Chavez’s Story

January 12th, 2009

Our cat Chavez, seen above being absolutely fucking adorable with my wife, has had a tough life.  Some have paralleled it to rap icon Eazy-E.  Both led a hard scrabble life on the streets, fighting and having crazy sex with all the honeys.  Both ended up with AIDS as a result.  Chavez has never recorded any albums with Dr. Dre (that we know of), but he did gain full membership in the Kelly Park Compton Crips after cementing his allegience to the crack rock game.  OK, we made the last part up.  But you can see where I’m going with this, right?  

All my life, I’ve been surrounded by dogs.  I had a cat, Ralph, as a boy but his sole reason for being was to kill small vermin that inhabited our country house.  But dogs…I had plenty as a kid.  My K9 love never faded, and I certainly never would have told anyone that a cat was in my future.  But when Tori saw this kitty prowling around our porch in Indianapolis, it was game over for my dog days.  We adopted him from the streets and named him after César Estrada Chávez.  He got along just fine with the dogs (after he threw down a challenge or two…) and though it took me a while, I came to accept him as family.  We had a rough getting-to-know-each-other phase, as I am simply not used to a cat’s gofuckyourself way of living.  But he was awfully sweet when he wanted to be, and I came to know the kittykittykitty underneath his tough gangsta exterior.  When we had him neutered at the no kill shelter in Indy, his blood test came back positive for FIV.  We were worried, for sure, but he has lived a most excellent life with the virus.  But we knew that someday something could happen…and we just had a very close call.

Last night I received a frantic call at work.  Tori was sobbing and trying to explain that our beloved kitty was falling over, curling up and being dis-associative for a few minutes.  I instructed her to call the 24 hour vet (you pet owners do keep that number handy, right?) and see if it would be prudent to bring him in.  The folks at the emergency center presumed that he was having seizures, and told us to get him to a vet in the morning.  As luck would have it, our dog Sassy had an appointment anyway, so I figured I could call in the morning and switch K9 for feline.  When I returned home in an hour or so, it happened again.  It was an awful thing to see…not twitchy as I had presumed a seizure would be, but a slow uncontrollable curling and writhing.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to watch.  Some quick Google-fu told me there wasn’t a whole lot to do but get him help in the morning, and that for some FIV+ cats this is the beginning of the end.  He has recently lost a fair amount of weight as well which is never a good thing for FIV+ cats.  Neither one of us knew for sure that he was going to live through the night.

I slept a few hours, tossing and tumbling all night.  I had to work early, and dragged my ass in as best I could.  I made a call to the vet at 9 and switched animals for the appointment.  Tori (god bless her) brought him in, and he was examined and rushed to “treatment”.  He was given some Valium to ease the seizures that were happening every hour or so.  The doctor sent Tori home and told her she’d get an update later.  

I need to explain here that this cat is my wife’s familiar.  She had a terrible car accident in 2003 that she miraculously walked away from, and to this day she is sure it was Chavez that saved her.  She tells things to the cat that I don’t know.  He’s got it good, and the relationship is mutual.  She knows she can rely on him for a good chat, a laugh or a spirit boost.  And in case you didn’t know, many pregnant women have incredibly heightened senses of empathy.  If you know Tori, you may say “BUT TANG, THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE!  SHE IS ALREADY THE MOST CANCERY CANCER I KNOW” and I would have to agree, except I’ve seen it.  Now imagine how a woman in that heighened state of emotion would react if her best friend was in peril.  On with the story…

She got the call at around 4:30 that we could pick him up.  The Valium was working well for him, and we were given a course of  Phenobarbital to start him on in the morning.  It’s now 8 PM, and he seems to be doing well.  He’s eaten the pimp canned cat food feast I brought him home, drank some water and seems really content.  We’re not sure what happens next.  Some cats with seizures stay on the Phenobarbitol for the rest of their lives and die happy of old age.  The blood test results come somtime tomorrow and will give us a better idea of what the prognosis will be.  Chavez is about 9 years old, but all that hardcore gangsta living may have caught up with him.  I’ll post an update tomorrow, but say a little kitty prayer for us tonight, will you?  Because after years of tolorating that damn cat, for some time now I’ve loved him.

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