Our Sweet Bee-Bee

The past couple of weeks have been horrible for our kitties and our finances. It started off on a Wednesday night when I got home and noticed that our cat BooBear was limping. I discovered a huge gash on her leg was the culprit and so we took her into the emergency vet hospital hours. She ended up getting hospitalized overnight and they had to put her under to fix her leg. For the next few days, we took BooBear in daily to get her leg bandage changed. Interestingly, they packed the wound with sugar to help it heal. I'd never heard of this treatment!

Despite being locked up in Howie's dog crate, BooBear is handling all of this well. She let us know right away that she would not put up with wearing an Elizabethan collar, but even without it, she is being a good girl and not undoing her bandages. Now BooBear is healing and so we only have to take her back to the vet every three days for a bandage change. This whole ordeal with BooBear is easily turning out to cost about $600 or so, but at least she is healing and will be fine in just a matter of weeks.

Unfortunately, our other kitty Bee-Bee is not faring so well. Just as we were dealing with BooBear's leg, Bee-Bee went into an acute state of failure. I got home one day and she was meowing loudly in pain. She was panting and her skin was noticeably yellow. We took her into the vet and she was hopsitalized for a couple of nights. The vet ran a full gamut of tests on her and determined that the main problem is a case of pancreatitis. In addition to this, all of her other internal organs are also very swollen. We were afraid we were going to have to put her down then, but Bee-Bee pulled through and we thought she might be okay. Bee-Bee's ordeal cost over $1100, but we felt it was well worth the financial sacrifice when we saw her sweet face and how she was fighting to stay alive.

Now, though, Bee-Bee has been back home, and even with all of the medicine that we've been giving her, she won't eat and we're uncertain what to do for her next. One option would be to take her back to the vet again, but we don't know what they will do besides run her through the same routine as last time. We hate to say that her life is worth a certain amount of money, but the prospect of dishing out another thousand or thousands of dollars is also not realistic given our tight finances.

So, for the time being, we are spending a mere (in comparison to all of the vet bills) $40 on Bee-Bee by setting up an appointment with animal psychic Lydia Hiby. We used Hiby years ago after I had read her book, and we think she is the real deal when it comes to animal communicators. I don't know what she'll be able to tell us that will help, but I think we have better chances getting some useful information from her than from the vet at this point. We're going to give Hiby a call tomorrow night and so we'll re-evaluate our next steps after that.

I think the thing that has made all of this especially hard for me is that I have guilt over the pets ever since Kaz was born. The animals were always our babies for years before Kaz, but life has been so hectic since he came along and now especially since I've been pregnant for the second time. I believe that our pets are content with their lives, but I know that I have not given them close to the same attention that I did pre-Kaz. As I watch poor Bee-Bee wither away right before my eyes, I have regret that I have not petted her as much as she deserves in the past couple of years. The thing is...animals are amazingly accepting and nonjudgmental. Bee-Bee has obviously never held a grudge over any changes in our household. I was petting her last night and she just closed her eyes in bliss. She, like other animals, live in the moment rather than worry about the past. In these moments that she's sick, all I can do is give her love and know that with each touch I give her, she is at peace.