I had to rest for a couple of days. All that jauntiness about our cat that I was trying to maintain didn't match my real feelings and I would have written lugubrious sentimental things about Pets and All They Do For Us which is true; they do do a lot God knows, God knows, but less is more in the old expression-of-feelings department and I didn't want to be emoting all over the blogosphere. But he’s coming home today finally after six days in the hospital so I thought maybe I could screw my courage to the sticking point (that's from Macbeth) and carry on.
We drove up to our place at the lake for the weekend. We brought Abe’s sister here so we could examine our consciences and ask ourselves if we knew how to take care of cats at all. Here is Charlotte now, sitting in her favorite chair under the charcoal portrait of Bob Dylan that our boy Michael did as a junior in high school.
(I know, it looks like a photograph huh? His work is all like that. Only problem: it takes him like three months to finish one drawing.) It was just snowing a minute ago – a quick squall but now that seems to have stopped and the sun is coming out. We have to leave soon but I’m trying to hold back the time. I wanted to go up to my other favorite room here:
and read This Republic of Suffering which is Drew Gilpin Faust's book new about death and the Civil War, and also write in my poor forgotten paper diary which is getting short shrift lately.
But in five hours I can got get Abe who has had a one prett-y prett-y hard time (say that the way Larry David does on Curb Your Enthusiasm.) They catheterized him as we know but when they took the tube out at midnight one night and watched him the next day he still couldn’t empty his bladder completely. Also, he appears to be anemic but no one knows why. Was it Kitty AIDS? Feline Leukemia? Should they work him up for both? By all mean, yes. Hmmmm, but then the news came that he's OK in that department so what was the deal? The hours passed; they called twice daily. Now they had to catheterize him again… Finally on Friday they called and said “Let’s do an abdominal ultrasound, because he has to have surgery and we should know what’s in there. It’s the only thing now: a Perineal urethrostomy or PU – which, in fairness, they had told us about the first night Mary and I brought him in.
"With a PU they just reroute the urethra” I thought the young doctor said that first night. “They create a new opening in the perineal area.”( This, in case your mother told you never never to look down there, is the smooth shiny stretch of real estate we all have between the Department of Waste Management and what Shakespeare (Shakespeare again, that show-off!) called the Organs of Increase..)
But I must’ve understood wrong because this time they gave a different explanation. Friday’s doctor said, “Think of it like a garden hose that used to be nine feet long and now we’re gonna make it six feet long, that’s all - because the part of the urethra that gets jammed up is the narrowest part, at the end….
“So we’re going to basically cut off his penis.”
Poor Abe. “First they came for my scrotum when I was too young to measure the loss and now this!" he’d have thought he’d overhead them.
Well it’s history now. They operated and he came through. Except for the worsening anemia which is probably just from loss of blood and should we transfuse him? We think so? Of course by all means, is it complicated? Not at all. Costly? Mmmmm yes…
But just two weeks ago I heard a re-broadcast of that wonderful program about penises that Ira Glass did on This American Life. OK, OK it was really about testosterone. And don’t we all know what testosterone has done to the world! With my own estrogen levels ebbing daily the see-saw of hormones has caused testosterone to come into new prominence. (Ask my oldest girl who when she sees me nowadays says “Hi Mum you look great! You only have this One Whisker!”)
Thus little grey Abe won’t be fighting anyone, not that he ever did. He was always meek and self-effacing as anyone can see.
He won’t spray anyone, not that he ever did that either, his cruel owners having nipped that urge in the bud when he was a baby. He won’t even get to stand up to go to the bathroom. "He’ll pee like a girl" the vet had said and so he shall I suppose. The important thing is that he’ll be home with us soon.
Soooo initial sleepover bladder emptying and work-up: $1400; added evaluations $2000 more. Transfusion, morphine cocktail, enemas: a grand total of 4500 balloons. But Abe eating and peeing and trotting around with the enjoyment we all know? Priceless! So hang on old friend we’ll be there soon. And they say the drugs are great!
