It's been a rough month.
Major changes on the work front, the effects of which have yet to be seen. I'm hoping the positive results will outweigh the (potentially) negative ones, and that we can get back to business better than usual.
At home, we're once again doing kitty hospice. It sucks.
Thirteen and a half years ago, my buddy Drac came home with me with his sister Rani (who crossed the Rainbow Bridge on 3/9/09). He could fit in my shirt pocket back then. We named him Drac because he would chase us around the house nipping at our heals. We decided he had been a dog in his former life, since he is a top growler - even last week, a knock at the door elicited a deep-throated growl from the back bedroom. Sometimes he has even made barking sounds!
Drac has been the one constant in my life all these years. Whenever I opened the front door, he was there waiting for me - he knew the sound of the car, of the car alarm, of my footsteps. When my kids were at their dad's, he was there. When I came home from a trip, he was there waiting. When I've been sad, he would lay in my arms and gently place his paw on my cheek. If you used the can opener, he would come running in the hopes that it might be wet food or even better, tuna. He has spent hundreds of hours on my lap as I sat at the computer or watching tv.
He is an Energy cat. Any time someone was doing energy work, he was there. If we had a Haedery class, or a ritual, he was in the middle of the circle. If I had a Reiki class or a client, he was on the table with his paws wrapped around the recipient's ankles, adding his own Reiki healing to ours.
A year ago, he gav

e us quite a scare by losing half his body weight despite eating everything we put in front of him. Bloodwork showed he had a thyroid imbalance; after putting him on thyroid medication, he gained most of his weight back in six months. Everything was fine, and he was back to his normal self.
Then a few weeks ago, he started throwing up more frequently, and was less interested in food. We took him to the vet, and he had lost weight again. More bloodwork was done, but everything came back normal. We figured he was constipated and put him on a no-dry-food diet, nightly infusions of Ringer's, and stool softeners. It didn't help, and wifey was suspecting he might have a bowel obstruction, so we paid another vet visit complete with xrays.
Thursday the vet called and let us know that the shadow on the xrays is most probably lymphoma. All his other symptoms fit that diagnosis. Now he's on pain meds, an anti-nausea medication and an appetite stimulant. It's helping some - the vomiting is much less, and he is more interested in food most of the time. But it's still only a matter of a few days. We're doing what we can to make him comfortable, and as long as he is still interacting with us, and wandering around the house, and purring, we'll keep him with us. Once that changes, it will be time to say goodbye.
My heart is breaking.