I am obsessed.

With what will happen to my cats if something happens to me. You'd think that Scruffy's being OTJ would be helpful, but.... not really. (Although Rege said to me last night that Scruffy'd come down and napped on his lap three times in the last couple days - now that's real progress. Maybe Scruffy's worried about the future, too.)

I was thinking that other blogs seem to give more of a picture of the cat's personality; mine, not so much. I just ramble on and on about numbers, etc. So here's a capsule of my sweet boy:

From the minute I brought him home (and an hour later when I had to take him to the emergency vet because he'd developed an instant urinary blockage!), I was amazed by what a laid-back cat this was. I plunked him down in the midst of three other cats - one of whom was the famed Picklefritz, one of the world's oddest cats ever - and he was totally unconcerned. (Well, maybe not, since there was that blockage that I assume came from stress. And a second and third blockage that probably also were stress-related.) Anyway, he has never been particularly interested in and/or threatened by other cats. He just seems to take what comes. He's always been friendly and unafraid of strangers. His two main interests in life are eating and trailing around behind me waiting for me to sit down so he can sprawl across my lap and rest his head in the palm of my hand. It's very touching to me, this kind of closeness he wants so badly. Especially when you think that for the last going-on-four-years, I've been poking his ears and sticking needles into him on a regular basis. To say nothing of dentals and ear infections and ear and eye drops. I'm surprised that he even lets me touch him, much less that he's so determinedly "my boy."

I used to have to nudge him with the sweeper to get him to move out of the way. Nothing bothered him. Except that NO ONE touches his tail. He's been like that from the very beginning. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it; he just doesn't want anyone going near his tail. And his legs are way too short for the rest of his body, although he doesn't care if you touch them. He's got that awful fur that has the undercoat "reversed" - the stuff that's supposed to be on the bottom is on the top with him - but, oddly enough, it always looks pretty good when it's photographed (see the picture at the top of this blog) - in person, it sort of sticks up in every direction. Not smooth and soft and pretty. Although, since he's been off insulin, his fur does seem softer and smoother.

Lately, he's developed this interest in the bathroom. He insists on being in there when I take a shower. He even sits beside the door for hours on end, just so he doesn't miss my making a trip. A number of times, he's been sitting on the toilet lid when I went out, and when I came back four or five hours later, he's STILL sitting there.

Scruffy's reason-for-being is food. But only cat food - no people food. He literally inhales every meal. He stands in front of his bowl and eats and eats and eats, frequently until he throws up right into the bowl. And then he goes around and empties everyone else's dish. When he was diagnosed with diabetes, he had lost 4 pounds in a week - down to ten pounds. He managed to get back to 12 pounds within six or seven months, despite being an incredibly poorly managed diabetic. He's up to something over 12 pounds now.

Every vet who's ever examined him has thought that there was something wrong with his abdomen. During his first hospitalization, they announced that he had FIP and we should take him home to be isolated until he died. (That was five years ago, and he's STILL HERE!) When he was in the hospital with DKA, they wanted to xray him because they thought he had vital organs in the wrong place. (Or else, as I discovered when I got the copies of his records - the vet had personally given him way too much fluids and she was afraid that his lungs were full....) At some point, we'll probably have an ultrasound done, and that'll hopefully put to rest the speculation about what parts are where inside him.

Right now, he's got what's supposedly a lipoma on his right side - (gonna shave him again this summer so I can keep my eye on it) - and a horrible creepy sickening iris melanosis in his left eye that I can't decide what to do about. Dr. G says just ignore it - that lots of cats have them and they don't turn into melanomas. Dr. K wants to laser it out of there, even though she's never done the procedure before. I have the name of a clinic in Ohio that I think I'm going to take him to for a second opinion.

Despite his unknown age, at least a couple times a week, Scruffy will come thundering and thumping across the living room floor and bounce up four or five levels of the cat trees like he thinks he's a kitten. I guess as long as he's able to do that, he'll keep on truckin'. He is such a sweet, affectionate cat, and what a fortunate thing it was for both of us that he showed up when and where he did. (Of course, he wouldn't have gotten diabetes if someone else would have taken him in; it was my insistence on treatment for the "sinus infection" that got him the shot of depomedrol that did him in.) Anyway, he's a very special cat and brother, do I love him.