Achilles is Full of Shit 💩

This post is a rundown of what happened last week to my seventeen-year-old cat Achilles.

Editor’s Note: This post is going to be a departure from the recent series. It is a recap of an event that happened to my cat Achilles this past week, and how I reacted. If you’re not interested in that, feel free to skip this one.

⚠️CW: pet health emergency, poop, death

At our house, Thursday is our autonomous day of the week where my spouse and I each do our own thing without having to talk to the other person with the understanding that we’re intentionally taking space away to be able to focus on our thing without any other obligations. Sometimes this works very well, but sometimes the Universe has other plans.

On this past Thursday, I was going through my morning routine of going to the bathroom, taking out my night-guard, a quick brush of my teeth, brief yoga flow, plank, physical therapy exercises, drink water, and then head into the kitchen to unload the dishwasher, make breakfast & coffee, and take my morning meds. Somewhere between yoga and coffee, I noticed that my cat Achilles was breathing kind of weird. My partner had briefly mentioned that he was acting funny, and earlier that morning there had been a piece of poop hanging out of his butt. Achilles also threw up a little bile in his taco truck.

I watched Achilles go into a couple different litter boxes (we have 3) to try to use them but nothing was coming out. I also noticed that he wasn’t lifting his tail, like at all. Now Achilles is 17 years old already, but beyond the steroids he takes for his heart murmur, he’s in relatively good health. However, I remembered one of the vets we saw this year saying that something we should watch for was if he lost his ability to control his back end and that it would be obvious when it happened. I didn’t remember if this was something to look out for as a side effect of his steroids or something about his heart.

When I mentioned it to my spouse, he called our vet right away. They did not have any availability for us to bring Achilles in to be seen, but they said we should definitely take him to the emergency clinic today. So I finished making a quick bagel & cream cheese to eat something with my meds as we started preparing to get him ready to go. I should have known that something wasn’t right when he didn’t even try to get any cream cheese! He loves that so much it is his middle name. But on this day, he didn’t beg or really even seem interested.

The emergency clinic is only a 2 minute drive down the street from our house. Once we got there, I told them that Achilles had thrown up and wasn’t able to go to bathroom even though there had been a little bit of poop hanging on him recently, that he wasn’t lifting his tail, walking a little funny, and his breathing was rapid and shallow. I also told them about his age, his steroids, and the most important info: we usually have to dose him with gabapentin before vet appointments because Achilles hates being there, can be aggressive, and has 13 front claws because he is poly-dactyl.

They took him into the back while my partner and I sat in the waiting room. I immediately started to disassociate because I hate emergency waiting areas, and it is how my body/brain likes to cope in stressful situations. At this point, I had no idea what the issue was and no clue how serious either. When they came back out to let us know that they had given Achilles some pain medicine to calm him down but it wouldn’t kick in for at least an hour for them to start checking him out, I asked if it was OK if we left and went home since we lived just right down the road. They said it was fine and double checked our contact info before we dipped.

I had already been sweating in my mask even though I had taken off my hat and coat while we were there. I was happy to get back to our space even though I was worried about leaving Achilles alone. My spouse recommended I try to do something that would take my mind off of it or at least distract me so I wasn’t just sitting there wallowing. I really tried to heed that advice, but after clearing the kitchen counter of dirty dishes and putting them into the dishwasher, I didn’t really know what to do next. I thought it was only going to be an hour before we knew what was going on, so it didn’t feel like enough time to start anything.

Ultimately, I ended up doing exactly what my partner was concerned that I would do, and I just marinated in the thought that my first cat, who I’ve known for 17 years, who precedes my current partnership, was going to die, and I didn’t even hug him before I dropped him off at the scary cat clinic. I did wonder if I should try one of the somatic exercises I’ve recently written about, but my anxiety wasn’t high. I didn’t feel out of control or that I needed to calm down. At the time, I thought it meant that I wasn’t dysregulated, but in retrospect, I was totally spiraled out in a hypo-arousal, numb, dissociative way.

My brain was churning nonstop. Beyond the feelings that I had let Achilles down by leaving him alone with strangers and the regret at not giving him some physical affection beforehand, I also kept inadvertently looking for him around the house. Usually, when I was in this headspace Achilles was there to pet and snuggle as I processed my thoughts. Every time I had the realization that he wasn’t here and the fear that he never would be again, I burst into tears. I couldn’t focus on anything, and I ended up just popping back and forth between Tumblr, Instagram, and Reddit to try to distract myself.

Just the night before I had updated my routine to better align with my goals, reviewed my To-Do lists, and written out some plans I had for my future. It seems as though every time I start to believe that I might actually have my life together, the Universe has plans to keep me humble. When my other cat Puck died, I didn’t write for a year. A lot of my current habits and future goals revolve around writing, and the thought that my grief would prevent me from that again was terrifying.

The “What If” scenarios I played out in my mind took me to dark spaces. I wondered if my spouse would stick around if I just dissolved into a pile of grief goo for an entire year. I got so insecure about the thought that I actually asked him if he would divorce me if I lost my ability to function when Achilles dies. (He says he wouldn’t.)

