106 - Good news, bad news

The good news is obvious - I passed my driving test. The bad news is a little bit more random - my mum and dad's cat, Tigger, had to be put down on Saturday night.

Our phone went on Saturday night, and we ignored it - as we usually do - and picked up the voicemail. It was from my dad, saying, "Call me back, it's an emergency". No explanation of what the emergency was, of course. So, I called him back and mum answered - she explained that they thought Tigger had broken his leg or hip or something from falling off their neighbour's new fence. Another neighbour had heard him crying and came to get my dad - he found Tigger stuck under the steps in the neighbour's garden, unable or unwilling to come out. Dad tried to get at him, but couldn't at first, so he called me for help, but managed to get Tigger out by the time I called him back.

They had already called the emergency Vet and were trying to calm Tigger down a bit before they left - at first I told them to just keep me informed, thinking if it was just a broken leg, there wasn't any point in me going over, and that I'd just swing by to see Tigger the next day. Then I heard Tigger wailing and crying in the background and changed my mind. I told mum I'd be over, grabbed the car keys and shot off.

We got Tigger to the PDSA hospital in Glasgow, and the vet checked him over. As soon I managed to get a good look at Tigger (he was in his box already when I got there) I could see that something wasn't right - neither of his legs looked out of place or disjointed, but they were both just hanging there, as if he was unable to move them. The vet pretty much indentified the problem straight away - his legs weren't broken, and his hips were fine, but the muscle mass around his legs had deteriorated to the point where he was completely unable to bear his weight on them.

I knew that Tigger hadn't been too well, but that my parents had taken him to the vet a few times, who took blood tests, which showed up clear, and prescribed him antibiotics which, apparently, perked him up. Holding him on Saturday night though, he was still very thin - to the point where I could feel each ridge of his spine, and his gums very almost white, as if he was extremely anaemic.

Despite him being so thin, his belly was quite large, almost as if it was distended, and felt quite tense and hard. The vet tried to take a sample from it using a syringe, and got very little blood from it (itself a warning sign), but got a fair amount of a clear-ish, extremely foul-smelling liquid. The vet couldn't be 100% certain, but he guessed that if Tigger had fallen due to the state of his muscles, he may have torn his small intestine, or ruptured his bowel - both of which would be causing him the pain he was clearly in, because although the state of his legs would be worrying him, it shouldn't be causing him any pain.

The vet was very calm, and very good, explaining that there was no way of identifying there and then what had caused Tigger's deterioration, but it was clear that he was in a very serious condition, and that while steps could be taken to try and get him better, he was in such a state that the prognosis was not good at all, and that in all likelihood, they would only be prolonging the inevitable, and all the while, Tigger may still be in pain. The vet gave Tigger a shot for the pain there and then, which knocked him out completely, showing just how bad a state he was in, as the state should really only have calmed him down a little and numbed the pain.

Mum and dad talked it over, and asked me for my opinion, and I had to agree that, given the state Tigger was in, and the fact that the vet wasn't confident in the chances of a recovery, putting Tigger down was the best solution. They told the vet, he administered the shot, and Tigger was gone almost immediately. Again, the shot would have taken a few minutes to work, if he hadn't been in so bad a condition.

I was, and still am, angry with my parents. How the Hell could they not notice how bad Tigger was? They say he hadn't been acting odd - he had been eating a decent amount, and hadn't brought anything up - but how did they not notice how thing he was, or how pale he was? When the vet put him down, Tigger's veins were so bad, that he struggled to find one good enough. I'm not going to get any answers to those questions, so I didn't even bother asking them - it would probably just widen the rift between me and my parents even more.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. With everything happening so fast, and with it starting out just looking like Tigger had just broken his leg, no-on had phoned my sister. As 'luck' would have it she chose that moment in time to call me at home for a chat and to chin me for not telling her directly that I'd passed my driving test. Morag asked her if she knew about Tigger, she freaked out and starting phoning my Dad's mobile, but by then it was too late, and Tigger was gone. This brought on much hysteria and anger from my sister - who is not exactly a stable personality - about how much she loved Tigger, and how well she'd cared for him - a dubious claim, to be honest. I finally managed to speak to her myself later on, when she phoned and woke me up at 2 in the morning, and got her to calm down a little after I explained what had happened. She was supposed to call me yesterday afternoon to talk about it, but she didn't.

So, the usual interesting weekend. Add all of that to my usual shoulder-load of stress, and you may not be surprised to learn that I have developed an unconscious twitch above my right eye, which is currently going crazy while I type.

Apologies for the wall of text, btw.