Breathe In. Breathe Out. And Look Around Once in a While.

Poor Cooper.

The other night, Sean noticed that Cooper wasn't eating his mush.  Then he noticed that he was doing that scary "bellows breathing" thing again.  And hiding under the guest bed.

Again.

This was a few hours after an episode where Cooper had taken a green anole for a ride in his mouth around the house, much against the anole's will.  The other cats also helped with the hitchhiking, but Cooper was the only one who seemed to be having a problem with it.  We called the emergency number for the vet and were told that the Prednisolone tabs we had on hand for Reg should do the trick, along with the Aerocat rescue inhaler.  We did both.  We did them both twice.  And slowly but surely, Cooper started to breathe more normally.  His eyes got less panicky and wild.  He suddenly wanted to eat again.  Unfortunately, a side effect of the Prednisolone is that he also gets hyper, so it was hard to tell when he was back to normal, particularly since Cooper's default setting is pretty much hyperactive.

Because it's what we do, I slept with him that night, although I should probably put "sleep" in quotations when I say that.  It's hard to sleep when you're worried your little buddy might stop breathing in his sleep.  The first time I woke up, panicked, looking around for him and unable to see him in the deep black of a streetlight-free Hilton Head night, I got up and started looking for him in all his normal places.  I checked the scratching toys and the furniture in the living room.  I checked the master bedroom and Sean's office.  No sign of him.

I woke Sean up to see if he could help me look for him.  Then something told me to go back to the guest room, where I had just been fitfully sleeping, and I found this:

Yeah, that's Cooper.  Sleeping with not a care in the world just a foot or so away from where I had just gotten up, worriedly looking for him.  (In my defense, he usually sleeps on my right side, so I hadn't even thought to look left.)  Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees.  If I had just looked around, I would have seen him and saved myself several minutes of apprehension.  Lesson learned.

Today was also a little rough, though.  He had another episode, but a Prednisolone resolved the issue quickly.  Maybe we'll figure out the pattern and get to the bottom of it.  I really hope so, because the feeling of fear and helplessness is so strong it's palpable when this happens.  

Still, I wouldn't give up a moment of getting to bask in his sweetness in order to live a life without that constant uncertainty.  I feel like I'm kidding myself if I think that the path of true cat love will ever run smoothly, to paraphrase the Bard.  There are always going to be these moments of distress and helplessness, but it's so totally worth it to get to be a part of their world, and to have them as important parts of our lives.  

Our buddies are a constant reminder:  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  And look around once in a while.  Otherwise, you just might miss it.