Our weekend started off relatively well. On Saturday we got up early and started a day of house and yard work. We raked leaves, trimmed plants and trees, hauled a huge pile of yard waste to the street for pickup, and even took time to set up our little 10-foot pool in preparation for the hot weather to come.
Yes, we really are that silly – we have a 10-foot round pool (complete with industrial strength pool pump / filter / etc.).
After a long day of being productive (all of this done in anticipation of summer BBQs/parties/etc.), we were relaxing after dinner thinking about what to do for the evening – perhaps a movie or something interesting that we’d recorded on the DVR.
I was sitting on the sofa next to Siobhan and she suddenly stood up and acted like she was going to have a dizzy spell. We’ve had to be very careful with her over the years because she has a grade 3 heart murmur and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a thickening of the walls of the heart). We manage this by not being too active with her, and making sure she doesn’t get too riled up – but this time it was different.
She had been relaxing with me on the couch, then started to get woozy. I grabbed her and pulled her toward me as her legs began to stiffen then spasm, she lost control of her bowels, and basically acted like she was having a seizure. We later found out that she had gone into congestive heart failure - where the heart suddenly stops then restarts.
We rushed her to an emergency vet where she had two more episodes while they tried to stabilize her with oxygen and a medication that pulls fluid off the lungs and heart to help her breathe better. After about 30 minutes they recommended we get her to the UC Davis Vet hospital as soon as possible, so we took off for Davis.
Siobhan spent Saturday night in an oxygen box, and when we left her that evening she was starting to breathe better but was still very scared.
All day Sunday she continued to receive medication to take fluid off the lungs, but was able to come out of the oxygen container without incident.
Monday morning (today) she is having x-rays, heart ultrasound, and some other tests to determine next steps, although both doctors who have seen her said that she will recover just fine but will need to be on heart medication the rest of her life.
The worst part of all this is just not having her here – not having her sleeping in bed next to us – not feeling her presence in the house. For people who have never owned a sphynx it is probably impossible to understand how much these cats are like children. They behave more like a three-year old than a cat, and not having her here is like having your child in the hospital without being able to see them or hold them.
We’re expecting she will be home today at some point, and I can’t wait to have her back in my arms to give her lots of love.
