Dear Karma, cut me some slack...

Now my little dearest clown-kitty, Rooney, has gotten ill. I thought he was depressed over Baxter's death, but he's been having terrible diarrhea and has continued to lose weight even though we've been working on fattening him up. He's been sitting crouched in front of the heater vent. So, I took him to the vet on Saturday and they did a ton of bloodwork (due back tomorrow) and took an X-ray.

Usually, the vet will start out with one of those, "Well overall it looks pretty good..." but when she brought in the X-ray she began with a list of abnormalities and "this is not supposed be there; I'm not sure what these spots are...this is not a normal picture at all..." My heart sank. I felt sick. His intestines are pushed back into the end of his abdominal cavity and although the X-ray didn't show a mass, the vet said there might be one because it looks as though many organs are being pushed around by "something." His temperature was also abnormally low. No. No. No. Until the bloodwork comes back she told me to feed him a special prescription diet mixed with pancreatic enzyme medicine to help him absorb some nutrients. So I did. And he got sicker. He just huddled on his Purr Pad and his little face was fiery hot. And then he had the most violent vomiting episode I've ever seen in man or animal. I was considering taking him to the local animal after-hours ER with absolutely no money to pay for it (Baxter's hospital and cremation bills have completely wiped us out.) We thought we would try to hydrate him a little first, so we went out and got some Pedialyte and fed him tiny, tiny morsels of his favorite food without the enzymes. Every hour we gave him a couple dropperfuls of Pedialyte and a tiny bit of food. We got up throughout the night to continue the routine and he progressively perked up and even crawled under the covers with us for a while, which is something he likes to do. This morning he was hungry and meowing which was a very good sign. I hope the bloodwork tells us something and that it can be treated. The next step is probably a fasting X-ray and possibly exploratory surgery (which I hope is not necessary). My fear is cancer, but my hope is a thyroid problem that can be medicated. I'm going to check on him at lunch and give him another small snack/drink. Needless to say, we are just sick with this new development. Here's hoping for Christmas Miracles.