It’s been a hard half-a-year here at the home front, which has doubled as a cat infirmary.

I learned my fierce female fur ball, Chayya, had chronic kidney disease early on this year, only to learn a several weeks after that that her lifelong flat mate Shukriya had a tumor in his front foot, and I made the hard decision to put Shukriya down at the end of April.

I continued to focus on sustaining Chayya through May, assuming all was well with our late boarder, Po.

I mean, he’s always been fine.

And then, last week, Po, my beloved boy from my Aunt Maggie, decided to quit eating.

I reasoned at the time I noticed his loss of appetite that it might be due to the heat, or it might be a cat flu- his eyes had been a bit puffy and goopy for a short time.

I let it roll for a few days, thinking he would pop out of it. He was drinking water, at least, and I kept an eye on him as I stayed on getting Chayya her daily special meals, helping her maintain her strength.

Two days ago, I offered Po a range of possible tantalizing wet foods and broths at each mealtime, hoping to spark some hunger in him, only to have him lick a little of the gravies before moving away from the food dish.

I tried the same again yesterday, to the same results.

And so I decided to wake up at 5 this morning and pack him in a carrier and take him up to a reputable emergency vet clinic in Algodones, a small community 25 minutes north of Albuquerque.

We arrived as the sun was rising over the Sangre de Cristos beyond Santa Fe. The vet office was relatively quiet when we checked in. I took a seat in the waiting room, and we waited.

I watched many patients arrive after 8 AM, trickling in over the next 3 hours or so, and as the emergency clinic is a triage clinic, I sat back and waited for my low level concern to be looked at.

Finally, around 11 AM, a tech took Po back for blood and chemistry work. I sat and watched others around me in the waiting room, not grandly concerned with my situation as two other pet families had already come into the clinic with dogs, and each left in tears without one.

I didn’t expect it really.

When the attending vet came out into the waiting room to speak with me, he apologized that there wasn’t a spare room to talk in. And then he let me know that despite all of Po’s other blood work looking fine, there was a significant problem with his BUN and creatine readings going through the roof.

“Po’s kidneys appear to be failing.”

What, I thought? Po? How?

Just like Chayya?

When Chayya was diagnosed with kidney disease, she was making long visits every quarter hour to the water bowl, and sloughing off weight day by day.

Po had just recently seemed to lose his appetite and become sluggish.

My mind wanders, and I try to understand how we got here.

I am offered the option to have them keep him a night or two, where they can try to flush his organs out and give him some meds to settle his stomach and maybe give him an appetite.

“It might help him to recover for a while”, the vet tells me.

A while, I think? A while? It might?

My mind thinks off my Aunt Maggie, from whom Po came to me, and Po as a living vestige of her departed presence in my life.

But he’s our last living part of her, my mind yells.

A while?

“It could be a month, or a few months. It’s hard to say. If the treatment here helps him.”

I think of his miracle return to life after nearly starving to death four years ago, and time we spent waiting that record out, him with a tube in his throat for feedings, skin and bones, trapped in tiredness, but with a fight to ride it out.

I think of him sitting in the doorway to my bedroom the last few days, waiting for me quietly, prone in a patient stare, to rise and then open the front door so he could smell the morning air.

I think of his miraculous recovery, and then I think of Chayya, chronic kidney disease poster kitty, herself a fluff of a head and long limbs attached to a thin tube of a torso, a frame that no longer carries flesh, still striving to stay with me, some days wobbly, always seemingly hungry, some days confused and distant, and I envision Po heading in that direction.

Again.

I think of what Po’s recovery might have done to his body back then, and how it might have contributed to where he’s at now.

And I also wonder what I missed, to not let his fate wind to this wasting route.

“It could be a month, or a few months. It’s hard to say. If the treatment here helps him. But if his quality of life will not be good we can also talk about other options.”

Inside, I balk and scream.

How did we get to this here, now?

It’s been a hard half a year in the cat ward.

And this is a setback.

I especially did not want to let Maggie’s miracle cat come home with me and then go on so soon. My heart cries.

After a review of costs and options, I think of Aunt Margaret and Po’s first survival battle. Despite the numbers on the estimate, it’s Po.

I sign off on a hospital stay and an embrace of hope.

He’s bounced back before. I’m hanging on the belief that he still has a little more fight- and time with me- left in him.

Before I leave the clinic around noon, I am shown him in his hospital cage for the night, and I pull him out and hug him and kiss his head, and then cry a little and leave.

But I remain hopeful.

I mean, it has been four months, and Chayya, my string bean feline queen, in arguably worse condition at diagnosis, is still with me.

You gotta hope.

Come home, Po- for a little while at least. It’s not time for you to go yet.

I say so.