Today was the sort of whirlwind day that I do not like, and would prefer to not have to repeat very often, if ever. We were sitting at the table eating breakfast and I heard Tangerine coming toward us, so I turned my head, just in time to see her start to slowly sink to the floor, legs scrabbling. I flashed back to the way Rebecca died, jumping up on my bed and then just slowly keeling over onto my head, and Richard and I leapt from our chairs toward her. Her legs twitched and she peed a little, and it felt like the seizure lasted forever, when I’m sure it was only a minute or so. And after that, her balance was wobbly and she couldn’t walk in a straight line.

Richard called the emergency vet, because we didn’t know what else to do, and made an appointment for later that morning, and then he arranged to work from home so he could take her in. They kept her for several hours, to take blood and do x-rays and generally keep her under observation.

He picked her up mid-afternoon and things seemed fine. We shut her into one room so we could keep an eye on her. She was annoyed about being confined and generally inclined to sulk about the situation and wanted nothing to do with either of us. So I headed off to the first session of the three-week class I’m taking on landscape design (an aside here for the humor in this, considering that I am extremely design challenged for pretty much anything domestic – interior or exterior – but I’m hoping that even someone as hopeless as me can be taught). Naturally I put my phone on vibrate as soon as I sat down in the classroom, so I didn’t hear the series of text messages and voicemails coming in, and didn’t get them until the break. She had another seizure, and this time they had him take her to the emergency clinic that’s further away.

There are tests they need to run to figure out exactly what’s causing the seizures. The most likely candidate – and probably the one we should most hope for – is heart disease. She’s got a heart murmur – something that wasn’t there the last time she was in for a check-up – and those two symptoms (the murmur and the seizures) appear to be classic symptoms, at least according to the hasty research we’ve both been doing online since this started.

We’re both feeling pretty drained right now. It’s one thing to know that this is the sort of thing you have to be ready for when you have pets; it’s another to be smacked upside the head with it twice in less than a month. My eyes are puffy from crying – or alternatively trying not to cry all day. She’s 14, which I know is old for a cat, but with everything else she’s been through in her life, somehow this is the last thing we expected.