posted by dave on Friday, October 8, 2010 at 1:19 PM in category daily

I dunno, I guess I just feel like writing something. I'm a little bored at the moment. Just watching the clock with one eye and glaring at my phone with the other eye. So yes, I'm typing this blind.

Whenever that was, a week or two or three ago - time blurs for me lately - I took my cats Nugget and Buddy to the vet to be tested. I've mentioned it before, but I have LaptopGirl's cat living on my deck. Well, a couple of times he came inside my house. He's a fast little fucker. And when I took Picklepie (the cat) to the vet for shots and testing, he tested positive for the feline leukemia virus.

This sucks, by the way.That poor kitty. But it not only sucks for Picklepie, it could very well have sucked for my "real" cats Buddy and Nugget, too.

So I took them in, one at a time because they're too fat for both of them to fit in the carrier at the same time. Nugget was first. I scheduled him first on purpose, because I knew that if he saw the carrier he would run and hide and I wouldn't see him again until Spring.

Anyway, Nugget tested negative. Whew!

And then I had to do some thinking.

See, if my cats tested positive, then I was just going to bring Picklepie inside and make him an indoor cat. He wouldn't have liked it very much, but he'd have gotten used to it eventually. It would be like I was running a little leper colony for cats.

Alternatively, if my cats tested negative, then I was going to have to try as hard as I could to find a home for Picklepie. He couldn't live inside my house, and it would be totally irresponsible for me to leave him outdoors where he could/would infect other cats.

But, I wondered, what should I do if only one of my cats tested positive? After all, Buddy had been in much closer proximity to Picklepie on those occasions when the latter came inside, Nugget having scrambled into the basement to cower. Buddy would stand his ground, even going so far as to follow Picklepie around the house and smell him.

What I decided, and this wasn't an easy decision, was that if only one of my cats tested positive, I was going to bring Picklepie inside my house even knowing that my other cat would be infected. There was just no way I could see myself separating Buddy and Nugget. They've been together for 11 years, after all. Plus, they're both old, and probably don't have all that many years left anyway. Because the feline leukemia can take years and years to develop, there were pretty good odds that neither of my cats would ever develop it. They'd be dead of some other causes - Buddy probably from too much indignation, Nugget perhaps from getting so scared of a moth that he forgets to breathe for a week - before the leukemia could manifest.

Well, as it turned out, neither of my cats tested positive. Whew again!

And that's what got me to where I am. Where I still am. With a contagious cat that I need to find a home for.

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