Our precious hearts

One week ago, I thought Parisa would be dead by now.

She was my brother- and sister-in-law’s cat, and we took care of her while they were on vacation for two weeks in July. We fell in love with her immediately. She is so sweet, and she has these little conversations with you in meows. When you wake up in the morning, she greets you with a little trill. When you ask her if she wants some food, she responds with a plaintive cry. While she stayed, she often slept in our beds, and she walked us to the bathroom when we had to go in the middle of the night. We were so sad when my brother-in-law’s family came back from vacation and we had to return her.

Soon after they got back, they decided to get a second cat. Parisa didn’t take kindly to this idea. Her sweetness disappeared whenever she saw the interloper, replaced by hissing, spluttering, and general intimidation. My in-laws tried to encourage them to get along for weeks – nothing worked. Eventually, as they ran out of ideas to help the cats work out their differences, they realized they would need to find a more permanent solution. Returning the new cat wasn’t an option, but they realized how taken we were with Parisa, and as sad as it made them to offer, they asked us if we would adopt her.

We leapt at the opportunity. We were so excited! On Sunday, August 20, 2023, they brought Parisa to our house to stay. She immediately became part of our family. Parisa looking out the window. Parisa on the couch, on the bed, on the chair. Parisa racing across the floor to grab a piece of string. Parisa waiting by the front door, ready to sneak out to explore the apartment’s hallway.

But about a month after she came to stay, we noticed something troubling – red flecks in her stool. The problem didn’t go away, so we called the vet’s office where we had scheduled her first check-up for later in the month. At first they said we would have to wait for our scheduled appointment in a couple weeks, but they were finally able to squeeze us in. We took her to their office and, after a scan, the vet told us that her kidneys looked abnormal. After a blood test, she explained that the kidneys didn’t seem to be functioning well given the abnormal level of toxins in her blood. The vet prescribed a fluid treatment and an antibiotic for about a week and told us to bring her back to check how Parisa was doing. She said the best-case scenario was that the fluid treatment would flush out some of the toxins, the antibiotic would cure the kidney infection, and Parisa would have enough functioning kidney tissue left to get by.

We had no idea how to do the fluid treatments, but thankfully, one of our neighbors who used to be a veterinary technician was willing to help us. These treatments involved sticking a needle underneath the skin on Parisa’s back and transferring fluid via IV underneath her skin every evening. We mixed her medicine into her food. Things seemed to be going OK. But as the day to return to the vet came closer, Parisa ate less and less each day. We wondered if it was because she didn’t like the taste of the medicine, but we really didn’t know.

When we took her back to the vet’s office the next week, they took a blood draw to analyze. The vet was gone for a while as they analyzed the results. When she returned, we could tell the news wasn’t good. She said that, instead of decreasing, the level of toxins in Parisa’s blood had soared. She told us Parisa’s kidneys were no longer functioning. She said that Parisa would likely be gone in less than 4 weeks.

We were devastated. We took her home and cried and cried. We resolved to make her remaining days as comfortable as possible. She kept eating less each day. Two days later, she started refusing to eat entirely. She spent much of her time hiding under the clothes drying rack. She barely walked, and had to take breaks walking from the living room to the bathroom. We thought she would be gone, not just in less than 4 weeks, but in less than 4 days. We made plans for putting her to sleep. We decided we would get a vet service who would do it at home so that she wouldn’t have to travel in the car. Since we have no place to bury her given we live in an apartment, we asked my brother-in-law if we could bury her in their yard.

Then, after three days of not eating at all, of growing weaker and weaker, suddenly last Wednesday morning, she nibbled at the food we gave her. She ate more later that day, and more the next. She came out of hiding. She began exploring again. She wanted to go into the hall of the apartment and ventured out on the back porch. It was like she was coming back to life. I have to keep telling myself that this doesn’t mean she is saved. The doctor has told us that she will likely pass soon, and we all need to keep in mind that is the most likely outcome. I don’t believe in miracles, and I don’t think we are witnessing one now.

And at the same time, this resurgence is giving us the chance to appreciate her and to show her how much we do. The reality is that none of us knows how much time we have left, nor how much time those we love have left. We all expect and hope that we, our families, and our friends will have many years, but we simply don’t know the future. And it is hard to live each day attentive to that fact. We get caught up in our daily lives, our work, our chores, our fun, our mundane details, our exciting events. Although we know in our heads it isn’t true, we start to live as if we will always be here, doing what we are doing today.

However long Parisa has, I want to use this time as an opportunity to show her what she means to us. I want this time to serve as a reminder that we never know how much we have. Nothing is given. Every day is a gift. Maybe we can’t walk around with that knowledge at the front of our conscious minds. But perhaps we can hold it at the center of our precious hearts, and perhaps from there it can suffuse our choices, so that we live differently, breathe more deeply, love more consciously. I hope that it may be so. I’ll try my best to show this to Parisa, our beautiful cat, each day that she remains with us.