Sick Kitty

Ronnie and Riley, in healthier times.

So Masheka and I found out today that our little orange kitty Riley (named for the Boondocks character) is very ill and most likely has an incurable fatal disease called feline infectious peritonitis. We brought him in to the vet because he's lost a shocking amount of weight (poor baby now weighs less than 5 pounds, probably about half what he weighed in that photo taken less than a year ago). He's only 5 years old. I cannot even express how much this sucks. He's always been a runt and asthmatic and sickly (he nearly died of a nasty respiratory infection the first month after I adopted him) but also always very sweet and affectionate and playful and social and very fond of chewing through or scratching up or puking on or otherwise destroying absolutely everything in the apartment.

Anyway, we're just going to keep him comfortable but he doesn't really want to do much but sleep these days. Unfortunately, Ronnie (gray kitty) doesn't understand why Riley doesn't want to run around and chase things, and he keeps batting at him ("play with me! play with me!") in puzzlement.

In his more active times, Riley was the inspiration for the cartoon "Bush vs. My Cat." Seriously though, no matter how ridiculous that cat is, he definitely would have made a better president than Dubya!

This SUCKS.