Goodbye Harvey.

My handsome boy got sick.



Then he seemed to be getting better. Then he got sicker again.



Turns out, he was only faking. He's been doing a pretty good impression of a healthy cat, but it was only an impression. Eventually, time came for his kidneys to pack it in entirely. So we took him off to the vet yesterday and sent him to that happy mouse hunting ground in the sky... or maybe, this being Harvey, to that giant cushy lap, where he is forever being hand-fed delicious terrine of free-range Patagonian mouse livers. Or something.



My lap will be a much colder place now.

Smelly cat, sicky cat...

Harvey is Not Well.

He recently stopped eating his regular k/d (kidney diet) crunchies. Stopped. Completely. Starved himself for a few days (we did our best to tempt him with tuna etc until we could get him to the vet; naturally he chose the worst possible time) and lost a truly shocking amount of weight.

Now, those of you who've met Harvey are probably finding this hard to imagine. "What was there left to lose?" you are thinking. Well. Trust me on this. He got even skinnier. Also, he started hobbling around on wobbly old-man legs the way he did when we first adopted him - before getting him on the miracle k/d food and turning him into a real live cat, doing a good job of pretending to be healthy.

So the vet (who turned out to be a long-lost schoolfriend of Beloved's, as it happens) said he'd gotten hisself hopelessly dehydrated and needed to go on drip. He went into hospital. He stayed on drip for two days. (Jemima, meanwhile, wandered around the house looking a bit freaked out. She always knew there was a danger of not coming home from That Place.) Vet told me he was then doing sooo much better, totally ready to come home, he was eating tons (dry and wet food), enzymes were down (up? whichever is the good one when you're testing for kidney failure), all great. Harvey came home.

Harvey continued to refuse to eat dry food. Okay... we give him wet food. He's lapping that up, more or less (less, really, but doing pretty well for Harvey). But he's still limping around like a very old, sick man. His legs are all wobbly. He doesn't purr. And he's got diarrhoea. And the vet keeps saying ominous things like "it's a bit touch and go" and "there's not much point in giving him his shots now".

[Insert sad face here.]

I am deeply in love with my cat right now.

Jemima is a sweet little thing, but the sweet is mixed with a liberal dash of crazy. That crazy has in the past led her to traumatise herself, and to leave me scarred (quite literally), but these days it seems to be making her utterly, pathetically, endearingly devoted to me.

Since we moved, she has hardly dared set foot outside. When we leave the doors to the garden open, she sits on the doorstep and looks out with big, round eyes at the strange new world out there. But she doesn't dare actually cross the threshold. Once or twice she has - very bravely - ventured out, but she keeps a close eye on the door, and if a person should make the tiniest move towards it, she shoots inside as fast as she can. (Running, on one occasion, straight into the glass door, bouncing off (ouch! forehead!), and circling back without slowing down.) Because clearly we are doing our damndest to trick her into going outside, so that we can lock her out and abandon her FOREVER.

Silly muppet.

This is, of course, the same cat who used to go stir crazy if locked inside for more than 12 hours; the same cat who occasionally disappeared for 24 hours or more at a stretch, causing extreme anxiety in housesitters. But that was before. Now, we've moved, and everything's different. Did I mentioned she traumatised herself, back in her yoof? Yes. The crazy is coming back to haunt her.

Anyway, so besides her sudden fear of the great outdoors, she's also developed an enormous crush on me. Bad things will happen if I am ever in a room without Jemima in it! Ever! So she follows me around, making tiny little birdlike noises, and once she's established what it is that I'm doing and how long I'm likely to be there, settling down to purr wherever she can make herself comfortable.

Like, you know. The handbasin.

Yes, I know she always did like the basin. But then, it was about finding a comfy spot to be alone in. Now, it's about protecting me while I brush my teeth. The second the toothpaste comes out, there she is. Purr, purr, purr. Curling up in a way you'd swear wasn't possible on a hard surface. Purrrrrrr.

Crazy.