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Norah the Explorer

Good-bye, beautiful.

Yesterday afternoon, we took Norah to the vet to let her go. We'd exhausted all our resources trying to save her, but in the end, FIP had taken over and started shutting down her body. It progressed from her tail, to her back legs, to her front legs, and at the end, was beginning to violently attack her brain as well. So we decided that the kindest thing to do for her would be to put her to sleep and end her pain. She just sat there in the vet's office and closed her eyes as we petted her.

They gave her a sedative because she was so sensitive to touch, and it relaxed her to the point of not even seeming to notice we were there anymore. A few minutes later, they injected the euthanasia liquid, and within seconds she was gone. She didn't even close her eyes, and she didn't even seem to notice what happened. It was a very peaceful ending to her pain.

May she rest in peace.

Oh, no..

Friday, I went to a specialist that was recommended by the first vet. I spent EIGHT HOURS in that horrid, horrid place, having all sorts of tests being run on me and being observed. They discovered that it's not just that I'm in pain, but it's that I really, truly can't walk. I've lost use of my legs. They put me against a wall and tried to get me to stand, but I couldn't. All I could do was stay limp and cry.

In the end, they diagnosed me as having "Progressive multifocal neurological disease (myelitis vs myositis)", which in non-geekyhuman language was explained as meaning what's wrong is neurological. And they said there's a good chance it's slowly shutting down my body! I didn't like the sound of that. I don't think the humans did either, because we just about drowned when we got in the car.

So now I'm taking even more nasty antibiotics, and hoping that I'm going to start walking soon. Oh, I hope I do. I'm sick of vets. I've been to THREE this week! And none of them agree with each other about what's wrong...

I have a WHAT?

I am a very, very angry kitty. Today I went to a different vet because I was still in a lot of pain. And guess what? I have a 'Coccygeal Vertebrae Fracture' - a fracture right by my tail. So I've been in pain for FOUR DAYS when I could have been healing and getting better. No wonder I hurt too much to walk or use my litterbox. They even said that if I didn't improve, I'd have to have my tail amputated! Can you believe that?! I don't think this would have happened had our other vets caught it on their x-ray Saturday.

But I'm very, very, very angry that the bad-vets did not see that the first time. They said it was because the x-ray was blurry so they couldn't tell. I don't think that excuse is a very good one. If my x-ray was too blurry to see anything wrong, then I think they should have taken another one. Isn't their job to care for animals? Not redoing a blurry x-ray is very hypocritical to that, I think. I'm so glad to have another vet that is a little more careful about his job.

Hopefully my tail will heal so I don't have to have it amputated, because they said that's not a good thing for a kitty to go through. I have to go back to the vet Monday, so I'll let you all know how it goes. I hope I get better.