Bella's own plans

Two years ago this month, Bella was diagnosed with kidney disease and the vet said she wouldn’t last the weekend, a week at most. Bella had other ideas. She responded well to the special renal food and is now mainly like an elderly cat rather than a sick one. There have been a couple times over the past two years when we thought she was on the way out, but she still had other ideas. She’s slowed a lot, but she’s still bright and aware, loves sleeping in our laps or next to us at night, and she loves her new dog brother, Leo. She deserves this quiet retirement that she clearly enjoys. We don’t try to second guess here anymore—she clearly has her own ideas.

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Jul 23, 2018 at 6:04pm PDT

I took the photo above of Bella earlier today, one of several I took. The Instagram caption pretty much tells the story, and it’s something I was going to talk about this week at some point. The photo is a good reason to do so now.

Bella is doing okay, despite everything—much better than anyone would have expected. But it’s also why I haven’t talked about her condition much over the past eight months: We have no idea how she’s really doing.

Last November, I blogged about how we thought Bella’s journey was coming to an end. It turned out that she’d just had an upset tummy, but when I shared the Instagram photo, there was such an outpouring of support and kindness on Facebook that I was actually embarrassed, not the least because it turned out to be a “false alarm”. So many people I know have lost furbabies, and know what that pain is like, and I felt bad for unnecessarily bringing up those memories and feelings.

So, when Bella had another turn a couple months ago, I didn’t say anything. That turned out to be a sore tooth, probably the one they can’t fix because she can’t have anaesthetic due to her kidney disease. We didn’t have any of the special wet food for her, so we took her renal dry food and soaked it in water to soften it, and she was fine with that, and ate normally. Since then, she’s gone back to her dry food and continues to eat, drank (and use her catbox…) a lot.

So, every time some silly human has been convinced she was on her way out, she’s proved them wrong. Like I said in the caption, “she clearly has her own ideas.” We’re good with that.


Footnotes: I took several photos today, but I chose this one because she’s looking more or less at the camera, not off to the side as usual. I really like it. And, it goes to show it’s possible to get a really good close-up using the camera on a smart phone, something I’ve sometimes struggled with. Good to know for the future.

Also, this is post number 31 for July, meaning I've now made this month's goal, the first time this year. Every post over the coming week will reduce the deficit so far this year. Will that make any difference? Will this be the year I again make my annual goal? We'll see.

Previously

Bella’s journey
Bella’s condition
Bella’s new normal
Better Bella
Is this it?
All posts about Bella are tagged “Bella”