Bella
First, a brief history of my cats:
Kate was the first cat I had as an adult, the first cat that was all mine. An ex-roommate gave her to me when Kate was already 13 years old, with the expectation that Kate would soon die. Kate lived another 10 years, much of it just her and me in poorly air-conditioned student apartments. It was actually my vet (also inherited from the ex-roommate) who said one day that he had been seeing Kate for an awfully long time, looked up her chart and realized she was over 20. She slept on my head, and once in the early morning stretched out a paw and accidentally hooked a claw in one of my nostrils. (Fortunately she was also a very smart cat and realized immediately what she'd done, and waited calmly for me to unhook her.) She died of heart failure, at home, in my lap, in 1997 when I was working on the galleys of The Death of the Necromancer.
Harry was a kitten when I found him at night in an ice storm outside my apartment. Harry died in August of 2010, and I wrote about him here. He was two months shy of 20.
We got Bella as a kitten from the animal shelter when Kate died, and she's probably close to 16 years old. She's been losing weight for a couple of years, but at first that was okay, because she was a bit overweight. But she was down to 8 pounds last October, and now she's nearly down to 7. We had complete blood tests and urine tests and every other bodily fluid test done at the vet (same vet I've had since Kate), and the results are all negative. There is nothing wrong with her. She eats, she doesn't throw up food, she plays a bit, purrs a lot, sleeps a lot, doesn't seem to be in pain. But she's wasting away. So, yeah, there's something wrong with her. For me, 16 is not old for a cat. 16 is when we start to notice that, oh yeah, the cat might be getting kind of middle-aged now.
So right now we're just waiting to see what happens, and plying her with expensive cat foods that come in pouches and smell very very bad, and guarding her food from Tasha who would otherwise gorge on it like a Roman emperor at an orgy.
Bella:
Bella with Spike, our dog who died of cancer in 2008:
Bella forcing affection on Harry:
Tasha as a kitten forcibly grooming Harry:
Kate was the first cat I had as an adult, the first cat that was all mine. An ex-roommate gave her to me when Kate was already 13 years old, with the expectation that Kate would soon die. Kate lived another 10 years, much of it just her and me in poorly air-conditioned student apartments. It was actually my vet (also inherited from the ex-roommate) who said one day that he had been seeing Kate for an awfully long time, looked up her chart and realized she was over 20. She slept on my head, and once in the early morning stretched out a paw and accidentally hooked a claw in one of my nostrils. (Fortunately she was also a very smart cat and realized immediately what she'd done, and waited calmly for me to unhook her.) She died of heart failure, at home, in my lap, in 1997 when I was working on the galleys of The Death of the Necromancer.
Harry was a kitten when I found him at night in an ice storm outside my apartment. Harry died in August of 2010, and I wrote about him here. He was two months shy of 20.
We got Bella as a kitten from the animal shelter when Kate died, and she's probably close to 16 years old. She's been losing weight for a couple of years, but at first that was okay, because she was a bit overweight. But she was down to 8 pounds last October, and now she's nearly down to 7. We had complete blood tests and urine tests and every other bodily fluid test done at the vet (same vet I've had since Kate), and the results are all negative. There is nothing wrong with her. She eats, she doesn't throw up food, she plays a bit, purrs a lot, sleeps a lot, doesn't seem to be in pain. But she's wasting away. So, yeah, there's something wrong with her. For me, 16 is not old for a cat. 16 is when we start to notice that, oh yeah, the cat might be getting kind of middle-aged now.
So right now we're just waiting to see what happens, and plying her with expensive cat foods that come in pouches and smell very very bad, and guarding her food from Tasha who would otherwise gorge on it like a Roman emperor at an orgy.
Bella:
Bella with Spike, our dog who died of cancer in 2008:
Bella forcing affection on Harry:
Tasha as a kitten forcibly grooming Harry:
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