#it sucks being poor again fretting over leeloos health again

[foldingfittedsheets]

I got Leeloo when she was seven weeks old. The owner lied, or miscounted, and I got her a week too young. She was pretty well adjusted for all that, feisty and fierce as a kitten. I got her right as my ex and I were splitting. She was only a month or two old when we broke up. It was pretty wretched, finals week at college, both of us heart sore, and then we both came down with the mother of all coughs.

He was sleeping on the couch. I offered to share my cough suppressant and he set it on the table. We weren’t used to having a kitten under foot yet.

I was brushing my teeth when I glanced out the door and saw one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen, my beloved kitten on her side seizing, the pill capsule punctured and empty beside her. He burst into panicked tears when I shouted and I practically shook him to get in the car while routing to an emergency vet.

We sat clutching each others hands in the waiting room. Neither of us had known who would get the kitten in the breakup. But sitting there, both of us sobbing, he said it should be me. The doctor told us she had a fifty fifty shot of pulling through. She’d almost asphyxiated, her tongue was blue when we’d gotten her in the door.

After what felt like centuries they came out and said she’d made it. She was going to live.

It was only a few months later that I noticed her not walking around. She barely played anymore. I took her to the vet again and they said she was just constipated and didn’t follow up. Another pestering a week later led to closer examination of her X-rays. Turns out, the asphyxiation had led to a very narrow blood vessel leading to the head of her femur dying. So her bone had snapped off in the joint.

Horrified at the amount of pain she must have been in I got her in for surgery to remove the bone fragment. In a human we’d stop being able to walk, but cats have enough muscle to overcome a simple thing like lacking the ball for their ball and socket joint.

The surgery was a shit show. They called me after putting her under anesthesia and cutting her up open only to realize they were missing a tool. Then they sent her home with an open wound instead of stitches and I had to bring her back yet again to go under and get stapled shut. Then they tried to charge me for all their fuck ups while I was already sobbing over vet bills.

I had a loft bed at the time. Usually she climbed a cat tree to join me in bed at night but after her surgery I made a nest on the ground so I could cuddle with her every night. Her dopey little face looking at me from her cone was worth my back hurting every day.

I felt so bad watching her try to eat with a cone that I hand fed her every meal. To this day she’ll go sit by the food dishes, looking at me longingly to remind me of my little nest on the ground where I’d hand fed her.

That was a decade ago. But she still remembers.

Today I got her new medicine for her horrible cough, fretting about her lungs collapsing. I lovingly rolled each pill and brought them to her an hour early because I couldn’t stand having medicine on hand that I wasn’t giving her.

It was only after she’s happily eaten her pill pockets that I remembered the pills saying to give them with food. So I walked back upstairs and stood beside the cat bed while she ate from my hand again, and when she was done she looked at me with love. Because she doesn’t feel good but I’m still here to hand feed her.

#ramblies #Leeloo #she’s had so much medical bullshit #and this is already going long but I was living paycheck to paycheck when things broke bad #and a friend anonymously donated to pay for her surgery #I found out who it was years later and I’ll never stop being grateful #and I’ll never stop being grateful for that act of generosity #it sucks being poor again fretting over leeloos health again #but at least this time I have a credit score and a savings account #I want the antibiotics to just magically make her feel better instantly #ffs foibles