Lunar Eclipse

Luna is spending the night at an animal hospital tonight.

When I got home from work on Monday, Luna didn’t greet me with her usual persistent demand to sit on my lap. In fact, she looked rather miserable sprawled on a plastic shopping bag. A couple hours later, she relocated to the corner behind the toilet. Since then, she has wandered about the apartment as though addled, refraining from eating or drinking.

By Tuesday night, it was obvious she wasn’t getting better, so I resolved to make a veterinary appointment. Today at 2:30pm, the vet told me there was fluid in Luna’s lungs, and its possible she has cardiomyopathy. She referred me to an animal hospital with a cardiologist on staff, and off we went.

The other animal hospital claims Luna’s heartbeat sounded “muddled,” blaming a possible pleural effusion or something otherwise obscuring her pericardium. They are keeping her overnight for tests, and if those don’t determine the cause, the cardiologist will step in with an echocardiogram.

I don’t really know what to think of all this, though the irony is not lost on me. If Luna is diagnosed with a heart problem, the odds of having me as an owner seem rather distended. Either way, my fluffy is defective and I hope they can dismantle her sickness before she dies. If it is cardiomyopathy, her prognosis is not good. Cats don’t feel pain very acutely, so diseases like this can go unnoticed until it’s highly advanced.

Cardiomyopathy for instance, starts as lethargy and avoidance of food and water, which the owner will notice as a quick onset illness, but has in fact worsened over several months until the cat finally stopped compensating. If not arrested early enough, it progresses to congestive heart failure and eventually death over roughly three months–though some cases can be forestalled for up to three years through medication. I can only hope she has pneumonia instead.

Until Tomorrow