Where does the time go?

This entry isn't about a Corgi, or even a dog.

My cat, Alice, just had her annual vet exam today. She turned 16 sometime in the spring. I am not sure of the exact date, since I found her under a hedge when she was around 6 weeks old. A tiny half-wild thing, it took me a week of feeding her to bribe her out from under the hedge far enough so I could catch her, and she spent another week or so after that living under my bed and only coming out to eat or use her box.

She's doing ok, but at the vet today it could no longer be denied that she's getting old. She lost 11 ounces since last year. She free-feeds, so we don't know exactly what she eats, but her food consumption and litter-box-output seem unchanged. She had a complete blood panel done last year when she started drinking more and her kidney function is good.

Her temperature was a bit low, her gums a little pale. The vet said either could be from the stress of just coming in to the office, but to be safe she had a B-vitamin shot and some vitamins to take home. They did a blood draw too, and already called to say her red count is normal which means the paleness was probably stress. The weight loss is likely from reduced absorption brought on by age.

But still, it's hard not to see that we have set upon the path that leads to the inevitable.

I have had her nearly my entire adult life. I was just out of college, still living at home when she showed up. We were never even cat people; we were dog people. But she was the 2nd of three cats we saved. The first, a male, was my parents'. The 3rd, a calico female, we placed with a friend. But Alice was mine and that was never in doubt. She was that once-in-a-lifetime pet who is indifferent or downright hostile to the rest of the world save her owner. With other people she will often hiss or scratch, but to me she has never been anything but sweet and affectionate.

I try sometimes to brace for that future day by briefly imagining going to sleep without her purring next to me, or walking into the bedroom without being met by that soft mew that ends in a question mark, as if she's asking where I've been, but I can't bring myself to even think of it.

In human years, I figure she's about 82. So for now she will get some extra strokes, and be more frequently treated to her favorite fishy canned food (the kind with no filler, just fish and vitamins). In a month she goes back to the vet for a weigh-in to make sure she's not still losing (concerned enough is he about accuracy that he even noted on her chart that her bladder was 3/4 full, which he said adds about 2 ounces to her weight). And in the meantime, I go back to pretending that she'll be here forever.