Three and a half hours later, when I had tried to mentally steel myself for the worst news, the vet called to say that Achilles was stressed out there, so they would need to drug him again to do blood work to see if it is his kidneys. He was definitely constipated with hard parts near his colon and into his intestines. His heart was not enlarged (which is great!) but there is some arthritis in his spine. The blood work results (which would be available in one hour) would determine if they were going to try to give him an enema. If they couldn’t give him an enema, he would need to be hospitalized.

Another two and a half hours later, I hadn’t accomplished anything beyond hoping that Achilles would magically change his nature so the medical staff could give him an enema, when the emergency clinic staff member called back. They told us that we could pick Achilles up in half an hour. His anal sacs were full and hard, but after sedation and the enema he passed some “nuggets.” He is allowed to eat tuna and Churu treats for the next few days while he takes gabapentin, other pain meds, an antibiotic, and a laxative/stool softener.

At the half an hour mark, we made our way over to the clinic up the street. This time they took us straight to a room where someone reviewed all the paperwork with us. Achilles was being sent home with four different liquid medications that we would need to give him every 8-12 hours. He should try to drink a lot of water, and he has to wear a cone so he can’t lick the affected area. They told us to try to put a warm compress (a folded warm cloth inside a plastic bag with a paper towel around it) against his area 3-4 times a day for the next few days.

We thought we were about to leave, but as we left the room they told us to go back in there because the vet wanted to talk to us too. We sat alone in the room for another half an hour until the vet came in to say that they had kept Achilles longer because he is anemic (although not “clinical”) so they needed to check his platelets. They didn’t want to send us home just for him to “bleed out.” 😨 (That freaked me out.) But that they had checked his leg for bruising, but there wasn’t any.

I also specifically asked if Achilles would’ve died if we hadn’t brought him in, and they replied that it was a distinct possibility. They mentioned that his anal sacs could have burst, but that they had “clipped and cleansed” them to flush them out. Oh, also, that we should prepare for there to be discharge, but that was normal. My own IBS has lessened the grossness around bathroom habits, and I had my own bout of constipation-into-a-kidney-stone ordeal earlier in the year. I understood what Achilles was going through.

We finally got the all clear to leave, but then I asked them where his cone was. We had to wait for longer than anticipated for them to go grab one. Finally, we made it home with Achilles. He was still fairly loopy from all the meds they had given him, and I could see the betrayal he felt in his eyes. He kept trying to shake his bandages off, but even though the vet said it was okay to remove them, Achilles would not let us do it.

That night he hunkered down in his new favorite spot in a cat bed, next to a heating vent, underneath the dining room table. Since I couldn’t really keep an eye on him from my bedroom, I set up a nest of blankets and pillows nearby on the floor. My other cat Percy helped me make sure Achilles was OK by keeping watch with me. I thought as soon as Achilles goes to sleep, I’ll go to sleep. Sometime around 3:45am, I lost the battle and crashed in the nest. When I woke up at 5:55am, it was because Achilles was smashing his plastic cone into the legs of the table trying to get up. Thankfully my spouse woke up at 6am, and I crawled into my bed to sleep while my partner kept an eye on Achilles.

It has been a few days now. He’s still hanging out in his safe spots in the house, and he’s still wearing his cone. We are through the heavy duty pain meds and the stool softener, but we are still giving him the gabapentin and antibiotic (along with his daily steroid). There are poop smears in his cat bed, on the blankets from the nest, and the towel near his other heating vent. I could not care less about the skidmarks all over my house because Achilles is still alive. As I clean them, I think about all the “What If” scenarios I considered, and nowhere in the list was there a scenario where I bartered days of cleaning up poop marks to have my companion alive for longer. I would clean up shit every day of my life if it meant having Achilles around.

We ended up paying $1,550.00 to find out Achilles is full of shit. Conveniently, we already have his regular vet checkup scheduled for Tuesday. Hopefully the vet will say that this was just a one-time event and not the start of something that happens chronically. (We may not know until/if it happens again.) I obviously assumed this happened because we got lax on his water sources or did something wrong. I specifically asked if there was anything we could do to prevent this from happening again. They said sometimes these things just happen, but that it happens more frequently in dogs than cats.

I wrote all this out not only to have it in one place to share with people, for my memory’s sake later on, but also to let you know that even though I have been working on myself and intentionally trying to learn skills to cope with dysregulation, I’m not perfect. I’m still a flawed, fallible human being who sometimes doesn’t know how to deal with life without dissociating and going Worst Case Scenario. I’m kinda weirdly proud of myself for not having a full-blown panic attack, but I still think I need to do some more work accepting mortality for the inevitable future.

TL;DR: My 17 year-old cat Achilles went to the Emergency Clinic for “constipation, dehydration, bilateral anal sac abscess, and mild anemia. He was given an injection of pain medication and a sedative. The area around the anal gland abscess and anal opening was clipped and cleansed. If the abscess had not ruptured, it was lanced in the center and drained. It was then flushed out.” He is still recovering; so am I.

I think he’s relieved to be home, but pissed at us about the whole ordeal.

3 of his 4 limbs were bandaged. He is trying so hard to clean himself.

The nest

Achilles