About 7.30pm this evening Dr Emily Payne from Pet Vets left a voicemail with an update about Artemis: “She’s drinking a bit of water for us, and she has eaten a very small amount of food as well, so that’s good. And she’s purring when she gets a pat.”
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“I’m so glad she’s doing well, I really didn’t know if she’d make the night,” said our vet Glen Kolenc a short time ago. And yet Artemis did make it through the night, thanks to interns Dr Helsa Teh and Dr Dharshinee Rajkumar and their team at the Sydney After-hours Veterinary Emergency Service.
“On presentation Artemis was collapsed and her gum colour was slightly muddy,” says the discharge statement. “She was given oxygen by mask and started on shock rates of intravenous fluids. Her blood pressure improved afterwards.” Artemis then spent the night in hospital on the drip, with methodone for pain relief.
While there is a lesion in her mouth which, as I explained yesterday, “could be a tumour”, the report also says that “her small kidneys and very dilute urine despite being dehydrated is suggestive of kidney disease”.
This morning, thanks to James Neave providing transport and Kate Carruthers covering the bills for now, Artemis was transferred back to our regular vets at Pet Vets, Petersham. She’s back on the drip and at the start of a few more days in hospital while tests are run and diagnoses reached.
At lunchtime Dr Emily Payne called from Pet Vets to say the first of the blood results were back. They show very marked kidney disease going on, “all kidney-related enzymes high”, “this all relates to kidneys”. And if it is kidney disease, well, it’s generally manageable long-term. It could even explain the mouth lesions: ulceration. We’ll find out more over the next few days.
However for the time being it’s mostly a matter of getting Artemis her strength back and then figuring out what’s going on. There will be uncertainty for a while, but she’s alive and now in no immediate danger.
My especial thanks to the many, many people who’ve given support, both personal and financial.
Donations have now well exceeded $2000, and this will probably cover the emergency treatment, hospitalisation and diagnoses currently scheduled. Whether further treatment is needed remains to be seen.
Of course if the mouth lesions do turn out to be cancer then we’re in for a bumpy ride. But it may not be that, and Dr Payne emphasised that at this stage we simply don’t know.
Thank you, everyone.
Right now I’m mentally exhausted, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I will respond properly to comments in the next instalment. But for now, I’m taking a nap.
[Photo: Artemis, 30 May 2004.]
What a week! If you were following my Twitter stream this evening, you’d already know that one of the cats, Artemis, is gravely ill tonight. She is in hospital. My cashflows are thoroughly depleted. And I am severely stressed. But I am also astounded by people’s generosity of spirit.
In writing all this, I run the risk of alienating those who want to see a supposed-professional’s website full of serious things like my media work and serious commentary, or at least mildly amusing satire, not that supposedly lowest-of-low, “cat blogging”. My good friend Nick Hodge has already written this week about professional versus personal social media projections and the risks of letting them intermingle.
But you know what? Fuck all that!
If I am to be an honest human — and I would like to think I strive to be one — then what I write about should be what is on my mind. And this is what dominates my mind today. If you don’t like it, well, stop reading now and pop back another time. Maybe next week.
And if you think less of me for writing about the personal issues that happen to be dominating my life, well, fuck you too.
So, to Artemis…
The cat vomited this morning. Again. Artemis has this habit of gorging her food and then, five minutes later, throwing up wherever she’s standing.
Today it was a projectile effort from the heights of the TV stand, a reddish-brown spatter right across the living room floor.
Remember that last time you threw up? How the acrid stomach acids burnt your throat and mouth? How it felt like it was surging up into the back of your nose? It’s just like that. Freshly warm and mixed with the reek of cheap fish.
You can’t help but get it on your hands as you wipe it up.
I’ll bet just the thought of that smell is causing tightness in your sinuses, clenching in your throat.
Wiping up cat vomit first thing in the morning is rather unpleasant, no?
If wiping up cat vomit is the worst you have to think about today, then you’re one of the luckiest bastards on this planet. It’s not a particularly demanding sacrifice to make in return for some furry companionship.
Today is, of course, Anzac Day, our national memorial for those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and that other country.
… like sitting in high vantage points around ’Pong’s desk while he’s working.
That’s Artemis on the left and Apollo on the right. Artemis had spent all afternoon asleep on my jacket, near where I was working. Apollo had been sleeping on my other jacket on the office floor. I think they now expect to be fed or something.
As we begin a new and somewhat rainy Monday here in Sydney, it’s worth reflecting on my world as revealed through Twitter.
- If only cats ate cockroaches my two most significant household chores would cancel out.
- The only thing a VCR is good for is to watch old porno movies.
- “Luxurious possum fur” is an oxymoron.
- Twitter is (like all networks) just an amplifier. Natural news-bringers bring news. Natural wankers wank.
- Total Eclipse of the Heart has the most sensible music video of any song ever.
- “Wynyard Hotel, the sign saying ‘restrooms maintained to highest standard’ doesn’t stop stale urine smell.”
- As we all know, cardio fitness is improved through gin.
- “Do not insert in ear canal” is sage advice.
Now what sort of impression of me does that give? And what will this week bring?
[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]
I was going to tell you about Projections 2007 — a photography competition whose finalists were shown tonight at the Chauvel Cinema. Billy Law’s “Pumping Iron” series was one of them, and there was some very cool stuff indeed.
But… the Projections 2007 website still reads as if tonight hasn’t even been planned yet, and the only details online are the event announcement. So there’s no pretty pictures to link to and rant about.
So instead I’m going to tell you about the cats.
I’ve already descended to the level of blogging about pets by telling you that Artemis caught a Noisy Miner. So this week you need to know about Apollo and the chillies (pictured at left). But I won’t bother with a detailed story because such domestic trivia is really, really boring.
Suffice it to say that I wanted the freshly-harvested chillies — from our own garden! — to stay in the white bowl. Apollo had other ideas. Four times. And I took a picture.
Now you really do need to bow down before me and worship me as your god.
I decided not to publish a high-resolution version of this photograph. This morning one of our cats, Artemis, proudly brought us a Noisy Miner chick which she’d just hunted. After she’d played with it a while I decided to grab my phone to photograph her victory. But by the time I’d done that, this is all that remained.
Good heavens, I’m blogging about the pets!
I think I’d better migrate to Cincinnati immediately.
That said, it’s interesting that she left the claws. I don’t like eating chicken’s feet either.
This week’s website which simply had to exist: Cats that look like Hitler. (Courtesy of Tim Bray.)
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