Life has been very unkind lately
For those who want a TL;DR: took in an extremely sweet stray cat who turned out to be very sick, and then my husband was hospitalized a few days later (unrelated to the cat). These things will likely end up being super expensive. I have a Bandcamp if you want to buy some music or a ko-fi if you want to just throw a few bucks my way, and I'm always open for more composing or music implementation work!
Arlo
A little over 2 weeks ago, a very friendly cat that we hadn't seen before showed up on our back porch. There are people who live near us who have indoor/outdoor cats, so we didn't think much of it. He did keep trying to follow us and our neighbors into our apartments though.
He was still there the next day, so we figured he must be someone's lost pet. Our neighbor took him to get scanned for a microchip, and he didn't have one. We decided to keep him in my home studio temporarily until we could find his owner. The neighbor also made a post on a Chicago lost and found pets Facebook group, which got shared pretty widely, and we scoured various lost pet boards and websites (spoiler alert: we never found an owner).
The next day we noticed he was having bloody diarrhea, so we brought him to an emergency vet. They gave us anti-diarrhea medicine, cleaned out his ears, and very kindly did not charge us for the exam since he was a stray. We declined getting any blood work done because the plan that I was going to call some cat rescues the next day and get him set up somewhere safe.
Well, none of the rescues wanted him, and all of them told me that since he was a stray, I should just put him back outside (?!?!). I wasn't going to do that. He clearly wanted to have a home, and I was really starting to bond with the little guy. So my husband Alex and I talked it over and decided to keep him as long as he didn't have anything like FIV or FeLV that he could pass onto our other cat, Ramona. We decided to name him Arlo.
We set up an appointment with a regular vet for that Tuesday. I ended up bringing Arlo to the appointment alone, because when the day came, (ominous music plays) Alex was feeling sick.
Long story short, Arlo is around 5 years old and has likely been living outside for a very, very long time. He does not have FIV or FeLV. But he was very, very anemic, and the vet said this would normally require hospitalization. I told her we couldn't afford thousands of dollars to hospitalize him. I also cried a lot.
She was very understanding and offered me 2 options since no rescues would take him: euthanasia, or what she called the hail mary option, where she would give him treatment for what she thought was the most likely culprit of his anemia, IMHA, without any of the expensive tests or hospitalization. Since he was still eating, alert, and affectionate, she thought there was a chance this could work. And while still somewhat expensive, it would cost a fraction of what hospitalization would.
I went for the hail mary option. Arlo is the sweetest little guy, and I thought he deserved a chance at life. They gave him a steroid shot, an antibiotic shot, and anti-parasite medication and told us to make a follow-up appointment for two weeks out to get him rechecked.
Alex
I'm going to be a lot more vague about this part for privacy reasons. As we were getting ready to take Arlo to his vet appointment, Alex started feeling sick. He decided to drive himself to urgent care while I took Arlo to his appointment, and then I met him there after I brought Arlo back home. They gave him a referral to a specialist, and he made an appointment for 2 days later (Thursday).
On Wednesday, he was feeling better. But on Thursday morning as we were heading to the specialist, he started feeling bad again. The doctor scheduled some tests for a few days out, but we decided to go to the ER next door right away because Alex was feeling so bad.
It was a good thing we did that, because he was not doing well. They did some tests that day and moved the other one up to Friday, but he didn't end up getting discharged from the hospital until Sunday.
Now
Alex is home and on the mend. The tests ruled out anything scary like cancer or anything that would need surgery, but it's also not as straightforward as something like an infection that he can just get antibiotics for. Basically, he will recover, but he needs time and rest to do so.
Arlo's follow-up appointment is tomorrow. I had initially wanted to wait until after we got the results from that appointment to post this, but I didn't want to miss Bandcamp Friday and potentially miss out on a chunk the of the profits from selling my music.
But I will say, although I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, Arlo seems to be doing well. He's gaining more energy each day and is still eating a ton. He's the sweetest, snuggliest boy, and he's recently become obsessed with a little ball with a bell in it that we gave to him. We are 100% going to keep him. We just really hope that the treatment works and he'll be with us for a long time.
If you want to help
Unfortunately we live in the US, which means there will probably be a lot of hospital bills. Who knows how much they'll be or when we'll get them! Very cool system we have here! I also had to take some time off work to be with Alex, which was unpaid.
Our families have been very kind in helping us with cat expenses so far, but they can't do that forever (nor would we expect them to). Assuming that Arlo pulls through, we don't know how long he'll need to continue getting treatment for his anemia. And then he's going to eventually need to be neutered, chipped, vaccinated, and all that fun stuff once he's healthy.
If it was just one thing or the other I probably wouldn't even be making this post. I'm just afraid that very sick husband + very sick cat in the same week will end up dumping a lot of big expenses on us at once.
I'm not going to do a GoFundMe because I honestly have no idea how much to ask for. And to be transparent, I wouldn't say our situation is dire, just very uncertain at the moment. More of a "how much of our long-earned savings is this going to deplete" situation than a "how are we going to pay rent" one.
Regardless, if you still feel compelled to help out, I've got music available for purchase on Bandcamp, and I have a ko-fi if you'd rather just throw a few bucks my way. And if you're someone who's in a position to hire a composer or music implementer, I am open for work!
Thank you so much for reading this whole thing. Much love to you all! 💚