Update and Thanks

First of all, thank you everybody who left comments and emailed me with support on my Maddie crisis. It has been such a tough couple of weeks and your support has made such a huge difference.

I am happy to report that we *maybe* have made it past the crisis stage of this. Last week during our multiple vet visits (we have had eight in two weeks) my amazing vet was just wringing his hands thinking that I was going to have to very soon accept she wouldn't make it. But this week we re-ran her kidney-related blood tests and there has been dramatic improvement in the main number. I won't feel completely secure in this until all of the numbers are within the comfort zones, but both my vet and I have hope now.

So today was our first day of doing the sub-Q fluids at home. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Maddie was a rock star - honestly, she did fantastic with it. Granted the better gauge of this will be how she does over the next few days as she figures out what I'm grabbing her for, but I'm grateful today went well.

Probably our biggest challenge at the moment (now that we should have thrice-weekly vet visits behind us) is her eating. For now all I am relatively successful in getting her to eat is chicken and gravy baby food. Off a baby spoon. After multiple attempts at cajoling her to eat (and convince her I'm not actually trying to torture or poison her). That is, unless it is say 4 a.m., when she is STARVING and apparently must eat RIGHT THAT MINUTE. And as much as I do not delight in stumbling to the kitchen at 4 a.m. to heat up baby food and feed my cat maybe three spoonfuls from a baby spoon, I do it gladly and willingly (for the moment). First, because anytime she shows she WANTS to eat these days I am thrilled. And second because this shows my true Maddie is still here - the girl LOVES to wake me up at obnoxious hours of the morning to get fed breakfast - which really is just a way to try to get me to let her play in the backyard - so to see her acting more like herself gives me hope and reassurance. How, you may ask, does a itty bitty kitty force me out of bed at these hours? Well, she sits and stares at me as a first attempt - which actually is hard to ignore. But if I try to ignore her, then she pats my face with her paw. Cute, but hard to sleep through. If I continue to ignore her, she starts chewing on my hair and/or batting at the lamp cord or whatever else she can do that I cannot ignore. But again, this week I will gladly take it!

So life is complicated at the moment with her needs, but that is so much better than where I thought we might be right now. I'll admit I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do about Christmas (I had just booked a ticket to see family in Florida when I realized she was sick) or having to travel for the adoption. This is the cat that not only needs daily sub-Q fluids and only eats off a baby spoon, but is also scared of every single human being in this universe except me. Hopefully things will continue to improve and I will come up with some options. Luckily my mom and brother are big cat folks too and completely understand if I don't get down there for Christmas after all. The adoption issue, who knows - but since I'm not all that convinced it'll even happen, I will wait to worry about that when it becomes a real problem (well, I'll try).

In adoption-land, who knows. The good news is that my agency now has a bona-fide approved orphanage agreement in place in a new province. Huge progress considering all the developments (or lack there-of) with my agency over the past six months. But how long it'll take before they have babies available to refer, who knows. I should be, worst-case scenario, #2 for a baby boy - thus part of my willingness to try to stick it out with them. And on the domestic front, my profile did finally get shown for the first time recently, and the agency involved said they have a lot of situations coming up and were glad to get my profile (they didn't receive it initially since my agency didn't think they really wanted single PAP's). I have also recently decided on the domestic front to be completely open on gender. Two years ago when I first started working on this, I absolutely thought I'd be requesting a girl. Then as I gave it more thought and researched, I embraced and grew very attached to the idea of a boy. First it was Guatemala, then Nepal, then Vietnam, now possibly the US. Bottom-line, I would like to be a parent and I will embrace whichever child finds his or her way to me! So I am happy to make this progress, but there is an awful lot ahead of me. Exhausting.

So, how many of you have checked with your agency to see if they're attending the big summit? I was disappointed to hear my agency is not going. I'm not sure why, but I do wish they were going to be there. I'm not sure how much can realistically be accomplished, but I (along with many of you out there I know) will be anxiously awaiting updates on what transpired.

Alright, time to go try to coax my kitty off the rocking chair in the baby's room (which is where she is in the pic at the top - and I torture her by swaddling her in that baby blanket, which I think she enjoys or perhaps just tolerates). Again, thank you so much for all the warm wishes and support!