“Homer?” I said. No matter how deeply asleep he was, Homer would at least lazily flick one ear at the sound of his name. But this time he didn’t respond at all. It was as if my Homer, the cat I’d known and loved so well for more than a decade, was trapped somewhere inside this shell of a cat who now lay beside me on the bed.
This was something beyond the vagaries of a bad day or a sour stomach. I immediately called my vet’s office.
The vet was seeing other patients, and I was told that I should leave my phone number and he would call back. There was nothing for me to do in the meantime except pace the floors and wait for a return call—which I did, for the better part of the morning.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what was responsible for this dramatic change in Homer’s behavior. By lunchtime, when I’d called the vet again and still hadn’t heard back, I decided to consult Google. I was sure there was some perfectly benign, nonalarmist way of accounting for Homer’s malaise that the collective wisdom of the online community would reveal to me. So I sat in front of my computer and typed in the phrase, “cat stopped eating.”
Here’s a tip for the cat owners out there—and I want you to take this advice very seriously, because it’s important. Should your own cat one day stop eating, do yourself a favor and do not Google the phrase “cat stopped eating.” I mean it. You will be tempted to do so, but I’m here to tell you that you really, really don’t want to, because oh my good God.
The list of maladies to which this particular symptom corresponded was as long as it was terrifying: kidney failure, liver failure, stomach cancer, colon cancer, feline leukemia, pneumonia, tumors, brain tumors, a stroke that had already happened, a stroke that was about to happen, and on and on and on. The only innocuous illness—tooth infection or gum disease—was also the only one I could rule out on my own. Homer had eaten the crunchier dry food the night before when he wouldn’t eat the softer moist food, plus I couldn’t find any abscesses or signs of infection inside his mouth. That Homer allowed me to poke around inside his mouth without struggling impatiently was, in itself, corroboration that something more than a tooth infection was at work here.
Somewhere around page three of the Google search results, when I reached the stories of people whose cats had stopped eating one day and then fallen over dead the next, sanity and I parted company. I called the vet’s office again, and this time I demanded to speak with him. “I am not hanging up the phone until I do,” I informed the receptionist, my voice choked with panic. “I don’t care how long I have to hold.”
I was being something of a difficult client, but the veterinarian did come to the phone after only a few minutes and asked his questions patiently. I tried to answer with equal calmness and clarity. No, I hadn’t noticed any bloody stool or urine. No, neither of the other cats was displaying any unusual symptoms or behavior. Yes, it had seemed to come on very suddenly—Homer had been rambunctious as a kitten only two days earlier. I knew he had eaten and drunk a little something the night before, but he definitely hadn’t eaten and I wasn’t sure if he’d drunk today.
The last thing the vet asked was for me to pinch the skin of Homer’s neck just above his shoulder blades. I administered this strange-sounding test and reported that the skin had sunk almost immediately back into its normal position, albeit not with much elasticity. “That means he’s not too dehydrated yet,” the vet said. “If the skin hadn’t gone back down, I would have told you to bring him in now so we could get an IV fluid drip going. He should be okay for today, but I want you to bring him in first thing tomorrow morning. A cat who goes too long without eating can sustain liver damage.”
Laurence returned home from work with sliced turkey, cans of tuna, smoked salmon—all of Homer’s favorites. But Homer was equally indifferent to everything. The sound of the turkey being unwrapped or the can of tuna being opened didn’t bring the familiar clip-clip-clip of footsteps down the hall. Scarlett and Vashti followed me eagerly into the third bedroom, anxious for their share of the goodies. Scarlett clambered onto the bed and eyed Homer suspiciously as she nosed after the food in my hand that Homer hadn’t even lifted his head to examine. Aren’t you going to bother me? she seemed to ask. Is this some kind of a trick? Homer had always pursued turkey and tuna with an aggressiveness that Scarlett found distasteful, shamelessly pushing the other cats out of the way in his excitement.
But Homer remained perfectly still. If it hadn’t been for the slight rise and fall of his breathing, I wouldn’t have known he was alive.
I slept with Homer in the third bedroom that night—although slept may be the wrong word, because I was wide awake most of the time. I lay on my side and Homer nestled into my midsection as if he couldn’t get warm enough, even though it was the middle of July. I rested my cheek on top of his head and wrapped my arms around him, whispering, “You’ll be fine, little boy. You’ll see. The doctor will make you all better tomorrow.”
Homer didn’t fight me early the next morning as I loaded him into his carrier, although I would have given anything if he had. He’d always been a small cat, but today he looked frighteningly skinny. I could feel the bones of his spine poking through his skin as I lifted him into the carrier. For the first time, I found myself almost grateful that Homer didn’t have eyes; I didn’t think I could have borne the look of mute suffering that surely would have been in them. “Good boy,” I murmured as I zipped the carrier closed around him. I continued talking to him in a soft, reassuring voice in the cab to the vet’s office. “Good kitty. Good boy.”
The vet and I had a minor disagreement once we were in the exam room. He wanted me to wait in the waiting room while he examined Homer, and I had no intention of leaving. If it had been Scarlett or Vashti I might have, but Homer—ill and miserable as he clearly was—would be terrified if left alone in a strange place with strange people. He wouldn’t be able to see their faces or make any sense of what was happening to him. He wouldn’t understand why I had abandoned him. I couldn’t leave him; if anybody was going to hold Homer down while the vet performed his tests, it would be me.
Homer had been alarmingly listless for the past two days, but he sparked briefly back to life on the exam table. He had never exactly been a good patient (what pet enjoys the vet’s office?), but I’d never—not even during the break-in—heard him growl and hiss as evilly as he did that day while the vet turned him this way and that, poking with his fingers and various instruments as he collected samples and felt for lumps, tears, or obstructions. I stood at the opposite end of the exam table from the vet, my hands firmly clenched in the scruff of Homer’s neck as I tried to hold him still. “Good boy,” I crooned, my thumbs rubbing behind his ears. I felt that I should keep talking, that if anything would calm Homer, it was the sound of my voice. “You’re my brave little boy and you’re doing such a good job. Mommy is right here with you, and this will all be over soon.”
The vet announced that he was going to collect a urine sample. I was wondering how he would accomplish this—it wasn’t as if he could tell Homer to pee in a cup, was it?—when I noted the giant needle he was preparing and saw his movement to turn Homer onto his back. The idea, it would seem, was to insert that long needle directly into Homer’s bladder.