Message from an old friend

[smokingboot]

'I keep feeling " black bits" around you. I don't know if they are physical, or mental, of both, but I do feel " I need to get my heart and heels sorted out" '

She contacted me out of the blue with the above. I haven't told anyone, even R about my heels and how they hurt when I go down stairs. Could be lack of exercise, could be something age related, but they do ache and it is awkward. My heart?

My heart is having a dismal time.

Our old boy was found having a fit, by neighbours who were told by their neighbours that their cat was lying on the pavement looking distressed. Turned out that the two cats look almost identical and theirs was fine, but they took ours in anyway, fed him, gave him somewhere to sleep. Another neighbour told me to put the shout out on the local FB page. Very quickly our cat's rescuers contacted me, and we got him home. He was spaced out for a couple of days but he seems fine now.

At the same time, our eldest female cat seemed to be having issues eating, to the point that she was losing weight. Took her to the vets, they couldn't sort it, took her to the specialist vets, they did a CT scan of her head. Turns out all the facial soft tissue down one side seems to be inflamed. They are using steroids to deal with it. If it works, all well and good, if it doesn't, chances are it's a tumour that looks pretty impossible to remove. Even if it is benign, it is obstructing her jaw opening. The natural end of that is that she starves to death. We will put her down if that is the case. We should know by the end of this weekend.

I did get that awful pain around my heart, the one the doctors tested for pretty much everything and decided must be due to an allergen I am eating. But I think this one was stress.

After all, cats get old, they die, everybody dies. I get it. But that doesn't change the 'black bits' around me.

Old friend, you are bang on the money.