In the mood for a little Andrea Bocelli this morning, I played "Con te Partiro" from my iTunes library. I love this song more than words can adequately portray. I do not know a stitch of Italian, yet the first time I heard the song in the late '90's I felt a connection. This song sounds like goodbye. Goodbyes are hard, even if they are good for you. Their memories are bittersweet.

So there I sat with my laptop, eyes closed and tears welling, when I feel something not a little fluffy at my hip. Sophie stared intently at the computer that was producing the noise, before closing her eyes and beginning to purr. I doubt she knows any more Italian than I do…but then, hearts need very little translation.

I can't decide if she's happy that I've taken to feeding the squirrels or not…she seems to jump at the screen an awful lot while they're out there. Nick tries to cheer her up, telling her that those squirrel tails have nothing on hers.

Sophie went in for her follow up appointment on Saturday morning. Her bladder wasn't full enough for the urinalysis when we arrived, so they pumped fluids into her and held her for a few hours. The vet walked up to us saying, "Good news, bad news…" She had no crystals in her urine—amazing after having too many to count (excess of 100) in the small sample they viewed a month ago. The prescription food has done its work...even though she hates it.

(But, as Nick points out...she eats it. She eats everything. She just keeps eating and eating...)

Bad news, the new urine sample was riddled with bacteria. We have to pill her with an antibiotic twice a day for two weeks and then go back for another follow up. She no longer has to take solely Prescription Diet S/D; instead, she has to take Prescription Diet C/D. But now she can have Pounce again. Still no pretzels.



I had been holding her stock of Fancy Feast Marinated Morsels hoping that one day we would get the green light to give them to her again. I asked the question point-blank on Saturday, and that one day will never come. Not worth the risk. That afternoon, I emptied her place in the cupboard, moving the cans to a paper bag to take to her cousins' house. She was so excited to see me in that cupboard, fingering those cans. Nearly dancing with excitement, she stood on her back paws and braced herself on my leg. STUPID PH!

Sophie went back to the vet on Tuesday; her father took her. I was concerned about her long stretches of sneezing and a weeping eye that I first noticed Saturday. Sunday night, she went potty—first #1, then #2—in my closet. Monday morning, I called the vet to see if my fears were unfounded: nope, they wanted to see her.

Her eyes looked good (I keep thinking of her sister whose eye infection caused them to remove her eye when she was a kitten...so weird eye stuff with Soph freaks me out) and her sneezing has stopped. BUT, it just isn't normal for cats to do their business just anywhere. Instinctively, cats look for soil or sand-like material to eliminate…shag carpeting does not so much meet the prompt.



So they did a urinalysis and found crystals. Feline cystitis has ruined our little kitty's life. I gave the unopened bag of cat food that I had to a friend at work. (When I handed over the Iams Naturals she exclaimed, "My cats have never eaten so good!" and somewhere Sophie was weeping at her lost lifestyle…) I want to have a vet tell it to my face before I give away her precious Fancy Feast—she will be on low pH food the rest of her life. Dr. Larsen told us that her infection is very rare in a female feline.

She is on Hill's Prescription Diet s/d for at least the next 1-3 months (at which point we would be able to switch to the over-the-counter version), but possibly forever. As I rearrange my budget to accept that I can probably live off on an English muffin a day, I am planning to call PetSmart (where I get an über low price) to see if Sophie's clinic needs to fax over her prescription for a refill, or if I can walk in there with the copy they gave Nick on Tuesday. I will also call the vet today to see what I can give her for treats since she is used to getting them in the morning (it's the only reason she gets me up at the most ungodly hours, but I enjoy her enthusiasm), and OTC treats are a no-go.

We read over her diagnosis and her new diet, Sophie sitting on the counter-stool next to Nick. He looked at her with sad eyes and said, "You know what this means, don't you? No more potato chips." And I swear, if she was any kind of a teenager she would have ran upstairs and slammed the door while screaming, "I HATE MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!"

A Life Gone By:

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They found roundworm in our cat's poop.

Being that she has no outside exposure and that she can't get five-inch worms in her intestines from sniffing air, I would say that she has had these suckers the entire time we've had her (I refuse to believe we have mice that she could have gotten them from). When I asked if this was possible considering that last year's sample yielded no parasites, they replied that they only test a portion of the sample and that some worms are discriminatory-layers. In essence, it's likely that they missed her nasty worminess.

They gave her the first deworming treatment and sent a second home to be administered in two weeks. I am so completely grossed out. They have me on the lookout for squirming poo, and I am wigging out. So seriously. Nick and I threw out all of her current litter. The instructions I found were to first scrub it out with bleach because bleach is toxic to ringworm larvae, and then the scrub away the bleach because bleach is toxic to cats. Then we scrubbed her bathroom. My eyebrows physically itch. Why my eyebrows? Good question. I feel like the psychologist from Miracle on 34^th Street.

I don't remember feeling quite this disturbed since we had to read How to Eat Fried Worms in fourth grade. Some describe the Antichrist as a horned demon with flaming nostrils—in my mind, he's slimy and squirmy, and he should be fed to baby birds. I will spend the next weeks trying to overcome my revulsion and work up the courage to so much as touch my cat.

I am almost afraid to mention it, but I think Spring is well on its way. It has been over 40° most of the week, and after a winter season that seemed to start in October and during which we broke snowfall records from 1978, 40° feels just about like paradise. Finally I can look both ways without edging halfway into an intersection, and that stubborn icicle on the edge of the garage has bid us farewell. Good riddance.

My car said it was 50° when I got in after work. I rushed home to turn off the furnace and open the windows and the patio door. Immediately, Sophie scrambled to the edge of the now screened door. She sniffed excitedly at the smell of real air, so excited in the exercise that she began to sneeze, sniffed more, sneezed more, and then rolled to her back, stretching all four paws in opposite directions as if to say, "I love life!"

And then she sat up to clean her butt.

She has an appointment on Saturday, March 15th: her one year check up! She has no idea, as I can assume that she's pays about as much attention to soothsayers as she does to me or Nick. She's a cat: if it isn't sparkley or jingly, why should she care? Though, I must say she always comes when called, even if she's in the middle of doing her business downstairs where the litter box resides. She's good like that—which is why Nick was alarmed Monday morning when she wasn't underfoot and did not come to his call. I, slower to stir after that nasty bout of Daylight Savings Time, awoke to his frantic looking for your favorite cat and mine. We found her in the garage. Even though it was her own lousy fault for somehow sneaking out there, I felt incredibly guilty and bought her several toys and two beers.