Of old cats and lack of sleep

My house is owned by three cats. I mean, they are our pets but anyone who owns cats know that the house is theirs and we are just tenants in our own home.

Our cats can be considered seniors as they are 7, 15 and 20 years old. The latter, called Luci, can be even considered ancient by a housecat's standard lifespan, and he is also the loudest and most active of the pack.

He is slightly blind due to cataracts and also deaf, causing him to bump on things a lot and SCREAM BLOODY MURDER when talking to you. That is a bit endearing on the first three or five times he yells at you during daytime, but when you are fast asleep the funny yodelling almost gives us heart attacks.

He isn't satisfied with just screaming our hearts out when we try to rest, if he doesn't gets what he wants, be it food (even though his bowl is half full save for the hole in the middle) or a late night cuddle session, he will convince you to do his bidding through good ol' physical violence.

He starts by patting your face, then moves on to using his claws on the bed to produce delightful "pleck" sounds and finishes with a love headbutt + deathmetal scream combo. I broke my nose a few times already (not because of him, though!) and everytime he headbutts me I feel echoes of the past cruising through my nose bridge's bone.

I confess this is slightly annoying and painful, and I pretty much couldn't have a good night of rest in the last few years, until a day he was acting really weird.

He was crouched, head extremely low and seemingly very weak physically. We immediately took him to our 24/7 vet hospital and it was definitely the right call. After some tests, we were informed that he would have to be hospitalized.

That night, even though it was silent and calm, we couldn't sleep. It was too quiet and we deeply missed our old stinky boy.

The thought of possibly not having him anymore was way louder than his screams. We talked a lot about how to deal with grief as this cat has been in my husband's life since he was a toddler so he almost has no memories without him. He's also his emotional support animal, so trying to imagine not having him in our bed sleeping with us was painful.

The hospitalization lasted longer than expected because the vets had to make sure he was eating by himself (plus the lab fumbled one of the blood tests), but after the results came in we received the best diagnosis possible: it was indeed renal insufficiency but we got him to the hospital at the earliest moment possible.

Cats are difficult to diagnose because they hide symptoms very well. His disease is at stage two, which means he now needs meds daily for the rest of his life, and also will have to be fed a special diet going on. But other than that, he will likely be fine and have full quality of life for (hopefully) many more years to come.

Now here's the thing, after all that he became his younger self again. When he was a youngster he was a menace, jumping on top of everything, trying to get into the kitchen sink at the first opportunity to lick and snatch anything that wasn't immediately cleaned or disposed of, etc. You get the gist, the full bratty/daredevil cat package.

We thought he stopped doing these things due to his old age but it was actually the disease at it's earliest stage.

He is getting better and with that the incessant screams without a reason or explanation of what he wants stopped, but now we are awaken with the metal clang of his tag hitting something while he jumps onto somewhere he isn't supposed to be.

This last few days were a rollercoaster of emotions and due to that I got the craving to try and paint him. I'm still learning and have no idea what I'm doing or I am supposed to do, but it was a fun study and seeing him makes me happy.

It was a enjoyable experience and because of the subject of the painting, it's one of the very few I actually liked.

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Hope you enjoyed the post and the art! Thanks for your time.

If you know anything about digital painting and can give some tips, critics or pointers I will be more than happy to receive them!

Gif taken from tenor and art by me