Ankhesnamun, Count Catcula

We shall begin by reciting from the Holy YouTube video:

“…and they implored Him that they might just touch the tip of His tail; and as many as touched it were cured.” 

The word of Our Lord, World’s Funniest Cats 14:36.

And now, let us bow our heads in prayer to Ceiling Cat, beseeching him to restore the health of his poor little kitty, Ankhesnamun.

 

😽 O Lord Ceiling Cat, hear our prayers. 😽

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Before anyone corrects me, she is not the wife of a count but, rather, holds the title of count and all lands and incomes incumbent in her own right.  Also, she’s clearly not British, else she’d be an earl. And she can’t be Pharaoh; Caesar Octavianus  fucked that  up for Cleopatra and everyone else. (And he didn’t take the title Caesar Augustus until after the Triumph celebrating his victory over Marc Antony, which was after Antony’s and Cleopatra’s suicides, obviously.  Now will you all PLEASE shut up and let me make a point before you start arguing with…   Sorry.  Too used to Facebook.

[When last we encountered our hero, she was threatening to further damage the piano bench…]

Unless mommy right now and no wait and gently becawz I sick 🙀 lift me up to sit like hooman…  I refuse to carry on with this undignified charade a moment longer.  I am Ankhesnamun, Imperatrix Magna noster Omnipotens, and I wish to sit on the bench without exerting myself.  The bench is directly in front of a piano, which is where my body slave, Rhoda, types on her phone (75% of the time), hits the keys and makes noises (10%), curses loudly and fluently at the noises (12%), and occasionally (3%) threatens long-dead composers, books that won’t stay open, books that won’t stay closed, pages that won’t turn, etc., with creative if not particularly dire punishments if they don’t “straighten up and fly right” (she says that) right the fuck NOW and/or dare them, fucking dare them, to pull that shit one more goddamn time, and continue to mutter as the phone’s magic saps her will and keeps her docile.  Frankly, it’s exhausting to watch and hideous to listen to, even as a third-person limited narrator…

[Ankhesnamun hops down and crawls into a kitty bed, ignoring you so completely that you uncomfortably wonder if you even really exist. Well, back to Rhoda, I guess.]

 

Well, I had just picked her up, and since I had her, I tried to brush her, which used to be her favorite thing ever, but she’s so bony now that I can’t imagine it being very comfortable,

[WAIT A MINUTE!  If I’m not the Count Kitty and I’m not Rhoda, then who the fuck am I?!  Was that me raving about Facebook up there?!

Did the feline and her facilitator kidnap me from an argument in the comments of a Jezebel post in which I had engaged a condescending asshole who thinks that women are too emotionally involved to have legitimate opinions about, well, more or less anything, but we seemed to have agreed to narrow the topic to  whether “believe women” violates that most basic precept of our (well, England’s) justice system, the idea that the accused is” innocent until proven guilty,” which, by the way, is a ridicuspurious, terribad, disasterrific clusterspoon of an attempt to change the subject, a rhetorical point which I may have been hell-bent on explaining to him, partially because I loathe people who can’t even argue their idiotic points logically and partially because “believe women” means take their accusations seriously and give their complaint a fair hearing in the justice system, while “innocent until proven guilty” only applies to the idiot once he’s failed to convince the prosecution that he’s, like, so innocent that indicting him would be a waste of everybody’s bro-time and…

okay, okay, he obviously knew that, he was so clearly a troll, how could I fall for such a pathetic ruse, why would I just take such stupid bait…  It’s like I have this compulsion that prevents me from seeing people being wrong and just ignoring them, even though that doesn’t make sense, because if you went around killing all of the wrong people, you’d never have time to sleep.

But I was spared this particular idiotic internet battle, at least, thanks to the kindness of strangers…which I am apparently repaying by being their narrator, I guess?

In any case, I am so grateful for the night of sleep I would have gotten if Rhoda and Ankhesnamun, Imp Error Magenta Not Her Omni Potions!  I…I owe them whatever dignity I may yet retain after checking to see how many wiser Jezebels told me to stop feeding the goddamn trolls, Christ, you’re encouraging him, shit-for-brains!  Anyway…

The sisterhood lives!]

 

I, uh, you’re welcome and… anyway, Suna seems to have shed most of her undercoat already. But she usually loves to be brushed right through her whiskers, on the sides of her face, like it’s the Nu Secret Scratch Point (if you get that reference, we’re getting married) or something. Today, she flinched away.

She’s too weak to struggle effectively, so I got a wet cloth and made her let me clean and examine her face. With her eye gunk wiped away, she opens her eyes more normally, and the gunk that trickled down and outlined the sides of her nose isn’t there anymore, so she doesn’t look so much like Cyrano de Bergecat. Without the way over-contoured schnoz, her face looks much less gaunt–more proportionate.

