desperation and relief

today’s emotion du jour has been desperation.

i heard it first in Ulrich’s voice as he stumbled into the room right at 7 this morning, seconds before the alarm was set to go off. “something’s wrong with Pippa,” he said, his voice half a pitch outside his normal range, and i tossed the duvet off of my head and sat up.

“P-Pippa?” i mumbled, my last dream’s residue still evaporating around me.

Ulrich, realizing he had overdone the urgency by a notch, quickly clarified: “she’s okay for now, but we need to bring her to the vet today. she’s been in the litter box 60-70 times each day since thursday.” during his morning exercises he had noticed her pacing back and forth between the living room and the closet where we keep the cats’ self-cleaning litter box, which prompted him to have a look at the litter box app. that’s when he saw that the cats had tripled their toilet use over the past 4 days, with Pippa being the predominant cause for the uptick in visits.

Ulrich trailed behind on her next trip to the litter box and noticed her straining and meowing in what seemed like pain. he thought she probably had a bladder infection.

in the early afternoon I managed to grab Pippa by the nape of her neck in a moment of surprise and, wearing an oven mitt on my left hand, tucked in her paws and shoved her swiftly into her carrier. She cried during the entire car ride to the vet.

when we arrived, the waiting room was overflowing with dogs and a single guinea pig. we decided to sit on the bench just outside the waiting room. Pippa grew very quiet, but whimpered and showed us her moon-shaped pupils each time Ulrich or I reached down to touch the top of her carrier.

a steady stream of visitors accompanying their cats and dogs (mostly dogs) continued to arrive. over an hour after our scheduled appointment, it was finally our turn to see the vet. She was calm and encouraging and cooed lovingly at Pippa as she administered two shots intravenously: a painkiller and an antibiotic. she gave us two take-home prescriptions for follow-up treatment and a pouch of special cat litter and asked us to obtain a urine sample over the next few days, if we could. Ulrich and I exchanged nervous looks.

i decided to drop Ulrich off at home and make a pit stop at the nearest pet store to get a spare litter box for the urine sample (less high-tech, with no app!).

afterwards i thought about picking up ingredients for Shakshuka at the neighboring Rewe, but Ulrich called me as soon as i left the pet store. “you need to go back to the vet,” he said. the desperation in his voice had made a full comeback. he explained that Pippa was foaming at the mouth, struggling to swallow her own slobber and gagging as if she were going to vomit. he sent me three pictures and a video.

a drooling Pippa after receiving 2 shots at the vet =/

time oozed like molasses as i made a U-turn, wove through slow-moving traffic and finally parked around the corner from the vet and jogged my way back towards her office. her office had officially closed at 4 pm; it was after 4:30 but i knew there were still pets waiting to be seen (i was pretty sure the guinea pig was still somewhere in the queue). breathless, i huffed into the waiting room to see the family which had been sitting next to us with their bichon frise wrapped into a barbie towel, still waiting. they eyed me warily as they considered the possibility that i was going to cut back in front of them in line, but i did it anyway: as soon as the doors to the examination room opened, i poked my head in, attempted a feeble “Entschuldigung?” then blurted, while gesturing wildly at the photos from Ulrich on my phone: “iwasjustherewithourcatPippaandshe’sbackathomefoamingatthemouthnowpleaselookatthesephotosandthisvidiocanthisbenormal?!”

the vet eyed the pictures and quickly but calmly explained that, while the foaming-at-the-mouth reaction to medication doesn’t happen to many cats, it does happen for about 1 in 4. she apologized for not mentioning it earlier, but assured me that it would go away on its own and in the meantime there was nothing we could do but gently encourage Pippa to drink some water.

i arrived home to Ulrich holed up in his office with Pippa, cradling her in a bath towel in his arms, balls of crumpled up paper towels surrounding them on the floor marking all the spots where Ulrich had wiped up after Pippa’s foamy drool puddles. he’d had to lock George out of the room because the two of them couldn’t stop hissing at each other: George, weirded out by his sister’s newfound dopey mood, and Pippa, irritated by George’s persistent existence. A feedback loop of bad vibes continued to ricochet between them for the next few hours.

and now, finally - a settling of dust; a bit of relief to end the night. Pippa finally stopped drooling and has managed to eat about ~half her normal intake of wet food since then. she and George are still hissing at each other, but their feedback loops are slowly getting choppier and more intermittent. i can feel the desperation from today slowly dissipating from my fingers and toes. in its place is deep exhaustion, a dull heaviness which begs to take over my body and bury it underneath the soothing layers of my duvet.