Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Look below. Titled "Why I have done nothing productive for two weeks." (She will be okay, God willing. She has cholangitis, the poor creature, and hepatic lipidosis. So I need to feed her--and give her medication--through that tube five times a day, at regular intervals.)

https://twitter.com/RkSyrus/status/1058243025413988355

I adopted her when she was but a wee kitten, in Istanbul. You can read the story here: catstantinople.com. I adore her.

But she is not, as you can imagine, happy to have a cone on her head and a tube in her nose. Feeding her through it five times a day has caused ...

... some stress.

For example, when I tried to pill her, she freaked and squeezed herself through a hole in the tiles in my bathroom wall and disappeared *into* the wall. This photo makes the hole look much bigger than it is. I measured it; it's 7cm at the widest part.

All of my cats love looking into that hole and poking their paws in it, but every one of them (her included) had found, to their sorrow, that it was too small to squeeze into.

So it didn't occur to me that a weak, sick, but *absolutely freaked-out* cat could indeed get into it.

Panicked cats, my vet told me when I called, panicked, are capable of doing *astonishing* things.

But since her illness *will* kill her if she doesn't eat--and the same illness kills her appetite--you can imagine my state when, 16 hours later, she had not reemerged.

I couldn't even figure out *where* she was: I couldn't see further into that space than you can from the photo above.

But panicked cat owners, too, are capable of doing astonishing things, hence this. Yep. With my bare hands.

(Goodbye, security deposit.)

This allowed me, at least, to stick my phone in the wall and use the camera to confirm she was still alive (thank God!)--but still nowhere *near* anywhere I could get my hands on her.

(Have I mentioned patreon.com/ClaireBerlinski?)

Again, the photo makes everything look bigger than it is. That's my bathtub on the right, the wall to the left, the bright spots are Daisy's eyes; and between the bathtub and the wall? Maybe eight inches, max?

So no, I couldn't crawl in.

I wondered who exactly one calls, in Paris--on a Sunday morning--to ask, "Would you please destroy my entire bathtub, quickly, and do it without injuring my sick cat?"

I sure couldn't do it with household tools. I mean, what would it take? Dynamite? (patreon.com/ClaireBerlinski)

But I *had* to get her out of there. Dead or alive, she was going to have to come out of my wall. It wasn't as if I could just live with a decomposing cat in my bathroom wall, either.

So the bathtub was toast, either way. It had to be destroyed.

Of course, I thought, "So destroy it while there's still a chance to *save* he!" I was, seriously, trying to figure out what kind of tools I would need to do it and where I'd get them ...

(Have I told you about patreon.com/ClaireBerlinski?)

Meanwhile, I kept frantically trying to entice her to come out--but because she has no appetite, nothing worked: Not sardines, not chicken, not canned Sheba, not liver pâté ... not even when I tried using the blow-dryer to push the smell toward her.

Before going out to buy a sledgehammer (what I concluded I needed), I made one last effort to lure her out. With no hope at all, I opened a can of tuna.

Then ... to my astonishment, I saw her ears! She poked her head out! She had sauntered right up to it to give it a sniff!

I NABBED her. It was ugly. But ... cat saved! And bathtub saved.

TUNA SAVED MY CAT!!!!

Still, the "nabbing" business--it had to be done--didn't calm her, to say the last. I wasn't gentle about it. I couldn't be: If I missed that chance, she'd die.

So next day: She gets a nasogastric tube, because she's not letting me give her any more pills, ever.

Next evening: she rips it out even before we get home (Hey, do you know about patreon.com/ClaireBerlinski?)

So right back to the vet, now for the ninth time.

We got through the midnight and breakfast feeding without incident. But now she's hiding under the bed, and it's mealtime again...which means unless she comes out soon, I have to cancel my plans for today. But the good news is that unless I screw it up somehow, she'll make it.

The vet was very grim about her prognosis: She suspected cancer. But that, she said, could only be confirmed by an echogram, the next day.

Awful night. Next day--incredible relief--the echogram reveals she *doesn't* have a tumor. But...we have no clue what's wrong with her,

For that, they'd have to do a liver puncture, but first they had to stabilize her with fluids and ... other stuff. So Daisy spent a week at the Hotel Vétérnaire, and to keep her morale up, I spent my afternoons reading beside her, in her cage.

To my immense relief, she began slowly recovering. Very slowly, but the bloodwork was going the right direction. And now she's home with me, where she belongs--but under the bed. As soon as she emerges, though, I've got all her food and her medication ready to go.

So that's my life with cute animals and famous landmarks.

She's so darling. Such a sweet, loving, shaggy thing, so confused by all of this and frightened. Usually, I work with her curled up in the crook of my arm as I type. I miss that.

Oh! She just came over!

She's right where she belongs! Time to feed her.

Anyway, as you've probably guessed by now, the vet bills wiped me out. Financial flatline. Nest egg gone.

Daisy's alive, so who cares: That's what money is for.

But the people to whom I owe money (say, my landlord) probably won't see it quite that way.

So that's why I'm following Anna's advice and mentioning patreon.com/ClaireBerlinski every five minutes--in between chasing my cat, cuddling my cat, and pouring formula up her nose.

And meanwhile, I'll finish writing two books.

I've got this.