Tuesday I'd had enough; our smallest & youngest cat Dooley had been sneezing & mildly lethargic for a few days and I got a text from home. "She's shivering."
I've had dogs & cats all my life; they don't shiver unless they're scared or something's wrong they can't explain to us. I said "bring her here and I'll take her to the vet." First, who knew "walk in's" were hard to pull of in local vet clinics? Second, thanks to On Point in Socastee for realizing the importance of her being seen as soon as possible. They worked her in same-day (Tuesday) and deduced her low-grade pneumonia diagnosis.
Believe it or not, I was relieved, at the moment; see, her temperature was 104.9 - rather high and emblematic, often, of feline leukemia/HIV. I literally plucked her off the streets of downtown Conway as a weeks-old kitten, so it never dawned on me she might've been born with it. They ran tests to rule it out, which I was thankful for.
That said, the prescription regimen is no joke! Three different oral liquids, two taken 1x a day, the other 2x a day every 12 hours, and one has to be taken on an empty stomach. You know how hard that is - to make sure a cat hasn't eaten and WON'T for another hour? Exhausting. Plus, she's small and rattled by the new house, and all the installation and delivery folks and movers, so she hides often. She's found the insides of a couch to be her choice destination. Problem is we can't coax her out. We're literally taking the couch apart at least once a day to pull her out; and now she knows what times are "medicine taking time," so she's up inside that couch like clockwork.
Right now, I'm not her favorite; I can only hope she notices she's improving and attributes it to my frantically chasing her before she gets into the couch or yanking her out of it, claws-drawn.
All of this has me questioning my stamina should we decide to adopt. Or is the effort we're making proving we might be good parents?
I'm gonna take a nap and let y'all decide. I'm worn out!