Sweet Seymour

Last month, after getting our old man of a kitty onto antibiotics and wet food, he really perked up for a few weeks. He ate copiously, meowed more, even played with some toy mice. We congratulated ourselves on bringing him back.

But in the last week or so, Seymour almost completely stopped eating. Even when we warmed up his food, only bare nibbles were consumed. Then we noticed that he had pretty much stopped meowing. The occasional sounds were more plaintive and uncontrolled wails than communicative meows. On Sunday night it occurred to us that he had stopped purring, too. He, the cat who purred when you looked at him, and often loudly enough to wake the kids when they were babies, was silent. And his breath - oh, gracious, it's like something died in there.

I took our guy into the vet yesterday. After a careful exam (he's lost a whole pound in the last month! Even with the several weeks of better eating!) and a blood test, the vet thinks Seymour has renal failure. He couldn't see any growths in his mouth or throat. He might not be end-of-life, however. We're trying some things to see how he responds. First, more antibiotics to see if an infection is contributing to the situation. Second several days of sub-cutaneous fluids. If he bounces well from these interventions and starts eating again, we'll go forward with other efforts.

If not, we'll have other decisions to make. I hope it doesn't get to that.