#TeamTimmy: If I ever deal with another cat penis, it will be too soon.

Piper’s cat, Timmy, had a close call with death by UTI last weekend, and while he seems to have passed the tipping point of recovery, he is down to approximately half a life now. He had a mucus plug in his urethra and the catheter insertion failed, so they chose Route 2, which is to go in through the bladder and down the urethra that way. After a few nights at the vet's (because I refused to pay the thousands an emergency animal hospital overnight would cost), we brought him home with lots of pills, a collar of shame, and a catheter sutured to a tube sutured to him that was warned not to pull out.

That was about noon. The office closed at 5pm Saturday. By 5:10pm, he had pulled out his catheter. I was supposed to take him to emergency services if he did anything to it, but we pretty much gave him a thumbs up and a promise to call the vet on Monday if he were still alive. 

Piper spent all afternoon cooped up in the tiny, stuffy tiled bathroom to care for our leaky patient, preventing him from pulling it out several times before he finally got it out. In retrospect, it was better he had done it then than later when we made her eat dinner or sleep in her own bed. She has been an amazing caretaker, and if he pulls through, it will be her consistent and sacrificial care that makes the difference. She’s coping GREAT with the emotional roller coaster, but well, it’s an emotional roller coaster. I lost a lot of sleep over this, mostly because I abhor spending that much money on a pet, and deciding whether or not to kill your daughter's pet is not as easy as it seems. I resent dealing with vet because, not only am I at the mercy of my own ignorance, but there also seems to be an underlying assumption that money is no object in saving the life of a pet. By Day 2, I finally figured out a strategy. Whenever I heard, "Now we'll have to .... and it will cost ...", I would reply, "We can't pay that. How much will it cost to have him euthanized right now?". Then a Plan B would be presented that was slightly more reasonable.I learned a few more lessons that I hadn't been looking for over this last week. 1) I'm quite good at giving Timmy pills and making him swallow. 2) When a cat has a catheter, kitty litter needs to be avoided to keep the bits from going up, well, bits. I've shredded many newspapers these last few days. 3) Now that Timmy isn't allowed to have dry food (UTI, um, yay), that's what he wants to have, not the expensive canned food he's supposed to have. 4) I don't have to love a cat to lose sleep over him. And I certainly don't have to like a cat to spend too much money on him. Use that half-life well, TimmyCat.