An Epidemic of Feline Proportions

Sarah is the oldest of our three cats. We adopted her shortly after moving into our first apartment together; she turned twenty last June. For a cat, that’s pretty damned old.

She’s been deaf for a couple of years now, our Sarah. She’s adjusted her life accordingly. If we’re out of the house, she’ll position herself somewhere—the kitchen counter, the dining room table—where’s it’s easy for her to see the back door open on our return. In the mornings, rather than listen for our steps on the upstairs floor or the creaking of the bed, she’ll sit directly outside the bedroom door, nose to the wood, so that there’s no way she’ll miss it opening, even if she’s asleep. Sarah’s a sweet old thing, and like most old folk, she lives a life centered around eating, trying to stay warm on even the hottest of days, and napping. For the last several months she’s been napping so silently and motionlessly that I’ve gotten into the habit of poking her when I walk by and asking, “You alive? All right then,” before moving on.

I thought this week, though, was going to be her last.

Two days before we left for Connecticut, Sarah started sneezing pretty constantly. I was worried enough when we left to ask our house sitter to keep an eye on her; he would search her out when he visited, poke her to make sure she was still among the living, and then report back to us. Chloe and Fred both started sneezing the day we left. When we came back home, last Thursday, we had a full-blown kitty epidemic on our hands.

Sarah was in particularly bad shape. The sitter told us she’d eaten every day up until Wednesday night; she hadn’t eaten a thing when we got home Thursday evening, and I couldn’t get her to express any interest in food either Friday or Saturday. Her eyes were streaming, her nose was dry, and her breathing was so stressed and dire that I could hear it several rooms away. She’d stopped grooming herself, which made me unconsciously start humming the “Smelly Cat” song from Friends every time I was near. When she walked, she tottered around on weak little legs. She completely lost her voice, and would let out pathetic, silent mews that you just know were meant to communicate her weak despair. I attempted to feed her warm chicken broth to keep her strength up, but it was too difficult for her to drink.

Saddest of all, instead of sprawling in her usual sleeping spots on the sofas and chairs, she holed up in dark, concealed places where she would attempt to sleep through her death rattle. I’d been steeling myself for her demise for months—she’s an unusually old cat, after all—but I knew this was the end. I tried to make the breathing easier by putting her in the bathroom with the shower running on hot, for the steam. She responded with silent meows and by curling up to sleep in the sink.

And then she bounced back. Yesterday she was eating again. A couple of days of the steam treatment put her breathing back to normal. Her voice returned. She’s bright-eyed and vocal again, and sleeping on the chairs and cuddling up to us for comfort once more. The vet had given us antibiotics for the cat’s colds, yesterday but she scarcely seems to need it any longer. She’s gotten through, and is in the enviable state of watching the other cats suffer.

Fred isn’t happy to be sick, and doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s easy to deal with, however, because she simply does what I’d do in her situation—she crawls under some bedcovers, pulls them over her head, and sleeps all day.

Chloe, however, is miserable, and wants to world to know it. She walks around with a snot-covered nose that defies cleaning, meowing her discontent at the top of her voice and demanding I do something about it. Sometimes she’ll sit, sullen and cantankerous, glaring at us with contempt.

Today I gave them a bit of the steam treatment in the bathroom, because Chloe in particular was wheezing fairly badly. Fred hunkered on the counter and breathed the vapors like a good girl. What did Chloe do? Protest at the top of her voice the moment I closed the door, and then jumped into the half-full bathtub and began to wade around in it. Just because she is the biggest feline drama queen I’ve ever known.

All afternoon she’s been glaring at me, wet and miserable and refusing to lick herself dry. I think I’m supposed to gather from her offended and aggrieved staring that some reparation is supposed to be made.

Mostly I’m just ignoring her, and waiting for those antibiotics to kick in.