Ave Maria

My beautiful Persian cat, Maria, has been in my life for years and years now. She's the most beautiful cat: solid white with silver tips and the most piercing teal blue eyes you've ever seen. She's a Chinchilla Persian so it looks like she's always wearing eyeliner. She's registered as "Ave Maria" but we've always called her Maria (I didn't choose the name; her previous owner did).

Maria's moved with me from Texas to Alabama to South Carolina to Hawaii and has been such a trooper. She turned 9 just this month and has always been healthy - always. I adopted her many years ago from a breeder who used Maria as a showcat and then as a breeding machine. She was entirely too little of a Persian to have as many kittens as she produced in her early life. So I got her fixed and brought her home with me when I was stationed in Texas.

She has loved every minute of living in Hawaii these 3 years because she has so many windows for her to lounge in the sunshine for hours on end. At 7 a.m., she's ready for her breakfast and at 5 p.m. on the nose, it is her dinner time. She often lingers around after dinner in the hopes that I will give her a little taste of milk. Maria loves to play at the most random times - usually it is in the wee hours of the morning when she jumps on my head, purrs loudly and starts meowing at the top of her lungs to get me to play with her. She loves to drink water whenever and wherever she can find it. She loves dripping water in the sink, Piper's water bowl, her own water bowl and especially any toilets that are left open.

Noah chases her from one end of this house to another and squeals in delight in the off chance that he might catch her. He says "e-ow, e-ow" and "itty, itty" over and over to her. He adores her as much as I do but she's a total "mama's girl." Never has she been a lap cat on your terms. But she loves me (and now Dan) so much that she will slip onto our laps from time to time.

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I just returned from taking our overly anxious dog, Piper, and Maria to the vet for their health certification that they must recieve in order to fly. Piper goes on Continental on Sunday to arrive into Pittsburgh on Monday and Maria goes on Northwest Monday to arrive into Alabama on Tuesday. We will be separated from them for about 6-8 weeks and are very sad. But they cannot travel all over the country with us so we are very blessed to have family members willing to take care of them while we are apart and getting settled in Louisiana.

Piper got a clean bill of health and I just expected Maria would do the same. She has always weighed 5 lbs on the nose but today, she weighed about 4.7 lbs - meaning she's lost 6 ounces in less than a month... not good. But I didn't think anything of it till the vet started feeling around on her midsection and pulled out a huge mass of skin and said "What's this?" My reply was that it was just a matte - she's constantly shedding her 2 inch long coat. But the doctor made me come feel it. Well, it was her right kidney which is currently about 3-4 times bigger than the normal sized kidney she should have. Her left kidney is about the same size.

Going back to the stress levels I am already experiencing, that was more than I could bear. I held back the tears long enough to find out that Maria has renal disease and her kidneys are on the downward spiral. The doctor asked about how much water she was drinking and I told her the same thing I just wrote about - where there is water, there is Maria drinking it. She said she's doing that because her kidneys are enlarged and are putting out the water she intakes too quickly for her body to absorb any. So she's dehydrated constantly.

The vet immediately pumped her with an antibiotic and an i.v. bag of fluids. She said she would allow Maria to travel but that this will need to be her last flight. I have to take her back to the vet before she boards her flight Monday for more fluids to be pumped into her and that my mom should immediately take her to the vet for further testing on her renal system because she's at some stage right now of renal failure.

Once they took Maria out to get the i.v. and it was just me and Piper in the room, I broke down. Yes, this is just a cat. But she's MY cat and she's been MY companion for many years now - through some of the hardest years of my life when I was stationed alone in Texas while Dan was stationed in South Carolina for 3 years. And to find this all out after I paid $500 a month ago for Piper and Maria's annuals and for many antibiotics for Piper, then another $150 for more antibiotics for Piper's ears, then another $200 today for this appointment, and a total of $650 for both Maria and Piper's flights out on Sunday and Monday, I wanted to scream.

I am so sad about my little cat quite possibly near the end of her life and what lies ahead for her if her kidneys are already too damaged. And I am mad that this is something we are finding out right before we move and my life is turned upside down already. This might just be the nail in the coffin for me and the amount of stress that I can handle. I need prayer because I cannot take much more emotional and physical draining than I am already experiencing.