Klio is spending an uncomfortable night in the back room of the Straven Road Veterinary Clinic tonight. After a blood test today (and how come blood tests for cats only take a couple of minutes but human ones take days?) it seems she probably has diabetes. And if they can collect a urine sample tonight (I’m confident - she’s very good at urine samples) we’ll find out how bad it is and how long she has.
I don’t know exactly how old Klio is. Nicki got her from the SPCA some years before we first met, and I can only guess that she must be about eleven or twelve now.
I gather from what the vet told me today that she’s likely to need insulin injections every other day for the rest of her life, and if that’s the case I’m going to have to decide how long that life should be. Right at the moment, I’m maintaining the hard-nosed line that if she’d have to be on permanent medication for the remaining year or so of her life, then it’s better for her to be put down now. But the decision is made harder by a couple of things.
Firstly, Klio isn’t actually particularly frail right at the moment. She doesn’t seem to be in pain, and she gets around almost as if she was in her prime. If it weren’t for the diabetes, I’d assume she had three or four more years.
Secondly, she was Nicki’s cat. Not Nicki’s-and-my cat (Hatstand would fall into that category), but Nicki’s cat from when we first started going out. It’s hardly fair to rest such significance in a perfectly innocent cat, but there it is. Unless there’s good news tomorrow, I don’t think Klio will be coming home again.
Music: Pink Frost, The Chills