Get Well Soon, Buddy

It's been a couple of busy weeks, and I've been neglecting the blog again. In the past two weeks, I've completed all or most of half a dozen different freelance projects, two tax returns for family members and most of our own tax return which, for overseas filing purposes, won't actually be sent to the IRS until October. (The extension we received for living overseas is only an extension of time to file, of course, and not time to pay, so I had to do most of our return now to make sure we weren't in Uncle Sam's debt.)

Our state of emergency was lifted 10 days ago, I've made four or five runs to the airport in the last 10 days, kept our housekeeper happy enough to keep cleaning the house, and am currently living the bachelor life with Mister Tanaka while Shelly gets some use out of her Japanese skills at a Tokyo trade show this week. Mom has a cancer check up at the Mayo Clinic today, but she's been feeling well and the swelling in her neck seems to be going down.

So, it's been busy, but not overwhelming, until this morning. And that's where we come to the next part of the story, the one that coincides with that headline up there.

Mister Tanaka is sick. He's spending the night at the Dog and Cat Clinic, and the house is quiet without the jingle of the bell on his collar. The rest of this post could be excrutiatingly boring for anyone who isn't a pet owner -- and, maybe for those folks, too.

Okay. I know that Mister Tanaka is a cat. I never think of him as our child or anything like that, even if I do sometimes tease Shelly by calling her "Mommy" in my falsetto Mister Tanaka voice. But even though he is a cat, he's also the first pet I've ever had with its own personality. We grew up with hamsters and gerbils and fish and turtles and, for a brief period, a garter snake named Jackson who lived in my room in an ice cream container.

But none of those pets can really be said to have a personality, and I think Tanaka's personality -- the fact that he has one, not that it's so sweet -- is what makes this so difficult for me. Because, you see, I know he's a cat, not a person. But he's our cat, and we do like having him around, and he does make us laugh, or feel happy or, occasionally, proud. (No, the happy finger-chomping traits of Brad's hamster "Buttercup" do not count as personality, though that little guy did hang on to your fingers with great relish.)

When I let Tanaka out of the bedroom at about 3:30 this morning, he was going full speed ahead, full of energy and apparently feeling quite well. When I got up at 8:00 and opened the bedroom door, he didn't come running, which was odd. He usually takes off running for the bedroom when he hears the door open. You know, because there's food in there.

I found him in the guest room, stretched out in the corner, in a spot where he never hangs out. I picked him up and he wailed so loudly that I immediately set him down on the bed. He settled down, but was still crying, apparently in pain. He then stood up and tried to pee, but without success. He jumped off the bed (moving slowly) and settled back down on the floor.

I went around the house to see if I could find any evidence of what had happened: half-eaten plants, critters he had done battle with, something he had gotten into. There was a big pile of food he had thrown up, but nothing in it that was strange -- it was just food. So I went back upstairs and sat down next to him to pet him. He seemed happy when I pet his head and scratched him under the chin, but he growled when I tried to touch his abdomen.

I went back downstairs to see what I could find on the Internet, and to call Shelly's parents and Brad for cat advice. I went back upstairs and saw that he had thrown up again, with a hairball this time, but otherwise just food. Tanaka was still just lying on the floor, moving only occasionally, and very slowly.

I started thinking. Obviously something was wrong with him, but what? I realized that he's been drinking a lot of water lately, but not urinating much. He had peed on the floor on Monday, but there hasn't been much of anything else in the litter box. I went back upstairs and ended up following him to the litter box. He hopped in and tried to pee again, but nothing came out. I sat next to him again and again tried to touch his stomach, which again earned me a growl. In retrospect, he's a pretty smart cat, showing me exactly what was wrong with him, and doing it twice, since I didn't pick up on it the first time.

So I called the vet, who came over about 1:30. (Does your vet make house calls?) The vet's assistant picked Tanaka up in a towel, got hissed at and wailed at for his efforts, and put him on the counter. The vet felt around and said that Tanaka does, indeed, have a very, very full bladder, and that he would need to go to the clinic to start running tests and to get the bladder emptied out. I'll visit Tanaka tomorrow morning, when I'll also get an update from the doctor.

I've spent most of today reading up on cat urinary tract problems. I'm guessing that he has bladder stones, which should be fairly easy to clear up since we're handling it early. Still, I'm finding it hard to deal with Mister Tanaka's absence, and am hoping that he'll be back home soon, with his head once again on my pillow, where it belongs.