cimorene

The BB has kidney disease! But they still need to do more tests to determine exactly what kind and how bad it is and what exactly we need to do in the future. We've done some research and this is true, it seems like there are a million tests that all require multiple samples. In the meantime,

We still don't know why she peed in the wrong places a few times! Is she in pain? Maybe! She was kind of yowling when using the litterbox but she also is still using it and she also is acting happy and playful and still eating and drinking the rest of the time which isn't really normal for cats in pain.

The vet did prescribe us a painkiller... but the special painkiller that isn't dangerous for kidney diseased cats is, apparently, an opioid... that's actually for humans, just in smaller doses. It's in capsules that we'd have to break open in order to mix it into her food, and then she would actually be like, high on opium??? And we're not even sure if she's in much pain. And right now we're trying to finish packing all of our stuff to start moving it tomorrow evening!

Does she have a UTI? Maybe! I'm pretty sure the vet left us on 'maybe' with that and therefore 'maybe' with the antibiotic, but when they called me back yesterday the vet was at a different animal hospital and it was just an assistant passing on a message. So I've gotta try to call the vet, and ask them to call me back, but I have approx. 1 million questions and am having difficulty even prioritizing them in my own mind, let alone into a script.

Her diet needs to be altered as possible to persuade her to eat the kidney-disease-appropriate food with the low phosphorus and phosphorus-binding, whatever that is. Although it's more important that she just eats period, and she is, but she never eats very much at the 3x so far we've tried to separate the cats to feed them, she has just responded with confusion and eaten a few bites, and then been like "WHY IS THIS NOT MY REGULAR EATING PLACE AND WHERE IS MY DINING COMPANION!!!" In each case, I fed her in the normal place in order to get her to eat more of the food (which did work, thankfully, although again: a very small serving).

Is she actually eating less than normally though? She never has been that big on food and treats, and she almost always eats frequently in small snacks, even with the wet food that she really likes (which we can't buy anywhere anymore, and it has starch thickener in it anyway, and tuna is bad for the environment anyway and ocean fish in general is not good to feed to cats in large quantities because of potential mercury levels which are more dangerous the smabitsller the cat and she's very small. But she did REALLY like that extra-stinky, extra-cheap tuna that nobody sells anymore). But if we have to separate the cats in order to feed them, they aren't gonna be able to eat like that in the future, but they're both old and stubborn and very attached to each other. This is such a headache. I can't just starve them until they give up and eat alone because that's dangerous for diabetics like Snookums. Augh.

Also, I'm expecting some MORE strangers to come look at the flat in a couple of minutes, so I have to delay trying to disassemble the livingroom bookcases and calling the vet until that's over.

Since my executive function is such a mess and I deal poorly with anxiety I usually would just "nope can't" out of something like this and go hide somewhere taking deep breaths and distracting myself with books until I was calm, but I can't do that because of the time limits on... all of this stuff that I can't forget which seems to be happening all at once.