And then there was one...

When The Husband and I met, I had two cats and he had one. When we moved in together we ushered in an unholy mess of hissing and fur. Two years ago, it became clear the kidney issues one of my cats was having were more than he could bear and so we were down to two. Our little old ladies came to accept a kind of quiet disdain for each other and all was well with our menagerie.

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed The Husband's cat had a little limp. As it seemed to go away pretty quickly, we attributed it to a bit of stiffness when she first got up. We also noticed she hadn't been coming upstairs at night much and decided that was due to the heat we've been having lately. On Thursday night the limp was back. I made a mental note to make an appointment with the vet and went to bed. When we got up on Friday, she had lost use of the paw completely. It was heartbreaking to watch her try to make her way to her food bowl, so I moved it closer and waited for the vet's office to open.

They squeezed us in for an 11:30 appointment. I moved her to a favourite chair and went upstairs to brush my teeth and get dressed. And then I heard the thud. She tried to get off the chair on her own, and it became clear she couldn't use the limbs on her left side at all. Right then, in the carrier she went! I was pretty sure she wasn't coming home with me. Tip!: If you're hoping to jump the queue at the vet's office, I highly recommend showing up to the waiting room in tears. They'll move you the hell out of there pretty quickly. My fears were warranted, she had likely suffered a stroke. To confirm she'd have to undergo a battery of tests and the treatment options were scarce. Since she was shaking in terror at even the preliminary exam, I made the call not to put her through more prodding and let her take that trip over the Rainbow Bridge.

At park on the way home from daycare, The Parasite asked why her kitty's "arm was all folded up" and I told her her kitty had died. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much of a reaction. She didn't seem to much care about the cat unless she was sitting on her stuff. When her great-grandmother died last year she took it in stride, likely because she was too young to grasp the finality of death. I thought she still was, and I was caught off guard by her sudden outburst of tears and anger. "I love Cleo! She's my best friend!" It broke my heart a little more. Then she caught me off guard again a little later when she said "When Indy dies, I won't have any kitties at all!" She put that together all by herself. I'm impressed by her intelligence and afraid for us in her teen years at once.