Blaze came home from the hospital yesterday.

Blaze is one of our cats. We have two – him and his brother, Diamond. Two weeks ago, Blaze was fine, running around the house and eating as normal. But then he started to throw up. Now, any cat owner can tell you that a cat throwing up is nothing unusual, but Blaze kept throwing up most of his meals.

So Andrea took him to the local vet. After a barrage of tests, they had no idea what was wrong with him. In fact he looked great for a 13 year old cat. The vet gave him some special food, which he seemed to keep down, and sent him home.

That night he threw up 14 times. The next day, Andrea took him to Cary to the Veterinary Specialist Hospital. They had the equipment to run an ultrasound, and they discovered that he had an enlarged pancreas, and perhaps an enlarged gall bladder. Without an expensive operation, he would die.

Andrea and I talked about it on the phone, and we made the decision to put him to sleep. Both she and I left work to meet up at the farm, so we could go together. We were both upset, and we wondered if putting him to sleep was the right thing to do.

Now, one person at work suggested the “cinderblock” cure – tie him to a cinderblock and throw him in the pond. It’s funny, I’ve never understood why some people hate cats so. We have both cats and dogs, and while I’ve met people who just don’t like dogs, it is never to the degree that certain people hate cats. Strange.

Of course, that was never an option. We wanted to do what was best for the cat. Now if this had been some sort of chronic illness, like cancer, the decision would have been easier. But since it was acute, and sudden, we changed our minds and decided to have the operation.

We sat around last Friday night and waited for the call. The operation went well, and his pancreas was swollen and his gall bladder was infected. They started a regimen of antibiotics and inserted a feeding tube so that he could be fed without irritating the swollen organs.

It turns out that cats can only go for about three days without food before serious damage to the internal organs, especially the liver, occurs.

Andrea went to visit him every night for a week, while I went every other day (it was about a three hour round trip including the visit). The first time I went he was not able to leave his cage, but the next time he seemed pretty normal. Unfortunately, he seemed to get a little worse as the week went on.

Part of it may have been the hospital itself. There was always a barking dog or some other noise to disturb him, and that, coupled with the growing balance on the vet’s books, lead us to bring him home Friday night.

He’s home, which is good, but the downside is that he has to be fed, via the tube, every six hours, and the process takes 70 minutes (with medicine administered 30 minuted before that). I have the noon and midnight shift, and Andrea is taking the sixes.

He’s not out of the woods yet. He only seems “normal” for a few minutes out of the day, and the liquid diet gives him serious diarrhea. But if we can get through this weekend, things should get better.