Kitty Death Watch 2012

My dear and bitchy cat Bonanza is not long for this world.

Back in the spring, she sprouted a hump to rival Igor's. It is both bony and greasy. When I finally got it biopsied, the results were conclusively "hell if we know."

So, even though the dreaded C word was not uttered by the vet, it was pretty clear that Bonanza will not likely see her next birthday (whenever that may be). You see, the old girl is losing weight and getting her hump caught on things, leaving her with a festering scab of nastiness on top of the hump of icky. And she used to be so cute when she wasn't hissing.

I give this background to explain why I am the worst neighbor in the history of weed-whacker borrowing.

When planning our recent 5-day trip to New York City for BlogHer12, my brain insisted upon viewing the trip as "a weekend away." While the journey certainly included a weekend, that was the only thing it had in common with the usual use of the word "weekend."

Bonanza and her compatriot Charlie are perfectly capable of looking after themselves for a weekend, but a five day trip is a little much. I realized on the day before we left that we really needed someone to poke a head in on the critters while we were gone.

Our normal go-to critter wranglers were expecting a baby who had already decided to be a week-plus late to his own birth. Clearly they were out. Our only other option was our new neighbors, who had specifically told us a horrifying story about finding a cache of cat turds falling into the husband's face during a previous renovation project. Clearly, this was already a big favor.

Of course, our neighbors were gracious and willing.

Then we put together the emergency information for them, and included the following line: "if anything goes south with the cats, our vet is [REDACTED] and there is a travel crate by the front door."

This is the sort of thing you might add to any emergency contact sheet. But I had this horrible feeling that our neighbors might actually have to use the information/cat carrying case.

We arrived home today with both a thank you gift from New York and a fear that we would find that Bonanza had shuffled off this earthly coil.

What we found was a number of piles of hair balls all over the house. And no sign whatsoever of my sweet, evil cat.

After a couple of hours of looking under a great deal of furniture and wondering how I could ever stay in the house when I didn't know where my friend's mortal remains were hiding, Bonanza came sauntering upstairs from the basement.

J told me he hadn't been concerned. The level of hairball filth all over the house seemed to indicate Bonanza was just fine. I, on the other hand, had worried that they had been evidence of some sort of final throes of ickiness.  "If that were the case," J remarked, "then she's been dying for the past nine years."

In any case, we will be profusely thanking our neighbors and never asking them another favor ever again.

(Until next time.)

And, I will be snuggling up with my old girl. I'll even let her rub her hump juice on me.