Ed and I took Brunswick to the vet for his 6 month blood check-up. He gets phenobarbital to control epilepsy and his levels need monitoring. We took Chewy too, because he has been losing weight. He is acting normally, but has something going on and the vet thinks it is cancer. Best case, it might be toxoplasmosis or irritable bowel syndrome – both treatable.

So it was decided we would have him treated for irritable bowel syndrome – he will get steroids and will feel better. If that isn’t what he has, the treatment won’t hurt hm. If it is cancer, he can’t be helped anyway. The test to further the diagnosis would be an ultrasound, $750, and when we had this test done for Sniff, it did not show his cancer. The biopsy proved the diagnosis and once a 14 year old cat has been opened up and there is something like that going on, you just administer the shot, which is what we did. Otherwise he would have had an extremely painful death.

So we won’t be administering chemo either – it is hard enough on humans and would be very difficult for Chewy. Bottom line, we will lose him and I am thinking that if we can’t halt his weight loss, due to his eating but not deriving nutrition from the food – the condition is interfering with his absorbing the nutrients – he will be gone soon.

He came by to keep me company this morning while I did my stretches. I reach out with my free arm and pet him and he purrs.

Should I say how devastated I feel? My poor, dear kitty.

xx, Teal