The Latest on Li'L O

As I've mentioned before, vet visits usually freak me out more than they do Olivia--though, to be sure, she's never happy with being stuck in a carrier (even if it's the nice one given to me by Superbadfriend), hauled to the Brown Line and snaked on down to the vet.

She seemed especially unhappy with the concept Friday morning. Maybe she was just feeling so much better that she didn't really want to be hauled/poked/prodded/punctured, but she growled when the vet came in and growled just as loud at me when one of the vet's assistants brought her back after getting her blood drawn. She was definitely extra salty (or, as my vet likes to say, "spicy"). Annoying as a snarling kitty can be, though, it's preferable to a lethargic kitty who lets the vet do whatever she wants without protest.

Trust me--that's not what Olivia was on Friday.

The vet wanted to send out the blood for testing at the lab, if only because that hadn't been done since Olivia's initial diagnosis, and told me she'd call me with results Saturday morning. And that she did--just after 8 a.m., for which she apologized immediately.

You know what, though? The vet can call me in the middle of the frickin' night if she wants to, as long as the news is this good. And boy, was it good.

Olivia's creatinine level went down again, from 4.4 to 3.1. (the high end of the normal range is 2.4, so we're almost there.) Her phosphorus remains squarely in the normal range, and her red blood cell count, which was severely low when she was diagnosed, is now slightly too high; we just have to back off on her anemia meds to once a week, and she should be just fine. Add in the fact that she gained another tenth of a pound (not much of a gain, to be sure, but up is better than down), and the news is pretty good all the way around.

So the vet doesn't need to see her for another six weeks--the longest stretch we've gone without a visit--and the vet congratulated me again for all the hard work I've done with Olivia.

Nonsense. It's Li'l O whose done the hardest work, eating (most of) the food I put down in front of her and rolling with all the pills and pricks and syringes of yucky fluid. She doesn't like any of it, but she knows, in the end, that it's all for her benefit.

Or at least that's what I get from the fact that, mere moments after suffering the indignity of being punctured or medicated, she jumps up on the couch next to me and rubs her small calico head against the palm of my hand. She knows I'm doing my best to help her stick around, and she's paying me back by, y'know, sticking around.

A fair deal, I'd say.