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“We can take it from here,” the vet said, lifting Homer and bundling him back into his carrier. “We’ll draw blood and run some tests. I’ll let you know when he’s ready to leave.”

Laurence and I had to wait another half hour before we were able to bring a still-sedated Homer back home. I was given some instructions on how to care for him and things to watch for until the sedative wore off. “Do you know what caused him to fall over like that this afternoon?” I asked. After all the drama of the preceding hour, the thing that had brought us there in the first place seemed almost like an afterthought, like something that had happened years ago to somebody else.

“We’ll know more when the bloodwork comes back tomorrow,” the vet told me. “We’ll call you as soon as we have it. The important thing now is for him to get some rest.”

HOMER SLEPT FOR the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t stir into consciousness again until early evening, when he woke just long enough to eat his dinner before staggering back into the bedroom and collapsing in the little nest I’d made for him on the floor from old t-shirts and sweaters. I moved his litter-box into our bedroom and kept him in there with us overnight, away from the curious noses of Clayton and Fanny, who couldn’t figure out why their big brother smelled so different (like the vet’s office, although they didn’t know it), and why he didn’t wake and acknowledge them, even when they touched his head and face with tentative little paws. At some point in the middle of the night, Homer made an unsuccessful attempt to jump onto the bed but fell over backwards, the sedative having still not worn off entirely. I didn’t want him on the bed—which, being a king-size, was rather high off the ground—because I wasn’t sure he’d be able to jump off without hurting himself if he needed his litter-box. But I also didn’t want him to have to sleep by himself. I ended up moving my pillows and a blanket down to the floor, so I could curl up next to him.

The next morning, Homer was almost miraculously back to his old self. He ate a big breakfast and greeted Clayton and Fanny in his usual imperious way. A couple of hours later we were playing one of his favorite games, wherein I would wriggle my finger under the bed covers and Homer (who could once again get on and off the bed just fine) would pounce on them. I was delighted to see him cocking his head to one side in familiar fashion as he listened for the slight noises that would pinpoint where, exactly, my fingers were.

He was still doing well enough when noon came around that Laurence and I went out to grab a quick lunch at a sandwich place next to our apartment building. We’d just placed our orders when my cell phone rang with a call from the animal hospital. The vet who called wasn’t the one who had seen Homer yesterday, but she assured me that she’d thoroughly read both Homer’s test results and his medical file.

“How’s he doing today?” she asked.

“He seems okay, actually.” I’d risen and was walking through the restaurant, so we could continue the call outside where I wouldn’t disturb the diners around me. “He was even playing this morning.”

She sounded surprised. “He was playing?”

I think I mistook her surprise for reproach—as if she were implying that I was a dangerous lunatic for running an invalid cat like Homer around—and I quickly backtracked. “It wasn’t strenuous play. He was in a playful mood, is what I meant.”

“No, that’s good!” She seemed to file this tidbit away for future reference before continuing. “So I’ve looked over the bloodwork and Homer’s file, and I wanted to go over the results with you.”

She started with the numbers that fell within the normal range and therefore looked good, and that was the shortest part of our conversation. The problem, it quickly became clear, was Homer’s liver. I didn’t have to understand all the ins and outs or medical jargon to know immediately how serious the problem was. Doing some rapid calculations, I realized that Homer’s liver values (the enzymes that were supposed to be found in the liver itself, not in his bloodstream) were about fifteen hundred percent higher than what was normal in a cat. Fifteen hundred percent! “If his fur wasn’t so black, you’d probably have noticed a while ago that his ears are yellow, and how jaundiced he is,” the vet told me, and I cursed myself for having been so stupid—so unforgivably stupid and unobservant. “I sounded surprised when you said Homer was playing this morning, because frankly a cat with numbers like these shouldn’t even be able to walk.” She didn’t say it aloud, but I knew what she was thinking: He shouldn’t even be alive.

My mind instantly rejected that thought. Numbers or no numbers, anybody with two eyes in their head could see that Homer was still Homer. He ate, he played, he cuddled in my lap. Maybe on paper he shouldn’t be alive, but in the real world he was still walking around the same as ever—and where there was life, there was hope. So I took a deep breath to steady myself and asked, “Where do we go from here?”

“I’d like you to bring Homer in this afternoon,” the vet said, “and plan on leaving him here for a few days—maybe a week.” She launched into her recommended course of treatment, an aggressive one that would involve hooking Homer up round-the-clock to various drips and medications, which would drain harmful fluids out and introduce healthier ones in, and give his liver a fighting chance to recover.

I didn’t even know I’d started to cry until I became aware of a pain on my cheeks, and realized that the icy December wind had frozen the tears to my face. My god, was all I could think. My god, how can I do this to him? How can I bring him back to that place and leave him there all alone?

“Let me talk to the doctor who saw Homer yesterday,” the vet concluded. “I’ll call you back so we can make a plan.”

Laurence was waiting at our table when I re-entered the restaurant, and I saw that our food had arrived in my absence. I couldn’t touch mine, however, and as I relayed to Laurence the substance of my conversation with the vet, my tears began to flow in earnest. He reached across the table to cover my hand with his and tried to say something comforting. I suddenly became aware that we were in a very public place, and that the other patrons closest to us were beginning to take an interest in our table. “I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice sounded like I was choking. “I have to go back outside. People will think you’re breaking up with me.” I got up and left him for a second time, crouching once I’d reached the sidewalk again and putting my head between my legs as I tried to pull myself together.

I was still outside, grateful for the cold air I inhaled in greedy gulps in the hopes it would clear my thoughts, when the vet called back. “I spoke with the doctor who saw Homer yesterday,” she told me. “We talked a bit and…” She hesitated, as if searching for the right words. “We’re not sure that Homer would benefit from a hospital environment.”

For a moment, I was hopeful. “You mean you think I can treat him at home?”

Her voice softened. “Look, the doctor you saw yesterday told me what happened. We can’t get near Homer without sedating him, and we can’t keep a cat fully sedated for days at a time. And we can’t sedate a cat at all with bloodwork like Homer’s. If we’d known how bad his numbers were, we wouldn’t have sedated him yesterday.”

“So you’re saying you can’t treat him without sedating him, but you can’t sedate him until you’ve been able to treat him.”