I haven’t done a lot of cleaning or moving things around for a few weeks. It made my chest tight just thinking about it. The time has come, though.

Here is Shivers’ dish. I think it’s time to wash it, don’t you?

Here are her infamous peacock feathers, with Oswald deciding he’d like to be in the photo. Many, many thanks to the ladies at H3 who supplied them for us. No other cats will touch them – they’re still too intimidated by her to play with her toys. I’m going to compost the feathers rather than throw them out. I have no idea how long it takes to compost feathers. Guess I’ll find out?

I keep seeing this blanket out of the corner of my eye, and thinking it’s our white kitty.

So I swapped it for a brown blanket. We get a heck of a draft under that door. I keep thinking I’ll make a draft snake, but never seem to get around to it.

It’s been a difficult time, but it’s getting easier. We’re starting to tell funny stories when we talk about her, now.

Shivers is down about a pound, and her kidneys have decompensated again. We could really use some good thoughts right now.

We’d got her back on fluid therapy, with the addition of some vitamin B. The addition can’t hurt, and it might help. It makes the saline bag a funny orangey-pink color, though. That’s kind of a trip. She’s also on cyproheptadine for an appetite stimulant. The bad thing is that she just throws up the tablet. So we’re looking into something for nausea and emesis. When Dr. Carney is back in town tomorrow, we’ll check into options for raising her potassium levels.

Big thanks to Dr. Howlett for taking such good care of her yesterday. She’s kind of his nemesis. When we gave her fluids at the clinic yesterday, she didn’t even fuss, which has me more worried than anything else going on. This is the cat that’s so needle-sensitive that we have to give her a mild sedative just to vaccinate her. Otherwise someone is going to get bit. She didn’t fuss when the doctor drew blood for tests, either. We could have hospitalized her. It was an option. No one is at the clinic at night, though, and she’d have been alone. Also, with her little needle-phobia it would have been near impossible to keep her on IV fluids anyway. In her case subcutaneous fluids are the best option, and we can give those at home. If she were four years old, or even just ten or twelve, we might have given hospitalization more thought. But this isn’t her first bout with kidney issues, and she’s fourteen. She’s lived on borrowed time for years. We’ve been very lucky.

Shivers is crabbier than usual, and has no energy. She doesn’t want to eat anything – even mozzarella failed to interest her. Travis and I are both pretty worried. Please wish us luck for her recovery, or failing that, for her to be comfortable and happy.