Well, that was a fun twenty four hours.

Things really started on Friday when I noticed the cat giving the odd cough. It was a grand smoker’s cough to be proud of. ‘Furballs’ says I and thought no more about it.

Yesterday Cat was different. He wasn’t coughing so much but he wasn’t doing either of his favourite things. He wasn’t eating and he wasn’t demanding to go out. He just lay there, and when he wasn’t lying there he was lying somewhere else. His morning feed went untouched.

Herself was getting a tad worried at this point. Even I had begun to notice the strange behaviour. I phoned the vet and made an appointment there and then. I hauled out the cat basket thing that was buried in the garage, and after the loss of copious quantities of skin and blood I managed to get Cat caged.

I drove over to the vet with my hands wrapped in kitchen paper to soak up the blood. The vet examined him and scratched his head [the vet’s head not the cat’s]. Apparently x-rays were called for. So I sat and waited for ages.

Eventually the vet reappeared and called me in. He sat me down in front of a gigantic screen and showed me lovely clear pictures of the inside of Cat. The heart was normal. The lungs and diaphragm were normal and there was no fluid. The vet scratched his head again [his own as the cat wasn’t there]. The only things he could find were doughnuts. Yes – that’s what he said – doughnuts. If I peered very closely I could see what he was talking about – faint little circles in the lungs. Apparently this is a sign of a type of asthma and is very serious.

He then brought me to another room and there was Cat in a perspex box looking very dopey and apparently breathing nearly pure oxygen. I scratched his head [the cat’s, not the vet’s] and he seemed happy enough. Leastwise he didn’t attack my hand which is his normal reaction. I was told he had to stay in overnight and I was to phone in the morning to see if he had survived.

This morning, the alarm woke me at the crack of dawn and I phoned the vet. Yes, Cat had survived and could I call over. So I had my mug of tea and drove over.

It was a different vet. She brought Cat in and gave me pages of instructions, listing all they had done [oxygen, antibiotics, steroids, lucky Cat!] and all I have to do. My main function is to apply an inhaler every twelve hours [I’ll wear leather gauntlets and hope for the best] and to watch for a deterioration in which case I was to dash up to University College Dublin to the emergency vet. I think I draw the line at that though and Cat had better improve, or else…

I thanked the vet and went to pay the bill. It was then that I needed oxygen but there was none to be had. It has made a fair dent in the pension and even worse I had remembered that I had forgotten to add Cat onto Penny’s insurance policy. Fuck!

I have to bring Cat back on Monday to check progress but I have been warned that he may die before then

After all that, if the cat dies, I swear I’ll fucking kill him.