Kitty Crisis

I love all my animals. Even the quirky kitty who's so scared of the whole world I still can't pick her up... after 10 years of patient, devoted care. Especially her - because who knows what happened in her fragile little life before some monster tied her up in a bag with a little of newborns and dumped her? I'm just happy she can love me as much as she does considering her former life.

Sienna is the sweetest little thing and I do my best to take good care of her in spite of her reluctance to interact with humans. She's roughly 12 now (we'll never know for sure), but until recently her age really hadn't seemed to be catching up with her. And because she seemed to be the healthiest of my 6 pets and won't grace me with her presence on any sort of regular basis, I'm ashamed to admit I'm not sure how long her current problem has been going on.

In the last 18 months I've lost a dog to cancer, had another dog need surgery for a malignant tumor, adopted a monster puppy, had a cat go diabetic and wound up in the midst of a nightmare pregnancy. Somewhere in there I did notice a pea-sized lump on her hip and had it checked out, and thankfully it came back clear. But I still feel horribly guilty for not keeping better track of her.

Very recently (within the last month) I noticed she was losing weight. I also noticed she wasn't showing up for mealtimes with her accustomed regularity. I watched her appearance the best I could, hoping it was due to the new, lower-calorie cat food we were using for the diabetic cat. But maybe a week ago I noticed her face looked odd - sort of puffy around the mouth. Then I noticed her tongue sticking out. Last night - after panicking all day that I hadn't seen her in 24 hours - she finally let me glimpse her for maybe 2.7 seconds and I noticed she was drooling.

Finding her and catching her this morning involved a step stool, a broom and a tall husband fishing around in the rafters. Cause that's my cat for ya. We're on the way to the vet now. She's even thinner than she was a few days ago, her cries are weak, her protests are being crated non-existent, and she's drooling uncontrollably.

I feel like a terrible kitty mom. It should never have gone this far. I know enough to know what can happen to a cat that's lost weight rapidly. Now I can only hope that her liver isn't impacted and that we're just dealing with dental surgery.