Ernie the cat is half-blind

Yesterday, Sunday, my parents called to invite Ron and I over for dinner. This is quite nice, and happens once in a while when my parents are in town. While on the phone my mother asks “How old is Ernie?” who is their cat. I didn’t know. “Well, was he alive when you two got married?” I still didn’t know, so I asked Ron, who did know, and he said yes, Ernie was at our wedding. Literally, we got married at my parents’ house, and Ernie was there.

My mom went on to say that Ernie was actually pretty old after all, and the question of his age was brought up because he had not been feeling well lately and wasn’t eating.

So we went over to eat dinner and the discussion went from world travel to US travel to family gossip to eventually to pets. Dad told me that he thought that Ernie was now completely blind, and was maybe loosing his sense of smell, since the cat couldn’t even find the nice pile of fresh salmon Dad put in front of him the day before. Poor cat: blind and smell-impaired.

At this time I’m thinking “how can a cat loose his sense of smell? This is not possible!” Since I was done eating I volunteered to find the good cat Ernie. I first looked in the basement, many corners of which had not been traveled in by my parents for some months, since I did the invisible-cobwebs-all-over-my-face-and-bare-arms dance on at least three occasions. And it’s not a big basement! Then I went upstairs and couldn’t find him in any of the bedrooms or closets. Then I walked around the outside of the house, with J.B. the dog, and had to wait around the corner before going into the back door because my Dad was relieving himself off the back steps. It’s OK, there’s a bunch of myrtle and bushes and trees, so the only people who would walk right were he was peeing would be robbers or peeping Toms or some other low-life.

We then all moved into the den to watch Cold Case on TV. I got up after about 5 minutes to retrieve my half drunk glass of Shiraz from the dinning table, and there sat Ernie, in the middle of the kitchen floor, holding his head away from me. I gave him a quick scratch on the head, moved my glass of wine from the table to the den, and went back to the kitchen to pick up the cat. Now you have to understand that this is an old Tom cat. He has had bad days, he is ornery, but as far as I know I am his favorite human, even though he only sees me about once a month.

I carried him to the corner of the “L” shaped couch in the den and laid him across my lap and chest. He is a large cat and just doesn’t fit in my lap. I began petting him and took a couple of little sticky-balls out of his fur, began scratching the top of his head, and finally brought his head around to inspect his eyes, since my folks were talking about his being blind.

Lord help me I almost puked up my pot roast! He had lost an eye, and it was partially sticking out of his head, and there was little half-tears/half-blood drainage down the side of his nose, and.. AND… THIS POOR CAT!

Why didn’t they take him to the vet yesterday? How could they not notice this? Did they decide to not call the vet because it could cost another $100 for a weekend emergency charge? They have more money than Bill Gates! (well, I may be exaggerating a little bit on the last one) But they have more money than they can spend before they die! Do they know the chances of infection at this point? What? You didn’t even think about infection? Ghaa! How did they manage to raise two human children at all? And Yes, it is good that he damaged the eye that was already blind, and he still has one good eye.

But I actually did a good job asking (most of) the above questions in a calm voice and not screaming at them, although I did give them just enough of a push to embarrass them a bit. I asked them to just take the cat to the vet’s office first thing in the morning, and they said they would call for an appointment. They did get one at 2:00 today.

Ron and I walked through the woods back home last night and ended up watching Crossing Jordan. It was an episode where a man with a glass eye is murdered, and then they lose the glass eye and people are walking around carrying it. I told Ron “I’m doomed to have nightmares about eyeballs tonight!”

I'll let you-all know how Ernie is tomorrow.

Post Script: I called my folks at around 1:00 to see what the vet said. Dad told me that they had a 2:00 appointment and they’d call me later that afternoon. Mom called me a little after 3:00 to tell me the doctor said the cat’s eye was completely blind (duh!) and he was “mostly blind” in the other eye. She called back at 3:30 to say they decided to put poor Ernie to sleep for “quality of life” reasons. She also said the cat scratched the hell out of the vet. I would have too if I thought my life were at stake! Good for him!

I have to say I wouldn’t have done it. I believe in euthanasia, on many levels, but I think he would have lived a few more years with a fine quality of life. I’m just sayin’.