The nine lives of Walter, a life-loving feline hombre

When I brought Walter to the vet a week ago today, I wasn’t at all sure he would ever return home.

A long-haired black cat who is at least 11 years old, Walt had lost his appetite over the holiday weekend. He became listless, and seemed to be wasting away.

Once we arrived at the vet’s office, the news went from bad to worse. Although his temperature was normal, Walt was dehydrated. And his weight, normally low because of a longstanding thyroid condition, had dropped, leaving him thinner still.

The vet ordered up some tests and speculated that Walt might have failing kidneys, or diabetes, which gave me pause. Liz and I have cared for cats with each of those conditions. It’s daunting, especially in a case of kidney failure, which requires the regular injection of fluids into the animal.

So I left Walt behind at the vet’s and headed home, where Liz and I thought dark thoughts about Walt’s mortality. He’s the oldest of our six animals, and he has been with us longer than all but one of the others.

An hour later, the phone rang, and we steeled ourselves for bad news. But as I stoked the fire in the woodstove and listened to Liz’s end of the telephone conversation, my spirits lifted.

The kidney and diabetes tests were negative. The culprit was not new, but old. Walter’s thyroid was way out of whack, requiring a heavier dosage of daily medication than he had been taking. Racing back to the vet’s, I brought the freshly medicated Walt back home.

Alert and active the next day, Walt wolfed down all of his food and begged for more, by batting whoever was handy with his right paw.

Within days, his coat regained its luster, and he began grooming himself more fastidiously. Now when I get up in the morning, he’s usually hanging out in the kitchen with the rest of the feline crew, eagerly awaiting his breakfast.

Walt is the least affectionate of our four cats. He’s aloof. He’s gloomy. He’s a loner. But despite all that, or maybe even because of it, we would have missed him terribly if he had left us.

The day of reckoning hasn’t arrived just yet, though. It turns out grumpy old Walt hasn’t used up all nine of his lives after all. And for that we are truly grateful.