I am still missing Rosie so very much. I know Willow and Cosmo are too.

This is her when she was an adorable wee kitten with ridiculously big ears. Thank you for the photographs, Emma.

I am very sad to tell you that beautiful Rosie-cat passed away late this afternoon. She was very poorly and getting worse. The vet did everything he could, but it just wasn’t to be.

Goodbye Rosie and rest in peace.

Rosie is worrying us all. At this very moment she is sleeping comfortably next to me as I prepare for the dreaded return to school tomorrow. Rosie will spend another day on the drip at the vet’s and then we will see what’s what.

Thanks for all the positive thoughts so many friends have sent.

Sent from my iPhone

New kitten Florence is settling in so perfectly, making friends and flourishing that I don’t have to worry about her and can focus the majority of my attention on big-cat Rosie.

Be warned, the rest of this post is a tiny bit icky, so don’t read if you’re eating.

She spent today on a drip in a pen at the vet’s surgery. I’m very grateful to Gerd our kind vet at Vets4Pets in Hartlepool for taking the time to give Rosie what she needs on New Year’s Day. Gerd was pleased to report that she had a nice poo during the day, which proves she did eat her prawns last night. Her kidneys have had another good flush out and she is going back tomorrow.

When I brought her back home just after six, she immediately showed signs of a returning appetite by eating a few cat-treats. Since then, she has walked around her territory confidently, climbed the stairs, jumped up on our (quite high) bed, washed her bottom (I told you) and had plenty to drink. I take it very positively that she cares about her hygiene, because when a cat is very poorly, they do lose interest in being fresh and lovely.

As I started this post, Rosie was nibbling some fresh roast chicken. There will be prawns later.

Gerd warned me that Rosie is by no means out of the woods yet, but at least she isn’t getting worse and he is encouraged by how much she has perked up. Fingers, toes and paws crossed please!

Rosie is home from the vet, but has to go back in the morning to spend another day on the drip. This morning’s blood and urea tests show a little improvement on yesterday’s, but she still has 10x too much creatinine in her blood, which indicates between 75% and 90% loss of renal function. 

This is better than yesterday, but still very bad. The vet decided he would like her to come home to us, so we can try to tempt her to eat something. John has bought, cooked and finely chopped steak, chicken and prawns, but she isn’t interested. Yet.

We are trying to think positively and are delighted that she had several big drinks of water after she came home. Then she slept for a few hours on our bed while I cuddled her and about 10 minutes ago, Rosie got up, had two more big drinks and then used the litter tray. 

Tomorrow morning we are taking her back to the vets at 9am for her to spend another day on a drip to continue to flush her kidneys. She is definitely improving in herself and is as determined and strong-minded as ever, even if she is wobbly on her feet. We are using the power of positive thought to the best of our ability.

I am going to continue this blog into the New Year, so will keep posting about her progress.

Why couldn’t she have sat in a nice place for this picture? This is the still-uncarpeted landing, complete with step-ladders. Oh never mind, it doesn’t matter, does it?

It’s been a very strange and difficult day. On  Wednesday, we noticed that Rosie had an upset tummy. It happens sometimes and we didn’t worry too much. But this morning, we noticed that she also had a sore mouth. We rang the vet immediately and took her along.

It turned out that she had an abscess on her tooth and luckily the vet was able to operate on her this afternoon. He telephoned after the operation and told me that the situation was worse than we’d thought. Rosie also had abscesses under her tongue and is very poorly. The vet took a blood sample and the readings are all wrong. She’s dehydrated, anaemic and her kidneys are full of toxins and swollen. The vet is keeping her in the surgery overnight on a drip, to try and flush the toxins out. His words were that the figures on the readout presented a ‘dark picture’.

This is the siutation: worst case, she may not be able to recover; medium case, it’s possible she will regain enough kidney function to live a normal life (25% is enough, apparently); best case, if she does brilliantly she could have the drip taken out tomorrow.

The vet will take more blood at 10am and we are hoping to see improvement in some of her readings. If that happens she may have to go to another vet with her drip to be looked after for the long weekend, in which case we will transport her in our car.

We feel awfully guilty for not realising sooner that she was poorly. The vet did explain that it can happen very quickly, but all the same, we feel we really should have noticed.

We have an appointment at 12 noon tomorrow, by which time the vet will know a lot more. Poor Isobel has been poorly since we told her and the rest of us have churning tummies. It’s a very difficult and tense time.