Yet another Feline Friday, and Ms. Harry, the cat also known as Harriet, is still with us.

Ms. Harry’s is eating almost nothing, although there’s still a spark–a small spark–of an appetite. She’s getting by on tiny bits of baby food, raw fish, NutriCal, a little canned tuna, Fancy Feast, and an occasional taste of dry cat food. I basically rotating different choices past her, hoping that she’ll decide to take a bit or two of enough of them to get through each day.

We know this is kitty hospice care, and that one day the spark will be gone from her eyes. At that point, we’ll give her a graceful way out. But I don’t think she’s there yet.

Yesterday, though, she gave us a scare. After our walk, we let Harriet go out on the front deck. She usually just sits in the sun, or observes the yard from a chair. But when I went looking for her a bit later, she was nowhere to be found. I checked under the house. Not there. I checked the front and back yards, looked down the hill, took another look down the road, asked our immediate neighbor…no signs of Harriet.

We delayed our departure to town in order to do another sweep of the yard. No sign of Harriet.

Under more normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been an issue. Our cats formerly had free access to the outside, although we’ve been teaching them about being indoor cats. But with Harry’s fragile condition, we feared that this might be her time to disappear into the jungle, find a hole to hide in, and wait for the end. We finally had to leave for the day with very mixed emotions, and hoped for the best

When we arrived back in the late afternoon, there was no Harriet on the front steps, or on the front deck, or in the garage. She didn’t come out from under the house to greet us. As I came into the house, I was already heading for our bedroom to change clothes and head out to tramp through the brush in the undeveloped lot next door in search of the ailing black and white cat. But when I turned around, I looked out the window and spotted a bit of contrast on the green grass at the very back edge of our back yard. On closer inspection, it was Ms. Harriet, laid out on the grass in a spot of sun.

I went running to the door, down the stairs, and into the yard. She didn’t move, but she started crying, a loud, plaintive meow. I picked her up and brought her back into the house. Today wasn’t her day after all. And she was hungry. I drained a can of tuna, and she drank the liquid, then slowly ate a teaspoon or so of the tuna, followed by some tiny bits of smoked salmon. Then another partial teaspoon of canned cat food. It was actually the most she had eaten at one sitting in several days.

So now we’re back to the hospice care. With our current household of geriatric felines, this will likely be the new normal for the next several years.

Meanwhile, Romeo is on my lap, fussing. Ms. Wally is in Meda’s lap, also fussing. Harry is on a towel on the “island” in the kitchen. Kili is looking out the door to the front yard. Toby is asleep in a chair. And Ms. Annie is asleep on our bed. The morning meals are over, insulin shots done for Duke & Kili.

Time to face the world.

–> See Ms. Harry and the rest of today’s Friday Felines!