That's my Crybaby when she was a fat and healthy mother of five. When she was a kitten, she never shut up. And then one day she went into screeching, screaming heat and I called Cass Clark of the Animal Welfare Society (from which she adopted) and told Cass she had to do something. Fortunately, it was spay-and-neuter-a-friend day and so Cass said "Bring her in." So there Crybaby was, in her spring-loaded carrier, the same one she went to the vet yesterday.
Only yesterday she was too weak to push the latch up with her head and escape to gift me with five more beautiful, I mean really beautiful, kittens. Once she was a contented mother, she never cried anymore so I respectfully addressed her as Fat MommyCat. But that was eight years ago. Yesterday at the vet in Northfield she weighed in at five, not quite six pounds.
About five weeks ago, she started her crybaby act again. Shrimp, she wanted shrimp, and she knew where I kept it, taking up her post at the fridge. Her daughter, Snowflake, a long-haired Turkish Persian with two blue eyes and excellent hearing for the freezer door is daffy over shrimp too. That's one thing about my cat family -- they respect and defer to their mothers. So Crybaby got first dibs. She threw the shrimp up. An hour later, she cried for more. So I gave her chicken livers. Suddenly, so very suddenly, she was sick. Dehydration can happen as quickly in a cat as it can children and it was happening at both ends. So off I went to the PathMark with my approved list of over-the-counters medications acceptable for felines. Nothing helped. When I picked her up, I could feel the weight loss. Where was I going to find a vet with weekends hours?
