Yesterday, Kizzy took the last of his Prednizone. It's been almost a month since he almost died again, and it seems like we got another reprieve.

He's on a new kind of even more ridiculously expensive prescription cat food. This one is supposed to also help with stress, as stress apparently increases the chance he'll get blocked. Beloved and I avoid talking about a relapse even as we watch his litter box like parents of a newborn watch diapers.

We made a barely spoken agreement that if the little black cat makes it a year without a blockage, he gets a medical expenses reset button even though he is working on being our most expensive cat to date, and that is saying something after adopting a Manx with megacolon.

The hair is growing back on his front legs where they shaved him to put in IVs. He begs to be taken outside on his harness every morning the minute the birds start singing. He spends his afternoons, when it is nice, lying in the sun in his playpen outside.

It is so hard not to worry constantly about him, since getting blocked is a) something that comes on suddenly with absolutely no warning and b) not something I can control, other than giving him the prescription food and nothing but the prescription food. Oddly, it gives me comfort to remind myself I could die tomorrow, too, and all we can do is enjoy the purring, velvety bundle of fur in my lap every night.

What we have is today.

Kizzy didn't pee last night. About an hour after I wrote my last post, though, his painkillers kicked in and he stopped his frantic litterbox laps and settled down. This morning, there was still nothing in his box, but he seemed cheerful, so we all went to work and school.

Around ten, I went to pick him up and he made a mournful noise. I called Beloved and he picked up the little angel and I honestly thought that was that, but when we got to the vet, Kizzy had a 180-degree personality change and started trotting around the place like a show horse.

He's not blocked. He just hadn't peed.

So then the vet tells us the bladder can get stretched out (much like Buttonsworth's megacolon) after a cat is blocked and so it takes the medicine he's on to snap everything back together. We blinked at each other and collected our little black cat and came home.

So now I think we are in the tunnel that connects a health crisis to the safety zone. Kizzy passed through this tunnel last year, and I'm praying he can do it again. It's a pretty scary tunnel, and I've been through it with people and with animals, and it never gets any more fun.

But he's still here, and I'm very very thankful for that.

Onward.

It's been a year and two weeks since the last time our little black cat had a health crisis. He had a urinary blockage last January with two rounds of hospitalization. Then we had a good year in which we fell in love with him even more.

On Friday night, he started acting frantic around the litter box. We took him to the normal vet, where they said his bladder was small so they gave him steroids and antibiotics. We took him home.

On Saturday morning, he was crying in pain. He'd vomited all over the basement in the night. We took him to the emergency vet, where he got a catheter and he stayed overnight. The bill equaled almost exactly our mortgage payment.

We brought him home this morning, and he slept on my stomach for two blissful hours during which I tried to memorize the soft feel of his fur on my skin.

About three hours ago, he started straining on the litter box again.

We called the vet. They said he might be reblocking. After we underwent several rounds of unfruitful hospitalization with Sir Charles Buttonsworth, the Manx we adopted at the same time as Kizzy, we promised ourselves we wouldn't keep throwing ourselves at chronic problems if we weren't willing to take the radical next step. In the case of urinary blockage, the radical next step is a surgery that essentially removes the cat's penis and turns him into a girl cat with a wider urethra. I won't judge anyone that would undertake that step, but we can't afford it, not if we want to be fiscally responsible and stay on track to free ourselves from the mountain of debt we built getting out of This Old House and into Chateau Travolta. One four-figure vet bill per year. We promised ourselves.

We've had the four-figure vet bill. Kizzy is currently straining on the box.

Beloved and the little angel think he just needs to drink more water, but I have watched this cat every day since the last blockage. I know the ins and outs of his litter box behavior.

This isn't going to go away.

I sit in the office, typing this post, and my human family sits in the living room, halfheartedly watching the Oscars, and my cat sits in the basement, frantic.

I told my family I won't wait for him to scream in pain. I won't let him spend another awful night vomiting and straining in the basement. I can't stand it.

I thought, this time ... this cat was so young and super-human. This cat walks on a leash and can leap to the top of the refrigerator.

I can't believe this is happening again.

I swear, after the old age death, we've had the acute kidney failure then the diabetes crisis then the megacolon and now the urinary obstruction. The vets must think we have pet Manchausen by proxy. We feed them all expensive prescription food. We scoop their poop every day, two litter boxes per cat. We filter their water and we do everything.

