Josie's Sigh of Relief

I have learned the results of Josie’s tests, conducted on Friday. Her T4 ‘numbers’ are good, and she does not have hyperthyroidism.

Her weight loss is not as drastic as I first feared, and that is my fault. The scale I used to weigh her at home is accurate, but clearly I misread the figures when I placed Josie upon the scale. Though I know it displayed ‘4.89’, my Chubs perhaps did not have all her legs in the right places, or she was stepping off at the time. Something caused an error in the reading, though I am very careful to keep the cat in question still for a second or two.

At the hospital on Friday, however, Josie weighed 6.08 kilograms. Puzzled by the great difference between that and what I thought her weight now was, I used the PAW Society’s scales again upon our return home, and they registered her poundage as 6.07 kilograms. While there was relief that Josie was not vanishing before my eyes, and that the scales the rescue-group uses for all its cats was, indeed, accurate, there is mystery over that initial reading.

However, all’s well that ends well, as The Bard concluded, and the Great White has neither a weight-problem nor thyroid troubles. The hospital has records for Josie going back to 2009, and at one point she weighed less than six kilograms. She gained weight and topped 7.5 eventually. The doctor describes six kilograms as a good size for my Chubs. And, to be honest, if that cat did lose a little weight, it would not be a bad thing.

I believe that the better food she is eating is having its effect. The apartment is not as constrictive to the beasts as I first imagined (nor is the view as limited, for that matter), and if I think about it, Josie uses more rooms now than she did in the house. Perhaps a little exercise is being felt, as well.

Regardless, I intend to keep a weather eye on all aspects of Josie’s health: her eating, her drinking, her litter-box visits and, of course, her weight, which I will supervise for the next few weeks and then at least once a month. Josie is now my senior cat, in more ways than one, the matriarch of the household and, though she will turn thirteen in a few months, I want her to be my senior for a long time to come.