Animals

f4.5 | 18mm

This is my first attempt at creating a high dynamic range (HDR) photograph. It’s a picture of Gus, my room mate’s cat. He likes to sleep during the day so I took a shot of him laying on the couch.

“Baby, baby!”
That is all I can hear in my head when I get home. She had just gotten home last week and I was expecting her to make a full recovery but unfortunately she didn’t make it. I think the operation was too much of a stress on her body. She was an old cat but I thought she had a few years left. She was the only cat that I actually liked having around and now I have to get used to her not sleeping by my feet.

I am sure that, like most pet owners, there comes a time when you have to cope with the lost of their beloved cats. I am not much of an animal person but I do warm up to animals if they behave. Baby was one of those animals that warmed up to me. There are the odd time where she’ll get me annoyed because she’s peeing and pooing all over the place but she was doing that because of all that extra weight in her abdomen.

There were times when she would be sleeping by my foot as I do things on the computer. One time she tried to steal my slippers. When I’m at the desk, I take off my slippers and get myself comfy. When I went to get up and go to the fridge, I couldn’t find my right slipper. My slippers are black and so was Baby. I looked at her and saw that she was sleeping on my right slipper with one of her paws on it. I look at her and she looked at me with her tongue sticking out as if she was taunting me. Her tongue sticking out was a unique feature of her’s.

I have this video of her where she’s trying to get into a box. There was nothing in the box but she was curious and I guess she was looking for food or something but the box was a bit higher than she was when she’s on all four. She tired to stand up and get into the box but she was heavier than the box and it collapsed forward and she fell into it. It was a cute video of her and her curiosity.

She was a good girl and she never really gave me any problems. Every time I called her name she would look at me or she would respond in some way. When I gave her food, she would eat what’s there. If she’s hungry and I didn’t have any food in her bowl, she would try to climb into the bag and get some herself. I found the bag all scratched up laying on the floor sometimes.

Jenn and I are going to miss her, especially Jenn since she pretty much grew up with her. Nut Nut, her daughter will probably miss her as well. I’m not sure if cats knows if something is wrong but I think they do. Nut Nut hasn’t been quite the same since Baby left. We’re not too sure why things happened so suddenly and we’re hoping that the vet can give us some answers.

Since I’m home alone, I have to take care of the cats and make sure that they’re doing well. In the house are two cats, the mom cat, Baby and the daughter cat, Nut Nut (Nite Nite). They’re both cool cats but sometimes they’re a little annoying, especially Nut Nut when she’s walking around the house screaming about something. It’s not hard to take care of cats because they pretty much take care of themselves but lately, Baby has been getting sick so we had to take her to the vet.

We’ve taken her to the vet before and they’re not quite sure what’s wrong with her. They’ve performed a whole bunch of test and nothing has come up solid enough to determine the exactly illness. Apparently, her body is producing a lot of white blood cells and it’s going into her abdomen and staying there. They had to drain a few liters from her belly to make it normal. I assumed that it was just something temporary because it came and went but now it’s gotten to the point there it just a bloated belly. She has trouble walking around sometimes because of the extra weight.

So far, two veterinarians have seen Baby and examined her. One says that she has some sort of E. coli infection and prescribed something to fight it and the other says it might be something else. Either way both of them have drained the fluid from her body and apparently that costs a lot. The thing that costs the most are the tests. They range anywhere between $400 to $600 to perform. And even with those tests, it’s not for sure that we’ll find out what’s wrong with her. They can run test after test and find nothing good and I’ll have to foot the bill. It has already cost me $1000 just for everything and we’re no closer to finding out what’s wrong with Baby.

I think it might be cheaper to keep her at home and make sure that she’s comfortable rather than taking her to the vet so they can drain her fluid. Every time they drain her belly, she looks depressed and sleepy. She doesn’t respond to me like she does when she’s at home. I don’t want to keep putting her through all of that and find out it’s not helping.

I took her home from the vet on Saturday only to find that they left the wound open. This was messy because she somehow managed to take off the bandage and went to go hide somewhere. I found out where she was by she was leaking fluid and left a trail. I tried to put the bandage back on her but it’s not easy doing it yourself. I had to ask my neighbour for some help but even that wasn’t good enough. Every so often she’ll somehow break free of the bandage and everything would get messy again.

I was home all day Saturday because I wanted to keep an eye on her. It was a good thing that she was sleeping most of the time otherwise things could have gotten messy again. The incision in her belly wasn’t that big but it was big enough that fluid was seeping out of it when she walked. I tried to cover it up the best I could but with every step she took, it pushed the bandage away from the wound.

I managed to wrap her wound with a few layers of gauze and bandage to prevent her from moving around and pushing the bandages off the wound. So far, after eight hours, the wrap is still around her wound. I’m hoping that it’ll stay that way until I can get her to the vet to have it stitched up. But from what the vet tells me, they don’t want to stitch it up right away because they want to continue to drain it. As far as I know, the draining part is making things worse.

For the last couple of years, Baby has had that stomach problem and she has been coping with it. Her stomach doesn’t expand after it gets to a certain size so this leads me to believe that her body is producing those white blood cells to accommodate for something. Removing it will cause her body to replenish what was lost which is why I want the vets to stitch up the wound. They are thinking otherwise and recommend that I don’t stitch it up just yet.

Unless they are willing to pay for everything, I can’t afford to leave it open. The wound is probably getting infected as it’s left open and fluid will continue to leak from it unless it gets sealed. I can’t afford any more tests to be done on her because I’m running out of funds. If they don’t know what’s wrong with her now, they’ll have to wait until I can afford further testing. I just want Baby to heal so that she can feel more comfortable around the house. She was able to cope with the bloated belly before so I’m sure that she can cope with it later.