Last night it started with Baby (white cat). She’s about 16-17 years old and has been pretty healthy. She was laying in her bed and all of sudden rolled onto her back and began seizing! She was twitching all over! I jumped up and calmed her down and then she got up and couldn’t walk without falling over. Again I calmed her down, petting her and getting her to relax. Then it was over. I have no idea what happened or why, but she seems just fine today. From the online research I did this morning, it could be many things including epilepsy, diabetes, and kidney failure. Or, it could be none of those and just something that happens to some cats for no known reason. Will watch her at this point for another episode and/or other problems.

Then there’s Murphy (dog, age ~15). When they open later today, I’ll be contacting the clinic where we took him a few weeks ago to verify the testing they did. I suspect he may have diabetes. He seems to be losing his eyesight and that, along with the other symptoms he’s been exhibiting, make me think that diabetes may be the culprit.

Last night (or I should say early this morning since it was 4:00 am) Murphy woke me crying next to my bed. That’s usually an indication he needs to go outside to go pee or poop. Sometimes I can tell him to go back to bed and he’ll hold it until morning. But not this time. He continued crying until I got up and let him out the back door where he proceeded to walk straight into the pool! He was right next to the steps, but instead started swimming. While the pool isn’t icy cold right now, it’s still fairly chilly. I started calling him and following him from one edge to another, but he kept swimming. Finally I was able to fish him out and ran inside to get a towel, hoping he wouldn’t walk back in before I got back to dry him off. I was up for about an hour, and wound up putting him on a leash and taking him out front to do his business.

Now I have to be careful not to let him out without supervision. Don’t know what I’m going to do through the week when I go to work. Somehow I’m going to have to rig up a fence of some sort to keep him contained and away from the pool. And, he’ll be seeing the vet as soon as I can get in to figure out what we do next.

Puto (black cat, age 19) almost certainly has a feline form of Alzheimer’s and possibly kidney problems. He stands at his water dish and howls continually until I refill the bowl completely to the top with fresh water. And he wanders the house howling at various times for no reason. At his age there’s not a whole lot that can be done for either problem (other than dialysis).

Loki (grey cat, age 14) has a cold. Probably some kind of upper respiratory tract infection. He’s had a problem with sneezing a runny nose for most of his life. In fact, he started out with this problem when we brought him home from the shelter when we adopted him as a kitten. He’ll be going to the vet this week.

Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. It really is enjoyable when the animals are young, but it really isn’t fun when they get old.