After several months, I finally managed to convince my mother that something is wrong with Lusha. She was walking strangely. When she walked, her back legs would splay out to the sides as though she were walking on ice and slipping around. I tried cleaning her paws, thinking that maybe the pads were calloused and not getting traction, but that did not help. Even more disconcerting was that her front paws were bending backwards!!! When she stood up, her front legs would bend the wrong way about mid-way between the wrist and elbow. It looks like the forearms are broken. I don’t know how my mother did not notice this (which has been getting more and more pronounced over the past several months), but she finally did.
We took her to the vet and our worlds were shattered. Lusha was diagnosed with diabetes.
She was put on a diet of expensive, available from the vet only, specialized dietetic food, and an insulin regimen. After a month or two she showed improvement. She was able to stand and walk again, her front and back legs were back to normal, and eventually she was able to jump again.
After a month or two of disarray and confusion as to how to arrange the shelves and bed so that she can continue to look out the window, I finally managed to create a way up for her that amounts to nothing more than one extra shelf. That’s right, after designing a fancy, stair-well system, I ended up just adding one more shelf so that instead of having to make two jumps, she can make three smaller ones to get up to the shelf and top bunk.
We really thought it was the end of the world and nearly went blind from crying. However as luck would have it, even the most sensitive person will come to terms with even the worst tragedy once the situation comes under control and the pain will lessen. Even better, there is hope that she can live a long, healthy life despite the diabetes, and better yet, there is hope that she may even be cured, or at least become insulin-independent. Apparently cats are the only creatures who’s diabetes can go into remission. Lucky us. Unfortunately, the most important step is to lose weight, and while she was already overweight to start with (not exceedingly so, just our bad luck), she has actually GAINED weight being on the “diet”-management food—even eating a little less than the prescribed portion size.
We need to find a feline-diabetes specialist instead of relying on the vets who get kick-backs from the food (which I have found out is actually harmful crap) that they prescribe and sell. If only I had learned to feed our cats non-dry, non-manufactured food earlier, we probably would not be in this situation in the first place.
Happy freaking birthday.