat and when not, and hopefully spark Simon's hunger.

(Simon also had a lot of compacted fecal matter - like, he really wanted to take a crap - so I was given a perscription for a laxative for him. Which he dislikes. I've not noticed it working, though there was a nice, big turd laying in the living room today.)

Only, the food training thing hasn't worked out. Simon is actually eating less now; he won't touch the food dishes when set in front of him. He only eats cat treats, and even then not many of them (about half of what I set down at a time - a small handful).

Clementine, in response to the new feeding schedule, has started gorging every morning to the point where she immediately throws up.

So this feeding experiment is a failure: Simon has fewere opportunities to eat, and Clementine is just starving and pukey.

My next trick is to try feeding him baby food - chicken, tuna, whatever - in the hopes that he'll eat that. Or smelly wet cat food. Or something like that. I just know he needs to eat or he will be dead by Saturday.

He's suddenly so listless. Slow moving. He was unable to jump onto the dining room table this morning. He doesn't purr when I pet him. He feels like a small sack of twigs inside a rough fur bag.

I am pretty sure his time is coming to an end - possibly this week - and I don't know what to do.

It's been a long time since I didn't know what to do.

10 years ago I adopted a cat, Simon. He's a tuxedo cat, and even has "spatz": the two middle toes on each paw are white. He was kind of a runt, but picked up some weight later in life.

In the past several weeks, though, he's lost close to four pounds. You can can sometimes see the bones in his spine, he's lost so much weight. Even subtly_modded said, "Simon is lookin' pretty . . . angular."

This is worrisome, so I took him to the vet. This is always a traumatic experience for him, mostly because he has to go into The Box and then into The Car. Then he got poked and prodded and had some blood drawn and what not and we sat back and waited to hear if he had a thyroid problem or kidney failure or summat.

stress stress stress stress stress stress stress

(The Saga of Dealing With the Vet Who Does Not Call Back With Results for Forty-Eight Hours is a tune for another day.)

At any rate, the blood work came back and guess what:

Just like me, his blood work is perfect. He could survive on beer and butter.

So that leaves us in the curious position as to what is causing his weight loss, and the vet and I both think we know:

He likes eating plastic bags.

Apparently, this is a habit a lot of cats do. I've read that they can smell rendered animal fat in them or something along those lines, or they like the texture, or whatever. But for a while now I've been finding puddles of puke that contained a lot of undigested plastic bags.

Which would explain weight loss, if one were vomiting up 70% of one's daily intake of food.

Now, the dark spectre of cancer can still be in the running for this race. But logic says that it comes down to the plastic bags. So I have "babyproofed" the house (man, I found a large ziplock full of little D&D figures that Maynard brought over, and he'd destroyed half of it).

I have a prescription for him, even. Every day for a week or so I am to give him half a tablet of friggin' Pepcid AC. Coated in butter. We're gonna watch his weight (he's at seven pounds now) over the next month or so and see what happens.

So let this be a lesson: don't let cats near plastic bags.

Dear Simon:

I have never, ever, in the history of time, given you Human Food. Ever. So I'm not going to start now, especially with my bagel and cream cheese, which I'm certain you will not like anyway.

Confidential to subtly_modded:

Simon misses you and wants some milk.

Once or twice a month I have a service show up and clean up my bachelor-lifestyle messes. This is always a fun day for the household as the entire process takes about two hours and involves lots of loud vacuuming and scrubbing and chemical smells and anywhere between five and ten women dressed in white scrambling through the house.

The event utterly, completely traumatizes the cats.

Every time, after the cleaners leave, I get to play a game: Find the Felines. This is not as easy a task as one might think, especially since Clementine is not only able to squeeze into an area the volume of a ripe orange but is also exceptionally clever about choosing hiding spots.

Today she was hiding almost in plain sight and it took me about a half hour to find her: she'd nestled in and slightly under the pillows on the bed - which are the same color grey as she is. She was situated in such a way as to be able to see anyone coming or going.

Simon, on the other hand, had somehow managed to get himself trapped behind one of the servers. I don't know how he got in there in the first place, and he sure as shit wasn't getting out on his own, so I had to move a bunch of hardware for him.

Now they are cautiously wandering around, wrinkling their noses at the Stink of Clean and quite likely plotting to pee everywhere.

Such is the price I pay for being a lazy bastard.

My cat just circle-strafed me.

Are cats supposed to groom each other?

I'm watching Clementine give Simon a bath. And it's freaking me out. I can't figure if she's doing some sort of weird submissive cat thing or Simon got a bunch of catnip spilled on his head.

Also, I have the attention span of a smothered dolphin.

Also, Chelsea Handler is one of the funniest people I've had the pleasure to observe in years.

Anyways.

The lung thing happened about, oh, half an hour before the kick-off yesterday. Since I wasn't sure if I hadn't simply pulled a muscle carrying a big tub of ice or not, I swallowed a fistful of Ibuprofin, three or four beers, and some excellent Italian meatballs and watched the game.

