So, as the day wore on, it became clear that Syd (the cat) seemed to not be well. He curled up with me, though, and watched Terry Pratchett's Soul Music cartoon, which is largely about the necessity of death. Then, around supper time he crawled under the bed, started thrashing around down there, then came out and stumbled awkwardly around the bed, peeing sporadically as he went, then leaped clumsily right onto my computer keyboard and seemed to want attention.
I was looking up his symptoms and saw that cats with his heart problem usually just drop dead of a blood clot, and when they don't, they usually are suddenly completely (or almost completely) paralysed in their hind legs. For some reason, in humans, clots tend to go right to the brain, whereas in cats, they have a "saddle thrombosis" which blocks off blood flow to their hind legs.
Syd crawled under the bed and wouldn't come out, and I started to envision spending Sunday evening at home alone, watching my cat die. Nothing on the 'net was at all encouraging, and the vet had warned a year ago that he was likely to drop dead without notice at any time. (The cat too.) I thought about a dumpster to throw the body in and so on (I have just that sort of brain. The ground is frozen, and the vet's is closed on Sundays). I got fairly thoroughly miserable.
I left a message, unable to keep my voice steady, on the vet's emergency line, and one of the cute female vets phoned back and was very nice. My voice was wobbly throughout. She seemed to not be of the opinion that he was dying (right now anyway), saying that they usually drop dead instantly, or show much worse hind leg paralysis than merely having a weak hind leg. She said if he could jump onto the computer keyboard, or up onto the bed, then he's had quite a mild blockage, though last night was probably quite painful, as having blood flow cut off to some of your major muscles is pretty bad.
She told me to get a special "daily low dose" aspirin that human heart patients take to thin their blood, which is about double what you'd normally give a cat, but appropriate when they're having distress of this kind. She said "Get that into him. It might be necessary to save his life." The idea is that it will dissolve clotting in his blood, or prevent more clotting.
I drove to the next town over, where they have a drug store that's open until midnight, and got some.
Syd wouldn't come out from under the bed, and I knew I couldn't get him out until he was ready, so I sneakily built more of my history web page and then tried to concentrate on a episode of Kolchak so he'd come out.
I heard some quiet thumping around and knew that a cat (normally stealthy) would be quite uncomfortable with clumping around so noisily, but that a TV playing and the noises of my usual routine would reassure him.
I was most of the way through an episode of Kolchak when Syd suddenly ran casually out of the bedroom and jumped very smoothly onto the back of the futon. He wanted attention and I held him and then tried to give him his aspirin pill. He snapped and swatted and yowled and otherwise warned me to quit trying to do that every time I tried, and I realized he was too vigorous and dangerous to get that pill into. He is a giant beast, and a 20 lb cat seems much more dangerous than a 20lb dog for some reason.
Oddly, he clung steadfastly to me despite my trying to pry his jaw open, and wouldn't leave my side. Distraught, I did something out of desperation: I crushed the pill between two spoons and mixed it in with this hairball goop you feed the cat by putting it on the tip of your finger and the cat licks it off. Syd wasn't fooled for a moment, having watched the whole process, and he normally turns his nose up at anything that has pills mixed into it just by smelling it, but he eagerly licked my finger thoroughly, getting the majority of the human low-dose pill into him.
What a relief.
Now he's playing with an old guitar string on the floor and seeming remarkably spry. Not out of the woods yet, and all, but still...
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