And they. keep. dying.

I don't know what to say.

But I have to say something, because I have to do something, because there is another half hour before I have to go feel Kizzy's bladder and figure out what to do.

Oh my God, I love this little black cat so much.

Kizzy's been begging to be taken outside on his harness every day. He doesn't care that it's cold. He doesn't care that people keep asking if we got a dog when they see us from across the street. He doesn't care that he's a pussy (SEE WHAT I DID THERE) when it comes to loud noises.

Or maybe he does now.

Usually it's me that takes him outside, but the other day I went to pick up a prescription and some stuff for spaghetti and came home to this.

I stared at Beloved. "How?"

Him: "There was a loud noise. He freaked out at the garbage can."

Me: "But ... how? There's no blood. No cut."

Him: "I know. Um? I don't know. He's magic."

HOW?

I am working, at the moment, with a big black cat who used to be an overly-long-yet-still-skinny black kitten asleep in my lap. He has utterly ruined me for the rest of the cat world.

I'm in love with black cats.

His fur is silky beyond compare and shines in lamplight. He has tiny tufts of white fur at the epicenter of his little ears. Even his nose is black, so when he closes his eyes and curls up on a black blanket, he disappears.

He has the power of invisibility.

We were at PetSmart buying ridiculously expensive prescription cat food for this little black cat who almost died last year of urinary blockage (remember that??), and they had four little black kittens of varying sizes in one of those stand-up adoption cages.

We swooned. Even Beloved, who says NO every time I ask if we can get Kizzy a friend. (And I don't really argue that hard, because there is peace in my home now and I'm not sure if peace would reign if we challenged Kizzy's ownership of Chateau Travolta.)

But the three of us stood for ten minutes before the four little black kittens and poked our fingers through the wire to touch their little furry black toes and fawned over their perfect black noses and noticed how when they curled up on top of each other and closed their eyes, they disappeared into a pillow of silky black fur.

I wanted THEM ALL.

How cool is it that while all cats are gray in the dark, black cats can actually disappear? Who else among us has such superpowers?

We have had the hermit crab twins, Charlie and Sebastian, since the little angel turned two. Never in a million years did I think they would live so long. Guess what? If you take care of your hermit crabs properly, they can live up to 40 years in captivity, with an average lifespan of 15 years. Charlie and Sebastian are at least eight and a half. Lord help me, these crabs may live to see the little angel graduate from high school.

Unless the mites get them first.

I have noticed the mites before, but I didn't realize they are such a big deal. Apparently, left unchecked, they can kill the crabs. This week the little angel and I have noticed Charlie coming out and attempting to scale his way out of the tank when we are in her playroom doing homework. Charlie is not shy, but this is new behavior. I felt kind of bad for a while, like maybe he wanted to run free. I even had an entire inner monologue with him about how he was too far from a temperate zone and even if I released him into the lake he would be toast in a month. 

I know, I know.

I just went over to Beloved and made a plea for a vigourous scrubbing and hermit crab bathing session this evening. He rolled his eyes and said we need new substrate and I bought the wrong kind last time. This does not surprise me, because no matter what I buy on my own, from ripe avocados to hermit substrate to gym socks, I buy the wrong kind in his opinion. It is a running joke. It used to really stress me out, this buying of the wrong kind, then I realized, well, if he is really concerned, he will do his own damn shopping. It is not like his legs are broken. 

This is the key to a lasting marriage.

Anyway, I kept poking at him and whining about our duties as hermit crab guardians (something I take more seriously every year these crazy huge bastards hang on) and so he has promised to buy new hermit crab whatever so we can SAVE THE CRABS FROM THE MITE ARMY this very evening.

I only hope we're not too late.

The little angel's betta fish, Simon, went down the toilet, where all streams go to the ocean, last week. I bought Simon on a whim as a surprise one day, because I had fond memories of my own betta fish in college and because I think every child needs a fish. My daughter hadn't even asked for one; it was just one of those impulse things I do as a mother because I can. When she came home from school that day, I showed her Simon, and I think I was more excited than she was, but she grew to love him and shed a tear when we made the decision that anyone who has fungus growing on his side and who has eaten part of his own tail is probably on the shady side of the tree now. RIP, Simon.