Sunamu de Bergecat

After that, she even let me get her whiskers and chin, which is when I noticed a little bloody spot on her upper lip and also the fact that she was drooling profusely.  (On me.  Probably that’s why I eventually noticed.) I wasn’t sure what the drool was about, but I used the corner of a paper towel to clear some out from behind her back teeth, and she started…not coughing, but noisily swallowing and making pitiful little crying sounds like she was trying to get something in her throat either down or up.

I was ready to shout words of encouragement at random intervals when I remembered that for all that every cat in existence obviously has the ability to puke at will (regardless of current stomach contents and augmented by the presence of carpet, clothing, or bedding), if they have actually partially swallowed something, they’re going to keep swallowing rather than use their power for good.  So I had to check whether something was still visible in her mouth and try to remove it, if so.

As I beg her to open her goddamn mouth, please, you stupid cat, I keep thinking “Fitz fixes feist’s fits, fat suffices.” (Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb; go read it.  I’ll wait. I promise.)  (Let’s all laugh at that poor sucker who thinks I’ll still be here when they get back from the bookstore, haha ha ha.)  I finally got her mouth open, and she was Not Pleased, but I couldn’t see anything stuck in her remaining teeth.

“Remaining teeth?” I hear you ask.

Yes ma’am, granny (my dad says that…why does he say that?), one of her upper canines (that’s what you call the big pointy ones, right? look, I barely know people teeth) is missing. There’s just a hole with maybe a little nub all the way in where it could have broken off, and the spot is right where her lip was bloody. But I have no idea when she lost that tooth, though I did take a few minutes to check her favorite spots and the food bowl (just to not be an idiot), to no avail. And while I can’t swear that Peach didn’t take a swipe at Suna (if I had to bet, I’d say probably! except that since Suna began her rapid decline earlier this week, Peach has mostly picked on…me, but she was just trying to play and no one ever wants to play 😿 so even odds, I guess).

Even odds.

I can imagine some kind of non-Peach event simultaneously cutting her and knocking the tooth loose, or the tooth, watching the drool level as it rose higher and higher, crying out, desperate to live, Every man for himself! Abandon ship! and taking its chances out there in the mysterious land of U{x: x is in Ankhesnamun’s mouth} and cutting her lip as he struggled not to drown in the drool waterfall.  I mean, I guess. Maybe?

Now, I know that an untreated abscessed tooth is a big deal for a cat as well as for a person, and if that’s what’s been making her sick, we do not have until Wednesday to deal with it.  I do my duty and piss her off even more by (I am literally willing to give my life for hers at this point, or I would attempt no such foolishness as) prying her mouth open again in order to tap and nudge every single one of her remaining teeth with the goal of seeing there’s one she’s willing to kill me over.  There’s not.  Hm.  Missing tooth could explain the drool, though, maybe, if that was the tooth in which she stored the knowledge of how her mouth works?

By the time this ordeal was over, Suna was wheezing and still sort of coughing.  I did not like the wheezing.  I did not like the whimpering that sounded like she was in pain (even though anyone who has ever accidentally stepped on a cat’s tail knows that a cat in pain sounds like  ¡MEOWYUEEAARRRYEOWROWMREOWOWRYEOW! which cannot reasonably be described as a whimper), and I was ready to toss her in the car, drive to the nearest vet, and stand there crying in my pajamas until someone helped her, but she stopped wheezing and whimpering as soon as I picked her up and straightened out her torso. Breathing trouble?

To reward her for not murdering me, I carried Ankhesnamun to the bathroom sink for some tasty tap water, where I noticed that her hind legs are not furry enough to conceal her lack of…personal hygiene.

I’ve always said that I could never, never, definitely absolutely not ever no matter what never be a nurse, because nurses have to do disgusting things and I would gag if I had to wipe anyone’s butt but my own.  (I can clean up a baby, and I definitely gag, but babies are babies; they don’t give a sh…get offended.) 

Nevertheless, I fetched a washcloth, wet it, and cleaned the clumped and filthy hair-down-there. No actual dingleberries, but it was like she’d been wearing the same diaper for a week and having really smelly diarrhea the whole time (you’re welcome for that imagery) and she would so owe me if cats had any concept of owing anyone for anything, but she HAS to feel better now.  (It was awful, and I didn’t have pet shampoo or baby shampoo, so I just used water, and it took days to get it all… Okay, like seven or eight minutes, but it felt like days.)

Next, I threw a load of towels (and washcloths) in the wash, and then sat down to write this.  I was about up to Cyrano de Bergecat when I heard a sound that I’ve been missing for…geez, days, at least, but never noticed its absence.

