Luna has acquired a new skill that I can only describe as “yowling in utter distress”. This has been happening for a while now, but she’s been steadily increasing the volume and urgency with every passing day. With that said, that sounds a lot worse than what’s actually happening.
Luna is old. Super, duper old. I’ve addressed this multiple times in the past. Well, she’s now at the point where she’s starting to go a bit senile.
Though I don’t quite know the exact day Luna was born, I know it was some time in late August of 1999. This means a cat I adopted shortly after I graduated from college is now 21 years old.
I had just brought Luna home.
When I stop to think about it, that’s a staggeringly long time. Up until now, the oldest cat I’d ever seen was my grandma’s cat Boo-Boo, a beautiful Russian Blue she found playing in one of her wood piles one day.
Last weekend, Jen and I went back to Washington IL to handle a bundle of wedding-related minutia. We met with Monty of Chef’s Catering, consulted with our mistress of confection to outline cake blueprints, and endured an engagement photo session. We also had a wonderful Easter brunch care of Jen’s family, which I always enjoy. We drove back into town on Tuesday and I hopped on the train home, arriving around 6:15.
Luna is back from the vet, and she’s been diagnosed with severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Her left ventricle is enlarged and there was a clot forming in her left atrium. She’s been prescribed Lasix, Enalapril (what I take, ironically enough), Plavix, and Aspirin. Basically, they’re throwing everything they have at her in an effort to keep her from forming clots, ease her heart’s workload, and clear any fluid that backs up into her lungs.
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.
