I apologize in advance for this long post. We got bad news on Annie’s condition during our meeting with the vet who was on duty at the emergency veterinary clinic late yesterday afternoon. No happy ending to the story this time around, it appears.

The situation is complex, but simple. Annie has kidney stones. They have identified four descending from one kidney, causing a partial or total blockage. There’s another small stone within the other kidney that isn’t causing any trouble. Yet.

To complicate matters, there’s an infection. Those stones are a creating good spots for bacteria to grow and prosper. We don’t have a read on how well the antibiotics are attacking the infection.

This vet is very young, and explained that she has only been working at this facility for three months. Still learning the ropes. She began by touting the benefits of surgery to either remove the stones or create a bypass to let urine move around the kidney blockage to the bladder.
I was skeptical, given Annie’s age (16-1/2 years, thats something around 82 human years). She also has a heart murmur. There’s that infection. And this is really treating the symptoms, since new stones could form. I asked about recovery after surgery like this. Well, she said, they would probably have to surgically insert a feeding tube, at least temporarily. And then there’s the cost of such a procedure, which turned out to be off the charts.

The whole feeding tube thing has been our bright line in the past when trying to manage the end of life decisions for our long list of previous elderly cats. If that’s what it takes, then we would want to think very, very carefully before going down that path.

But not wanting to close off the discussion, we assented when the young vet said she wanted to get in touch with the surgeon to get us additional information.

So we waited. All this time, Annie was there on an exam table in front of us, where we could touch and stroke her, and talk to her, as we also talked about her. Very surreal.

Anyway, young vet returned. Her conversation with the surgeon had not gone as she expected, it seems, as she had done a 180 degree turn. Apparently the veterinary surgeon said Annie is “not a good candidate” for surgery, for all the reasons we were already worried about.

It looks like the best we can do at this point is bring her home, try to make her comfortable and get her eating. Then we can hopefully keep her on the antibiotics and other drugs they’ll send us home with.

We’re meeting with our regular vet later today to get her feedback and advice. And we expect to bring Annie home by the end of the day. It’s hard to know at this point whether it’s realistic to hope for a long goodbye. We’ll see.

Today is the full moon. January’s full moon is called the Wolf Moon. When we lived in the country, our cats were free to go in and out of the house and we learned cats wanted to be outside on the night of a full moon. They would be on the prowl, and come back tired out in the morning. Maybe this wolf moon can point the way for her next adventure.

I tracked down this photo of Annie as a kitten, taken at the end of October in 2003, two months after we rescued her from a beach alongside Kamehameha Highway in Kaaawa. She’s been with us a long time. We wish there were more years left. Yes, we do.