Mr. Monty Mo

Those of you who have met him know that our cat Monty is without a doubt the world's most awesome kitty. When I first moved here from Scotland Ben convinced me that we should just go and look at some kittens, because I'd never held a kitten before. As soon as I met Mr. Monty I was smitten. He was so tiny and sweet and cuddly and licked us with his tiny pink kitten tongue. Since then I've learned that Ben is sneaky, and can be pretty convincing after we "just go and look" at something, and now I try to resist looking at things like cars and computers and tvs and kittens and puppies with him, but that's another story...

That Thanksgiving the three of us drove from Ann Arbor to Minneapolis. The drive is about 12 hours, and 12 hours in a car with a kitten was an interesting experience...

This week Monty has been really sick. On Monday I noticed that he was throwing up and seemed really unhappy. He felt really strange to touch too, kind of stiff, it was very weird. On Tuesday morning I took him to the vet, who was immediately very concerned and told me he was really dehydrated. He ran some tests and learned that he was in kidney failure, as well as having pancreatitis. He started saying things like "we have to hope this works, or we might not get him back"... poor Monty was not a happy kitty. He spent all Tuesday at the vet being given IV fluids and an antibiotic, and then came home on Tuesday night and just kind of sat around miserably. On Wednesday he spent another day at the vet for more of the same, and by Wednesday night he was much perkier and his test results were back to normal. We took him home with a big bag of fluids and antibiotics to inject into him twice a day (which is really awful for everyone). Today he's still better than he was, but has no energy, and is still not eating or drinking despite being tempted with his very favorite foods. We have to take him back in to the vet tomorrow morning to give him some medicine to try to increase his appetite, and decide if we should be trying anything else.

The vet doesn't know what happened. It's possible that he consumed something that poisoned him and caused the kidney failure. He catches and eats woodland creatures sometimes, so it's possible that something didn't agree with him or there's some kind of foreign matter stuck in his tummy causing him problems and making him not want to eat or drink. Or it could be something else entirely.

I hope we figure it out soon though! I'm still worried about him and hope that he'll be back to his normal happy kitty self before too long!