Katie's Tragety

6/16/2010 (Actual Date of Event: 6/14/2010)

So my cat, Katie, is pretty old. I've had her since my little sister was one years old. Katie is about twelve years old right now, so you can tell she's elderly. She's always stayed energetic, though, and she's hardly graying. I know she'll have to go one day, but we thought it was sooner a few days ago.

Katie is usally bright-eyed and loving. While I visited my dad for the weekend, my sister recieved a call from my mother. She said she'd have to take Katie to the vet the next day because she felt warm, her eyes were foggy, and she didn't eat or meow. Drinking wasn't a problem though.
When I heard about this, I thought instantly of Shadow (A.K.A. Big Fat Tom Cat), a former cat of mine. He was a gray tabby with plenty of weight on him. He was the first pet I'd owned that had to be put to sleep. He had cytauxzoonosis (Sy-toe-zoo-no-sys); a rare tick-borne disease originated from mountain lions or bob cats. He had similar physical symptoms, but I knew they were different. Katie was drinking; Shadow didn't drink. Katie was still walking around, but, sadly for Shadow, cytauxzoonosis shuts his body down painfully so he wouldn't be able to move after it set in about a week after he recieved the infection.
Though I knew Katie didn't have the lethal disease her former "aquiantance" had, I couldn't help but cry. I couldn't help but think that the next day, when I would go to the vet with my mother and Katie, I'd have to put her down. Luckily for me, and Katie, it was nothing of the sort. I held Katie in my lap on the drive to the vet. Since we didn't have an actual appointment to see a vet, we waited in the lobby for about an hour until a space opened up. We entered the room.
The nurse came first. She did the usual: weight and temperature. Katie had a temperature slightly above normal and she was dehydrated. The vet comes and looks over her. Her lymph node on one side was enlarged and hard. They figured out it was an infection somewhere around her jaw that enflamed the node. They gave her an anti-biotic shot and a shot just for fluids. I was seriously relieved, but still worried.
So we left the vet with a live cat named Katie. We still have to go back in a week to get an additional anti-biotic shot, but other than that, it's all good!

Wolf