I’m worried about my cat … really worried. Fuzza just seems to get thinner and thinner all the time, and he now spends far more time sleeping between some boxes under Lin’s workbench than he does hanging out with us. In fact, he’s under there almost all the time. He doesn’t seem to be feeling unwell. He still plays sometimes, still comes running to see us when we get home or when I am making dinner, still gets into things he shouldn’t get into, so if I had to guess what was wrong, I’d have to say it’s just old age. You know how really old people feel when you hug them … all frail, like you might break them if you squeeze too hard? That’s how it feels when I pick up the cat these days, and it makes me really sad.

He’s eating and drinking water in about the same amounts as always, and his digestive problems are mostly under control again. He’s not showing any signs indicating an illness of any sort, so I am somewhat at a loss to explain his continual weight loss. Hopefully next month we will be able to budget a trip to the vet, but I can imagine that it’s going to be expensive if they have to do a bunch of tests. Then heaven knows what they may find. I’m actually sort of hoping it is just old age. Not that I want him to leave us any time soon, but if it’s cancer or some other sort of disease that is going to cost a fortune to treat, I just don’t know where we’d get the money for it, though I guess I could live without getting a new computer if it meant a few more years with my cat.

As much as I love my cat, I had always said that if he got really sick when he got old, I couldn’t justify spending thousands and thousands of dollars making him well again, seeing as Lin and I haven’t had any medical or dental attention ourselves in years. But now, of course, my plan to be so reasonable and prudent about it is faltering. I don’t want my cat to die. That’s silly to think, seeing as cats do have a shortish lifespan, and he’s lived a good long life already. I just hope it doesn’t come down to having to decide to have him put to sleep so he doesn’t suffer. I don’t know that I could do that, but I am sure I would find the ability to do so if he were obviously suffering. It would break my heart though.

I’m going to get a bag of his favorite food today at the store, even though it’s on the list of foods he shouldn’t have. He can have a little as a snack now and then. I’m also going to roast a chicken just for him and give him as much of it as he wants. He really loves roast chicken, and it’s not on the list of forbidden foods. If I have to roast a chicken for the cat every few days in order for him to be happy, healthy and fat, so be it I guess. I don’t know if it will make him any healthier or fatter, but it will make him happy. I’m not kidding when I say he really loves roast chicken.

I just wish if he is getting to the point of dying from old age that he’d spend more time with us and not hiding under the workbench, but all the other cats I have had that lived to old age and died a natural elderly death did pretty much the same thing … they wanted outside all the time and they wanted to hide in dark corners by themselves. That’s what really worries me. I’ve seen this behavior before, and I am so worried that one morning I’ll wake up and he won’t be snoozing at the foot of the bed or running to great me in the kitchen, and I’ll find him cold and dead under the workbench. I’m not going to handle that well when it happens, and even if it isn’t about to happen any time soon, it will someday. He’s already 13, and that’s pretty old for a cat.

I don’t even want to think about it anymore right now, but it’s been bothering me for a few weeks or so. I just feel like he’s slipping away from us and there isn’t going to be anything we can do about it. As soon as I stop crying (I am such a cry-baby these days), I’m going to go to the store, so I can spoil the cat. I think I’ll get a pizza to spoil the household humans with too. No matter how hard I have tried to adjust my mood this morning, it hasn’t worked and I think I am just going to be in a terrible and dark mood all day, which never leads to me wanting to make dinner.