The Drama Continues - Pippa

I'm back with a Pippa update, and it is not good news.  You can catch up with the Pippa story here and here.

We noticed awhile back that she was getting really pale again and she started licking the walls.  Both are indicators of anemia.  Kevin started her back on steroids and took her back to the clinic to run more tests. She tested positive for Feline Leukemia.  So for those of you following along that means she tested negative when she was a kitten in the shelter, positive in June when we first noticed she didn't seem quite right, negative in September when she seemed to be doing better, and now positive again.  According to Dr. Kevin (that is Kevin in his professional mode), this is all very unusual and he has no idea what is going on.  This past time he did send the test out to a lab who ran a really elaborate test (rather than the quick in house one that is standard).  Since the gold standard test came back as positive we are pretty confident in calling it - our cat has leukemia.

I haven't had that many emotions since finding out last week.  Since she had gotten pretty pale again and was licking the walls, the news was not a surprise.  I was pretty devastated when we got the news the first time and went through the gamut of emotions.  This time I went straight to acceptance.

I'm not sure what this means for Pippa in terms of her third class citizenship.  Last time we immediately promoted her to first class citizen and she got special treatment (outside time and lots and lots of food - so much she gained a lot of weight).  We haven't really changed our attitude much this time - maybe because I really don't want to put her on a diet again if it turns out she will in fact live for a long time (who knows at this point).  She was not happy with the diet we put her on when we thought she was recovered - and I don't want to have to put her (or us!) through that again.

Some recent photos of her:

She will drink water from one of our glasses pretty much every time we put one down.  She has fresh water available to her at all times so I'm not sure what that is about.  Maybe she doesn't like sharing with the dogs (we have one water bowl for the three of them)? If I surrender my water glass to her and go get another one - guess which one she'll drink from the next time?  That's right, the new one.  Brat.

Pippa loves Kevin, he is definitely her favorite.  I used to say that if both of our laps are free she'll pick his every time but that is not even true.  If he has the computer in his lap and my lap is completely empty, she will still pick his! I am over this (I'm still Kinsey's favorite) but it did take me awhile to adjust.  I was the one who wanted a cat - Kevin would have happily gone through life with just dogs.  He agreed to the cat as long as I took care of the litter.  The possibility that the cat would like him more AND I'd be stuck doing the litter never crossed my mind.