Eleanor

My kitty Eleanor is not doing very well. I took her to the Vet today and the x-ray shows that she either has severe arthritis or bone cancer in her left hip joint. Neither condition is good news. The x-ray will be sent to the MSU Vet Clinic to be read by a specialist. I will know more after that report. For the time being, Eleanor is in pain and not walking on her hind leg. She is pretty much just sleeping most of the time. I get to try to give her a steroid pill once a day. So far I have failed in my two attempts this evening. Despite her pain and fear, she is a strong cat and will not hesitate to use her teeth on me. I am so glad that I was able to clip her nails while she was distracted at the Vet visit.

A few years ago when Eleanor was still an outdoor kitty, she ran across the street and was hit by a van. She ran under the van, clearly hit something under it and kept running across the street. She appeared to be the miracle cat and really had no apparent injury at that time. The x-ray shows that there was an old break on the bone leading to the hip joint. She has probably just learned to deal with the injury and if it is arthritic due to the injury, the only affordable treatment is with steroids or other anti-inflammatory.

Eleanor has turned into a really sweet kitty. She had three litters of kittens in her short life as an outdoor cat and she is the mother to my youngest cat, Muffin. She survived an awful life as a feral cat and has had a much safer happier life inside for the past several years. I still find it amazing that she lived outdoors through many winters. She had a small dog house with straw in it that she and her male companion lived in during the winter. She stayed right in our yard and she was well fed and got fresh water every day. She had three litters and brought two of the litters to our patio when they were several weeks old.

Muffin was part of the first litter and he had a brother we named Rigby and a sister we named Buttons. My friend Marty took Rigby and Buttons.

I will never forget the second litter of kittens that she brought to my house on December 15th. There were five kittens. Three black ones with long fur and two tiger grey kittens. It was very early in the morning and it was snowing the really big snowflakes. The kittens were having such fun and the little black kittens looked like Scotty dogs leaping in the snow. My coworker Kathy took one of the black kittens and a quilt friend took the grey tigers to live on her mother's farm. One kitten had to be put down after she was attacked by an animal and severely injured. The fifth kitten stopped showing up at our house after a few months and likely died.

The third litter must have died shortly after they were born since she was gone for a few days and came back much thinner. She would eat and take off until the next day. A few days later, after a really bad rain storm, she came to our house and didn't rush off to her kittens. She just stayed. She acted very sad and I quickly realized that her kittens must have died. I don't know where they were hidden but I imagine she thought they were in a safe place.

When Mark trapped her to be spayed, she was pregnant with her fourth litter. She stayed at the vet for two weeks and when we brought her home she was too feral to bring indoors so we released her outdoors. She would come to the door and start talking to us, well, you know cat talking. She had never uttered a sound before she was spayed. We thought that she learned to talk while she was at the vet.

In January 2005 she came to live indoors. It was a terribly cold winter day and she met me at the front door and was crying. It took us a while to coax her indoors but she trusted us enough that she came indoors. She has lead a much happier life since that day.

I am so afraid that I will have to make a really difficult decision sooner than I would want to.

Okay, now for some entertainment: Check out this video made by Ron Howard, you know, Opie....

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cc65ed650d