Chris has been spending a lot of time on his cat perch. It is good that he is still able to get up there but it is also concerning because I almost never see him holding vigil at his food bowl waiting for someone to put fresh food on top of not-so-fresh-food.
The fact that he is losing his appetite worries me.
This post is from August of 2016. At eight years old, Floki still plays with his mice like he did as a kitten
Chris has been puking more than usual lately so I took him to the vet Friday morning. Chris used to like vet visits. It was a chance to explore, but as he got older the vets started doing things that were more unpleasant, so Chris gradually turned into one of those pets that the vet techs dread seeing.
They put us in an exam room shortly after arriving at the vet. I opened Chris’s carrier, but he had no inclination to leave it.
The vet came in with her vet tech, who picked up Chris and placed him on the table. The vet felt around Chris’s body to a chorus of grunts and howls. When the vet tech tried to take Chris’s temperature, he resisted. He dug both sets of claws into her arm and tried to pull himself off the table. When that didn’t work, he started peeing, and didn’t stop for a long time.
She eventually got his temperature and then they took Chris to another room to get blood work done. I could hear the howling in the distance. The tech then cam back with a large towel to wipe up all the pee.
I got the results from the vet today. She said Chris suffers from “moderate kidney disfunction.” She also said he has early signs of liver problems. She recommended a special renal diet for him. She said you can’t fix kidney disease. You can only slow its progression. So, here’s hoping for a slow progression.
My wife got a shipment yesterday, removed the flaps on the box, and put it on the floor for the cats. I noticed Floki sleeping in it last night. This morning Rose couldn’t sleep and, while she was up, put a towel in the box. She woke me up when she came back to bed so I got up and saw Chris napping in the box.
If we paid top dollar for a cat bed it wouldn’t get used as much
Here is a picture of Chris taken fourteen years ago yesterday when Chris was about a year old. He is in a basket next to my wife who made beaded jewelry as a hobby at the time.
Can you believe Chris is fifteen? Sometimes, like after waking up to find puke and poop all over the house, I think he won’t make it to his sixteenth birthday. Other times, like as I write this, I see he has climbed up to his perch with no problem. That gives me hope.
He can also still be bad, although in more subtle ways, like turning over his food bowls.
I’m not going to dwell on how much time he has left, instead, I will enjoy each day he is with us. I will also remember some of his antics when he was young.
At some point this past year, Chris mostly lost interest in going outside but lately his interest has returned. Now, when I take Frankie for a walk Chris waits by the door so he can go out when we return.
Unlike Frankie, Chris is happy to stay close to home. Sometimes he eats a little grass but mostly he just wants to enjoy the great outdoors.
Back in June of 2012 I wrote a blog post titled “Tub Pooper C.” It was only my eighth post and it talked about how Chris would poop in the bathtub if the litterbox was not perfectly clean. He went from pooping in the tub to pooping on the floor. It was a problem for years. He was four or five years old when he finally stopped doing that. I previously had litterboxes in separate rooms. When we moved to the place next to the marina, I combined two litterboxes in the same room. That solved the issue.
Now, years later, Chris is pooping on the floor again. It started a few weeks ago when Chris pooped under the dining room table while Rose was sitting at the table working. Since then, the number of times he pooped on the rug under the table or on the living room rug has increased until it was happening at least once a day, sometimes more.
I suspected that some of Chris’s age-related issues, such as arthritis and obesity, has made it difficult to use the litter box. Perhaps walking to the next room or climbing into the box has become too much. Of course, he can do it when he has to pee and he can also get up on a relatively high perch, but I still thought a lower litterbox closer to the dining room might help.
As an experiment, I picked up a disposable litterbox at the Grocery store on Friday and set it up under the dining room table.
As expected, our other cats used it, but Chris deposited his calling card on the rug a few feet from the box Saturday morning.
I ordered a large stainless-steel litterbox from Amazon that morning which is only four inches tall. It arrived Sunday. By then we had removed the rugs and washed them. We didn’t put them back because it seemed that Chris was targeting the rugs. I didn’t want to put the new box under the table, so I found room in a nearby bathroom.
It is now 2:00 p.m. on Monday and I have not seen a stray poop. I don’t know if Chris used the new box or if he didn’t poop because he only likes pooping on those rugs. Either way, I’m hopeful.
A couple of people said happy birthday to Floki the other day even though I didn’t post about it. It reminded me his birthday was coming up and I made a note to look it up when I got home, which I forgot to do until this morning.
Floki was born on or around the eighteenth of April 2016. Since we don’t know his exact birthday, it could very well be today. Even so, I feel bad that other people remember before I do.
I tried to find a recent photo of Floki alone but everything recent has Chris lying next to him or on top of him. The photo below was from two months ago.
Hopefully I won’t forget Chris’s birthday next month.
Some days our house seems like a satellite office of the post office. I won’t mention any names but someone I’m married to likes to shop online.
After I took Frankie for a walk yesterday, Chris wanted to go outside, so I sat on the front step and watched him while he lay in the driveway and enjoyed the sun. The door opened and that someone I mentioned earlier threw the empty box from the first of four packages she received that day out the door. We often throw empty boxes out the door until one of us goes outside and takes them to the garbage can. The box was too much for Chris to resist.
Bad Cat Chris 