Did you know, if you have a lot of cats who share litter boxes, and you need to bring in a sample from the litter box for the vet, and you’d really like that sample to be from The Specific Cat in Question, you can FEED YOUR CATS CRAYON SHAVINGS so that you can tell whose litter box sample is whose?? What a world. What a world.

In related news, I have spent time today whittling curls of four different, brightly-colored crayons into bowls, and mixing the shavings with highly-enticing CANNED FOOD, because I need a sample from ANOTHER possibly-ill cat.

To review. We have FOUR cats. Two are ORANGE and OLD. The other two are BLACK and YOUNG. One of the two young black cats is being treated for what is probably FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis, which until recently was 100% fatal, but now there is a Very Expensive Prescription that usually cures it). He SEEMS to be recovering beautifully, but his kidney-size and his bloodwork tell a different story, and the vet has warned us that the kidneys and the bloodwork “don’t paint a rosy picture.” It is not unlikely that we will finish his course of FIP medication, which cost many hundreds of dollars but who can put a price on a life (I can and will, when it is a housecat), and when the medication is over, he will die. We have been adjusting to this. We thought he was going to die in August while we were on our road trip, and that the kids would have to oversee the euthanasia, so we are glad for the extra time, and glad for the vet keeping us aware that the improvement may be an illusion. Not, perhaps, quite so glad to spend so much money and THEN have him die ANYWAY, but all of life is a gamble etc.

Now the OTHER young black cat is having symptoms, intestinal. The FIP cat’s situation made me skittish, so I brought the second cat in when maybe otherwise I wouldn’t have. A just-in-case ultrasound revealed thickening in the intestine (interestingly, it’s in the ileum, which is the same place Edward’s Crohn’s disease manifested) and swollen intestinal lymph nodes, which can be several things, including IBD and cancer. The just-in-case bloodwork was ALL beautiful, except for elevated levels of calcium; the vet says that can be from LOTS of things—almost all of which were ruled out by the bloodwork and ultrasound, leaving, well, cancer.

The first young cat, the one with FIP, is skittish and beautiful and flouncy and has never really gotten to know us. He is more of a character actor in our household—“mostly decorative,” in the words of one of my friends. We refer to him affectionately as a prissy little bitch. We love him and would of course be very sad if he had to be put down, but we would not be devastated; it would be A Very Sad Thing, but very sad things happen.

The second young cat, the one who might have cancer, is another story. I got him as a four-month-old kitten, and it was a “HE chose ME” shelter story, where I went in for one cat and came out with him instead. He is more like a dog, in that he is HIGHLY interactive with us, and he follows us, especially me; and he learns and knows our routines and likes them to be followed correctly, and he is upset when there are derivations from the norm. He’s very verbal, and has many vocalizations including greeting, complaining, grousing, inquiring, demanding, yelling, calling, etc. He arrives to say hello after my alarm goes off in the morning, and he walks ahead of me up the stairs to bed at night, and in between he follows me from room to room and sits somewhere near me. We call him The Baby. I am able to turn my mind to the idea that he will die someday, perhaps a dozen years from now; I am not really able to turn my mind to the idea that he might die soon.

The vet says it’s too early to call it. It could still be, maybe, some sort of unlikely parasite that hasn’t shown up in any of the samples we’ve had done; we can try another sample, one we KNOW is from him (usually they just assume any sample from the litter box represents all the cats, because parasites are so contagious) and also a de-wormer just in case. It could still be, maybe, a food sensitivity? It could still be, maybe—well, frankly to me it sounds like the vet is reaching. In the meantime we are trying an expensive prescription high-fiber food. Each time I tap my credit card, I am reminded of one of my friends, who is retired and has enough to live on, but who works ten hours a week for “Dog Money.”