Ankhesnamun, the cat who was sneezing continuously when I first laid eyes on her, who sneezed so much that it took her a good six months to smell treats and figure out why Imhotep was so excited by the concept, who sneezes to announce her arrival, departure, or simply to remind the world of her continued presence in it, who seems to make a point of sneezing on my glasses if I’m wearing them in bed… sneezed, several times in succession, and good, hearty sneezes, too, not her usual wishy-washy tch tch that lacks the meager vigor of a patrician sniff of disdain.

I knelt down to check her out again and recoiled in horror from Countess Catula, the Fanged Feline. There was so much snot dripping down her nose and over her mouth and down her whiskers to puddle on the floor that it took me a good coupla seconds to comprehend what I was even looking at, and then my first thought was “….how, even?” (my second was “at least it’s not more shit”) and I gaped at her like a very consternated fish while she…oozed.

{I order you to take down this picture at once! Tell Little Baby to give you forty scratches as punishment.}

Then she sneezed again. I grabbed another paper towel. She still didn’t want to have her chin cleaned (TOO BAD, IT’S GROSS), but she was happy to have me wipe her nose, the process of which dislodged, somehow, the impossibility of yet more snot, but instead of mostly clear and viscous but still sort of runny snot, the new snot, which can only have emerged from the darkest corner of her demanding little soul, because where the fuck else was she keeping it all, was much thicker, congealed into distinct globs, and opaquely green.

For the first time all day, I believed that my poor little kitty might not die this week.

You see, Ankhesnamun has had an incurable herpes virus since we adopted her (hence all the sneezing), but it’s never been a problem for anyone but my glasses… except when we first brought her home, when she has an infection on top of it. She had to go straight back to the Humane Society so they could clear up her upper respiratory infection (we couldn’t get her to eat or drink, let alone take her medicine), but I haven’t been thinking of that, because she never got sick like that again.

Until…now? Could this all be an upper respiratory infection? The declining appetite, the weight loss, the fatigue…and the wheezing because she was so congested she couldn’t even sneeze, and I didn’t notice? Then that would mean that she’s getting better, if she can sneeze the snot out of that…snot…and breathe and eat, and breathe and not collapse after mild exertion, and breathe and insist that NO, MOMMY, SUNAMUNA DOES NOT WANT COVERS! 

{Replacing you would be inconvenient, slave, but not so much so as to prevent me from disposing of you if you mock me further.  I shall feed you to Peach and command the first human I encounter to supply me with a more respectful replacement.} 

{FEAR MY WRATH, MORTAL.}

Because she will stop being willing to be cuddled as soon as it becomes less tiring to get away from compulsory snuggling than it is is annoying to endure it.

She’s still up to stealing treats from Peach even if she has no appetite for them.

{I am The Most Gracious and Merciful Ankhesnamun: see how I allow Peach to drink from my least-favored water bowl.}

And she ran outside and out to the grass two nights ago, and the night before that, just quickly enough to not be scooped up immediately. No idea WHAT she thinks she’s looking for, because it has been COLD as BALLS this week, and she’s easy to catch…but she made the effort.

{Do not dare to question me, slave–now, open this door at once!}

 

Maybe this isn’t renal failure or cancer (those are two things I can’t possibly pay for)…maybe it’s an infection that antibiotics can clear up, and then I’ll spoil her rotten until she’s fat again.

[Rhoda suddenly found herself engulfed in laundry hell after discovering that God has spared Ankhesnamun’s life today at the cost of Little Baby’s sanity, because that little psychopath, who rarely leaves her hiding place behind the pillows, decided that the litter box by the bedroom door was too far away and SHAT THE BED.

/Psychopath? Me?

Hours have passed.]

And look who’s eating her dinner!

 

{It is merely adequate.}

 

She sat still and let me groom her for almost an hour.  I washed her face again and used tweezers to pull clumps of dead skin away from her eyes.  I brushed her all over, not the way she likes, but looking for matted fur that’s ready to come out.  She hates that, but she sat in my lap and clung to my shawl and whined when it pulled, but I told her how good she was and how nice she was going to look and how much better she’d feel.  She even met me do part of her belly and the inside of one leg; I don’t think she’s ever sat still for that before.

She’s following me about and she’s always happy to be picked up today.  And she wants to hide her face in my shoulder and feel safe.  I’m glad I make her feel safe.

I dare to believe that she might be okay.

I made the mistake of sharing my optimism with my mother, whose immediate response was to remind me that, even if she recovers this time, she’s still going to die within the next two years or so.

It was my fault for starting the conversation.

[It really was.  You know what she’s like.]

{Foolish human.}

/Mommy, what psychopath? Baby wants know. Maybe is Peach? Peach chase Baby, Baby thinks fair point.

 

Counterpoint. –Peach