The 'f' is silent

Juliet went blind last evening.

It happened about that quickly, at least from my perspective. One minute she was happily toodling around the house. The next, she was suddenly paying attention to the front door, acting as if someone was on the other side. She hasn't noticed the door for months, at least.

Then she started to go upstairs, except that every other step or so, she paused and looked behind her as if the aliens truly had come and were hovering just over her, encouraging her to jump, jump up to their little saucer.

By this time, of course, I was intrigued and had started to follow her. When she got to the top of the stairs, she started slurking low to the ground the way cats do on unfamiliar territory. I looked into her eyes and her pupils were huge, with almost no green visible.

I immediately knew what was happening. A while back, I had a vet who loved kitties and used to comb Juliet's tail while she talked to me. When she moved away, I inherited a kidney specialist, someone who became a vet just to study kidney disease, who was widely read in the topic, and who was also a catastrophizer. He's the sort of guy to whom you could present a cat with a hang nail and the first thing he'd say would be: "You know, she'll be fine if we have to amputate; cats do really well with a missing limb." It was in this spirit that he had warned me to be vigilant about her pupils. Kidney disease can lead to very high blood pressure, and once it starts, you have about 24 hours to take action before blindness sets in. The clue is in the wildly dilated pupils.

So at 7pm, Robert had just come home, I had a cat who was going or had gone blind, the vet's office was closed (as it should have been). We called the emergency room. They were unhelpful and said they couldn't tell us anything without seeing the cat. We consulted. And by 8pm, we were in Waltham at the e-room.

They were very nice -- they gave us our own living room to sit in. We let Juliet out of her cage, and she slept on the couch between us.

We eventually saw a lovely vet who seemed to ask all the right questions. Juliet's blood pressure was indeed out of control -- 260 when it should have been 120. She has cataracts but not glaucoma. The vet said that her retinas probably detached (I hope that isn't painful) because of the high blood pressure. And she could barely perceive light, but was "legally blind." Of course, Robert and I immediately both said "Darn. She can't drive anymore."

We put her on the floor and she started methodically exploring the room. Simultaneously, I thought, and the vet said, "she's like a Roomba." And they sent us home with a prescription to lower blood pressure with strict advice to follow up with our regular vet. Good care; glad they're there when we need them.

At home, we're able to close off the addition. We put her in the bathroom, where she has food, water, and litter. She spent most of the night on top of a sheep skin, which is on top of the heated floor, not a bad choice on her part. Around 5 or 6 this morning, I picked her up and put her between us in bed, where she felt secure, happy, and loved. She seems to know the bathroom at this point, and she's exploring the rest of the bedroom and study. We'll have to be very careful not to move things around as she's getting her bearings. We'll confine her to the addition when we're not here, at least in the beginning.

And Robert, rude boy that he is, said that now that she's both blind and deaf, we'll have to start finger-spelling into her paw.

Finally, she doesn't seem at all distressed by this change. She hasn't meowed in confusion or frustration once. I'm fine with it. But I do feel bad and perhaps a little anxious for her. I'm sure we'll all grow more comfortable with this latest change.