Orpheus Lives On

published: Mon, 28-Apr-2008   |   updated: Mon, 28-Apr-2008

A long time ago in a galaxy just down the street, Lee Inman and I wrote the first version of a UI controls library for Delphi, which TurboPower Software marketed and sold as Orpheus. This post is not about that product. At about the same time I started going out with my now wife Donna. This post is not about that either. Instead it's about Orpheus, the cat.

You see, when we moved into the house we now live in, we went out and, as we put it, rescued two kittens from Pet City. The elder we called Orpheus because I'd happened to be working on Orpheus (the product) at the time we started going out together. The other kitten we called Eurydice. A couple of months later we then added a surplus-to-requirements kitten, who we called Aristaeus. (In the photo above Ari is on the left and Orphy is on the right.) Orpheus was a dedicatee for the chapter on threading I wrote in 1997 for Special Edition: Using Delphi 3 mostly for doing what he's doing now: lying on my mousepad.

It was Orpheus' 12th birthday yesterday, but he almost didn't make it.

One morning in February, he was quiet, lethargic, listless, and burning with a fever. We immediately took him to the vets' where he was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. He was put on methimazole, initially half a pill a day to see if the dosage was right. After four weeks, he went back in, where it was determined that he needed more dosage and so was put on two half pills per day.

Then a couple of days after we got back from a vacation in England, he was again extremely listless and lethargic, drinking a lot of water, not eating very well, and so we brought him back to the vet. This time, the diagnosis was much worse: Orpheus had Chronic Renal Failure (CRF).

The problem lies in the conjunction of the hyperthyroidism and CRF. Kidney failure is just one of those things that cats can get with old age. If it's caught in time it's treatable (by changing the diet, various therapies, etc). Hyperthyroidism, though, masks the kidney failure by increasing the blood supply to the kidneys, so helping them function, but in the process wearing them out faster. The methimazole was doing its job in reducing the thyroid hormone, and in the process illuminated the CRF problem in a spotlight.

The Friday before last, once I'd dropped him off, Orpheus had blood taken and analyzed. His concentrations of toxic urea by-products in his blood went off the scale in the vet's analyzer and they had to send it off to the labs. He was almost dead.

He went on immediate diuresis therapy. The vet phoned me up and said in no uncertain terms that she was unsure whether he would pull through. She estimated that he had, perhaps, 20% of normal function in his kidneys, and that if he didn't improve in three days under their care, he just wouldn't recover. The CRF would have progressed too far. Of course, the deadline was the Monday and I was in Orlando at the DevConnections conference there.

On Monday evening, Dr Walker spoke to my wife. Orpheus was still not very well at all, but he would pull through, albeit on medication of one form or another for the rest of his life. On Wednesday at noon, I went to the vets' to pick him up. I walked into the examination room and there in the back wall was a series of cages, with Orpheus lying down in the lower-right one. As soon as he saw me he started miaowing with pleasure, and I lost it.

I can say without a doubt that our cats are the most precious things we have. They give us pleasure every single day. They purr, they claw the carpet, they race around, they do LOLcat stuff, they toss their cookies every now and then (generally on the carpet six inches from the wood floor). They also, unknowingly but provably, lower our stress levels. There is nothing like working at your desk and suddenly a cat jumps on your lap and purrs away. For a moment there we thought we only had two cats left, but big old softy Orpheus decided he wanted to pull through after all.

I've now become adept at giving him his subcutaneous hydration therapy with 250ml of Lactated Ringer's solution every day (we purchase his prescription medical supplies on the Internet, which just gives me a weird feeling given the amount of spam I get on the subject). I've also become better at administering his required pills -- let me tell you, he does not like having pills pushed down his throat -- including a reduced level of methimazole. We have to play a delicate balancing act of giving the hyperthyroidism enough leeway to allow his kidneys to work better, without wearing them out completely, hence the mix of methimazole and hydration therapy. He's also started to eat more normally again, although we have to try and wean him off a high protein diet to a more fatty one (again to help the kidneys). And of course, he has to go back to the vets' every week for his blood test, at least while he's recovering.

But, despite all that, he's again a happy contented cat and purrs at a moment's notice. His subtext though is, just let's not go to the vets' anymore, OK?