I realize that fully 90% of the people I know are "football stupid" but I'm gonna talk about it anyway for a minute:

Which was kind of boring for the first half - but this was too be expected (coaches are always more conservative about offense in bowl and playoff games). However, the second half was just excellent. In fact, the last 5 minutes were better than Superbowl LXI's entire broadcast (which was like watching two sucky high school teams play).

I thought both teams played well, and the last play (you know, the fourth quarter one pulled off with 1 second on the clock) was very classy.

Anyways.

Dinosaur Comics makes me laugh my ass off. Which is kind of painful right now.

Oh, yeah: Ms. Kbk is giving me a ride tomorrow.

One of my cats ate the wire on my xbox 360 headset.

This is my life:



Fucking cats won't let me sleep.

And the cats are getting along:

The cats are getting along well now. So well that they seem to be plotting with one another as to how best to knock shit over or hide my glasses while I'm sleeping. They chase each other around, but it's obviously playful: no hissing, no nothing.

One of the best games I've seen is this: Simon (the older cat) is laying down on the floor or something, staring at a window. Clementine creeps up behind him, jumps, and lands a headlock on him. And then they wrestle for a bit, break, repeat.

They cuddle on the couch. Well, mostly. Sometimes Clem gets too close and Simon pushes her back.

Holy crap, the new cat's name is Clementine.

I never would have guessed that.



It doesn't show it in the photo, but Simon is like, three times as big as Clementine is. Easy. I think he's gotten bigger since she showed up. He was this teeny cat for the longest time, and then Mosfet moved in, and he bulked up to "normal" size pretty quickly. And now, it seems that he's gotten even bigger.

Simon is sick. Like, really sick. Stuff coming out of both ends for the past 12 hours, listless, sad-faced, hiding-underneath-the-bed sick.

So now I'm scared that I brought home this new cat to be his friend, who has just infected him with some horrible illness and possibly killed him.

The new cat is capable of producing the most toxic, room-clearing stenches.

She only weighs like, three pounds! Where does all that stink come from?

Augh!

So, the two cats have met one another. I opened the door and let them see each other and interact.

They touched noses and then Simon hissed. Gigi (and I'm sure now that is not her name) stepped back from that, but was totally nonchalant about the entire experience. Simon was, as far as she was concerned, another piece of furniture.

Simon, however, was not so happy about the experience. He sort of just hunkered down and stared at her, making small, stressful mewling sounds. Every now and then he'd let out a little growl. No really "hostile" hissing, however. He's more uncertain and scared than angry.

I let this continue for about 10 minutes and then closed the doors and spent a lot of time with Simon, petting and scritching.

I shall repeat the experiment in another few hours.

Well, she definitely seems more comfortable today than she was yesterday. I spent some time with her last night, before I slept (fairly restlessly) on the couch to keep Simon from howling. When I went up there, she was hanging out on the windowsill, watching traffic. She seemed happy to see me, and was very cuddly and looking for chin scritches.

I let the two of them stare at each other through a crack in the door for a few minutes. There was no hissing from either side, but Simon let out a ton of curious blerts.

This morning I was struck that it was cold in the bedroom. The first thing I checked was to see if she had finally used the litterbox (she had) and I think she managed to eat some. I saw her eat, like, one kibble last night, so she knows where the food is.

She wasn't in any of the hiding places. She'd burrowed under the covers in the bed. We played for a while, and then I let the two of them see each other with the door open an inch or so again. No hissing this time, but both of them kept trying to claw the door open.

I have set up a barrier at the top of the stairs now. I'm testing to see if Simon can figure a way over it; if he can't, I'll let Gigi out into the full upstairs for a while.

Someone made some lolcat images from the photo I took of her.

( (lolcats) )

So far, the reactions between the two are far better than they were between Simon and Mosfet - who growled and hissed at each other from the other side of the door for two days. It's all curiosity so far and no hostility.

I can't get a really good photo, but here is Gigi:



She's a blue short hair and (they say) about 10 months old. I'm really sad that I can't get a good photo of her right now because her coat is quite simply amazing.

She's totally terrified about being somewhere new right now, and alternates between hiding in my closet and under the bed (in the exact same spot Simon hides, too). Simon is . . . aware that something is going on in the bedroom; the door is closed and he's not used to that. I tried taking a nap up there so I could be around the Gigi and let her get used to me. This didn't work out so well because Simon just sat on the other side of the door and howled.

I expect I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

They are not scraping and hissing at each other from underneath the door, though.

Gigi. Gigi. I'm not sure that's her real name. It doesn't feel right. It's the best I have right now; she's too scared to let me know what it is so far.

I have a new cat.

My cat, Simon, has been behaving very frenetic lately. He's been mewling at nothing, demanding attention constantly, and even when he gets it he quickly turns nippy and combative, all the while making these sad-sounding warbles and cries.

I don't know what is going on but I think he's seriously lonely. With both gnat23 and Mosfet gone, I think he's utterly confused and ultimately bored.

I've been thinking about getting another cat for him to socialize with, but he's about 8 or 9 years old now. So I don't know that a kitten is the right course of action, and I'm apprehensive about introducing another adult cat to the mix.

Anyone have experience with this?