We transferred from Sedona to Payson yesterday. It’s not far, about 2 hours, but it is a completely different world.
Payson appears to be in what they call Rim Country. I’ll figure out why that is when I have a few minutes, it’s been a little hectic; but maybe it has something to do with the mountains? Feel free to fill me in if anyone out there knows!
The area around Payson is quite beautiful but different from Sedona in pretty much every other way:
- It’s mountainous.
- There are a ton of trees (I think I read this is the largest Ponderosa forest, need to check on that too).
- There is lots of water for Puck on the trails, at least the two we have explored so far.
- The best coffee shop in Payson is Starbucks.
- There is no Local Juicery health food store, that’s for sure!
- But there IS a Walmart, which I have had the great fortune of shopping in for reasons that will become apparent below.
So… Maya.
I think I mentioned that Maya had not been eating. It got to the point where I knew I had to get her in to a vet. After many tearful phone calls to various vets, the Sedona Animal Clinic kindly agreed to get me in first thing Thursday morning.
I don’t have a small cat carrier with me, so I had to put Maya in my insulated cooler shopping bag. Talk about adding insult to injury. She peed in it just to let me know how mad she was. She was so weak that peeing was about the only form of rebellion she could muster.
We spent the next 2.5 hours with the vet and vet techs. After the initial evaluation, we decided to run the basic blood tests. When the vet came in with the results, I could tell it was not good news. Maya was in serious kidney failure, with numbers so high they were off the chart. The Kleenex box came out. The numbers were so bad that the vet told me he didn’t think there was much hope, but we decided to do an X-ray just in case. He located a small stone in one kidney, but he said that it was clear from the blood results and the size of the kidneys that neither kidney was working, so removing the stone or the kidney would just put her through a lot for nothing.
As a last resort, they gave her subcutaneous fluids and some medicines to try to stimulate her appetite and make her feel a little better. The fluids definitely helped; she rallied a bit. She even snuggled with me for a while like the old Maya.
Today we have been dealing with the aftermath of the fluid infusion. She peed a lot in the litter box, but then she clearly was on her way for another pee and couldn’t make it. She found the next best thing: Puck’s bed. This necessitated a trip to the laundromat and then Walmart to stock up on waterproof pads to put down everywhere. I suspect this won’t be the only accident.
I don’t know what will happen, but I’m not hopeful. I’m not sure how one beats kidney failure. I have an appointment with the same vet next week when we get back to Sedona; I am just trying to keep her going through the weekend.
It sucks to watch her suffer, she cries at me like I should be able to fix it and I can’t.
I’ll keep you posted.
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