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We fell asleep around 2 this morning, with lots of waking up throughout the night. And, this morning, Jazz is still here with us. lady_curmudgeon and I couldn't be more glad - even if it sometimes feels as if we've exchanged another day of having her with us for another day of dread about when she'll be taken from us. Her eating and bathroom habits, paired with rapid breathing, continue to show that things are very much not right. But there's not really anything we can do but keep watching for signs of distress or pain. Other than those three things she seems alert today, and has already given us loving time in bed, and is moving a bit from place to place in the house.

I can't help but feel like we're prolonging the inevitable, but that's a rather silly belief a we aren't taking extraordinary measures such as force-feeding. It's only her normal schedule of meds and us offering food to her in an attempt to get her to eat. So I think as long as she wants to stay with us, she will. I'm still hoping she'll improve and gain back a bit more of her old self. I miss her carrying her sparkle balls into the hallway, the office or onto the bed. I miss her "Singing the Song of Her People" when she is carrying sparkle balls around. I miss the way she pushes her nose insistently into my hand for petting... so if I saw any of those behaviors come back, I'd be most relieved.

Thank you for all the good wishes and prayers to those who may have seen this last night. We continue to appreciate them as we look forward with worry and a spark of hope to the rest of the week.

Tonight I got home late from work, and lady_curmudgeon is off at bowling league. I decided to try an experiment and see how things worked out: can I actually give Jazz her full regimen without the assistance of another person?

The answer is yes, yes I can.

Getting Jazz to take pills is not very easy... her head is small, so it's difficult to get the pill far enough back on her tongue to make it easy to swallow. This meant it took me about 5 tries to get this pill to go down (one time it was caught between her gums, another time it was caught in her fur on her throat, that sort of thing). Eventually I did win, however! So, given the number of tries, I give myself half a point and Jazz half a point.

After pills comes the thing that we've never been able to do with just one person - put in the IV needle and administer the subcutaneous fluids. I was surprised to find that I was able to get Jazz to stand still long enough for me to prep her and set the needle. From that point on it was merely a task of keeping her in place while I adjusted the line clamp to get the treatment running. We encountered some difficulties because I couldn't reassure her, hold her in place and hold the needle in such a way that the line ran as fast as I wanted... but really all that amounted to was that the treatment went a bit more slowly than I'd have liked.

Overall I will mark tonight a success! I'm reassured by this outcome because it means if worst case scenario should unfold I can, with a bit of frustration and effort, handle Jazz's medication by myself. I'll do my best to try and avoid that becoming a necessity, but it's nice to know I've got that option as a backup.

Sigh, why can't all the kids be as easy to medicate as ra_kitty?

We're back from the emergency vet visit this morning. Curmudgeon summed up everything for the most part with this afternoon's post. Jazz has been diagnosed with CRF (Chronic Renal Failure) and, consequently, anemia as well. There's an astoundingly complete website on feline CRF that I did a lot of reading from yesterday as I built up my list of questions to ask the vet. If you're curious what all this means and how cat kidneys work, go read that.

Jazz's BUN and creatinine levels are dangerously high, and her hematocrit levels are low. This indicates her kidneys are functioning poorly and she's going anemic, a symptom common with CRF. The vet's approach at this time, since we don't know what caused her kidneys to suddenly start failing after a perfectly OK blood work up in August, is three-pronged. 1) In case something bacterial is causing her kidneys to fail, we're giving her 1 mL of antibiotic orally per day for the next two weeks. 2) We're hydrating in an attempt to stabilize her and ease her kidney's load. To that end we're administering 175-220mL of potassium-supplemented Lactated Ringer's solution subcutaneously every day for the next two weeks. 3) We're changing her diet, putting her on Hill's Prescription Diet "k/d." Fortunately she's shown signs of loving the wet food, which will make things easier.

While at the vet's office getting her first subQ treatment, Jazz also received three shots: a shot of potassium, a shot of antibiotic and a shot of vitamin B12 as well. This will hopefully aid in stabilizing her.

The goal is two weeks of the subQ and antibiotics, then go in for another blood work up and see how her levels have adjusted. We may be able to go some time without additional subQ fluids if she responds well, maintaining things with the diet change until she gets older. Or this may become part of my daily routine. Time will tell. I'm not intimidated by this, Ra was taking daily meds for a very long time and Diva will be taking daily medication for the rest of her life, so special-needs cats don't worry me at all. In fact, as of today, we're a 100% special need household as far as our cats are concerned.

I know this condition is, ultimately, terminal. How long she has left with us is a function of how she responds to protocol and how closely we monitor her. Right now I just want to get her better for the moment and we'll figure out everything else going forward.