We made a trip to the pet store and came home with a new tank and a new betta fish, which the little angel named Serendipity without really knowing what that name meant. I promised to buy more distilled water so we could take better care of the tank, even though Simon did actually live for three years through his murk and that is pretty good for a betta fish. It's been a week and it's time to start switching out half the water like the man at the pet shop told us to do. The man who also looked at us with his jaw dropped when we admitted we never turned out the light on Simon's tank and said, "You know they don't have eyelids, right?" and made me feel as though we had strapped Simon to a chair and played The Cure and showed him non-stop video of the bombing of Hiroshima. So now we turn out the light for Serendipity at night. 

That fish is so spoiled.

---

New on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews -- Time, Inc.'s Big Book of When

When we were dealing with Petunia's diabetes diagnosis, my best friend told me about Ira Glass and his dog, Piney. I guess Ira's dog bites people and has crazy allergies -- he has to eat a different protein/starch combo every eight months until he gets allergic to it. Steph said she heard Ira interviewed on NPR, and he was talking about how taking care of Piney had kind of become his life.

Yesterday afternoon, I called the vet to check on Buttonsworth, who had been there all day getting enema after enema. The vet said the first one had worked, but nothing since then, and he was trying and trying but getting nothing, and the next step would be to put him under and, I don't know, dig it out of him, but that had risks, and he'd found some medicine, but it cost $60 a month and needed to be given three times a day, and there was really no guarantee it would work.

I started crying. I called Beloved. We talked about two shots a day and three pills a day that might not work and all the enemas and the fact that Buttonsworth had developed megacolon and it might just never work properly again, and I realized I was becoming like Ira Glass. I've been at the vet's office more times in the last month than the grocery store. I'm was watching Buttonsworth like a hawk. My anxiety is through the roof.

And I can't make him poop. At some point, you can become obsessed, and I was becoming obsessed, perhaps even to the detriment of poor Buttonsworth, who probably did not like all the enemas or the pain of constipation.

We made the decision not to even bring him home, because if we brought him home, I didn't know if I could bear to take him back. I called the vet back, told him to stop with the enemas, we were coming in to say goodbye.

I told the little angel, who had been prepared that this might happen. The child is growing very resilient to pet death, much more so than I have. We got in Vicki and drove to the vet's office. They brought out Buttonsworth, and the three of us covered his face in kisses and told him how much we loved him and how proud of him we were. Then we donated his insulin and syringes. Beloved and the little angel stopped for ice cream on the way home, even though we hadn't had dinner yet. I called my family and sobbed my way home. The little angel and I watched two episodes of Clean House. I had to go downstairs during book time because I couldn't stop crying. I looked at all my photos of Buttonsworth and asked myself how, again, I keep picking these sick cats? But as I looked at the pictures, I couldn't regret adopting him, even though the final total on this month was nearly a thousand dollars and he still died. He kept Beloved company during the months of unemployment. He taught Kizzy to sleep on the little angel's bed. He taught us to not be afraid of cat diabetes like we were before. He wagged his little Manx tail and rumblepurred and gave us so much love and happiness for the short four months that he was here.

So, farewell, Sir Charles Buttonsworth. We will miss you. And we are proud to say the day you died, we had finally stabilized your blood sugar. So in that we did not fail you.

Inches of snow that fell in my yard this weekend: 9

Inches of poop that came out of Buttonsworth after one enema at the emergency vet on Saturday: 6

Inches of poop remaining in Buttonsworth now: 6

Number of enemas the emergency vet wanted to give him: 5

Amount the emergency vet would charge for this service: $918

Amount I paid to get him one enema and subcutaneous fluids: $166

Number of times Buttonsworth would have died this weekend if he hadn't had an enema: 1

Number of enemas Buttonsworth has had in the past three weeks: 7 and counting

Amount of money we have spent on vets and medicine for Buttonsworth this month: $674.41 and counting

Number of months we have owned Buttonsworth: 4

Number of weeks we are giving him on a new medicine to see if we can get his colon to work: 2

Number of weeks he has been on insulin: 4

Number of hearts in this house that will be broken if the new medicine doesn't work: 3

Number of cats that will be left: 1

Number of cats my daughter desperately wants: 2

Chances of getting a second cat if Buttonsworth dies based on my husband's feelings: 0%

Number of vet trips in the past seven days: 3

Number of posts on Surrender, Dorothy in the past seven days: 2

Number of days I've wanted to crawl back in bed within twenty minutes of getting out of it: 7