It's been a rough year.

If you follow me on Bluesky you may have seen me gripe about one or more of the following: leaking toilet, inexplicably ill diabetic old cat with a failing bladder, severely ill father-in-law, our car dying (very expensively over the course of a month), me going to the ER for rabies shots (fun times with community cat care), diabetic old cat's bladder responded to medication but then old cat decided to check out completely (RIP Murdock you crazy foo), second oldest cat inexplicably losing 1 out of 6 pounds, another cat with stomatitis, my husband going to the ER for acute chest pain (he did not have a heart attack, and he's on treatment now), the toilet leaking again, the water pressure valve for the house failing. Did I mention it's been a rough year? But we were lucky enough to have all of this handled.

Until Little Bit had a stroke.

Little Bit is our next oldest cat, and on the morning of Tuesday the 6th of October she was cranky and yelling at the younger cats to get out of her space. On Tuesday afternoon she was just yelling. After showing a slight wobble when she walked and refusing food, I rushed her to the ER where they pronounced her ataxic with nystagmus (she'd lost her ability to coordinate her limbs and her eyes were jerking rapidly up and down). Then they sent us to the specialist vet, who kept her overnight and in the morning gave her an MRI and told us she'd had a stroke.

This is actually good news, ish, because cats who survive a stroke have a good chance of complete or near-complete recovery. In her specific case it's looking like a very nearly complete recovery with supportive anti-nausea and steroid medications for a short time, and making sure she has a couple warm hidey-holes to sleep in. At worst, we'll have her on a regular medication that, in the normal course of things, would be cheap enough to fold into our regular budget. Unfortunately this year has been more catastrophic than usual. Our income is still steady, but our savings are now gone, and there is new car debt on top of the mortagage.

This ask is only for people who have it to spare, and only to give us some breathing room between ourselves and the next crisis. Over the past year (let's be real, over the past couple of years, but this year has been Extra) we keep telling ourselves we'll build up our savings again after we pay for this current crisis, but there's been a current crisis since January. We've set the amount at roughly the cost of Little Bit's emergency treatment; she's home from the hospital and has one follow-up appointment, but that's a paycheck away and we should be able to manage that. This is not a plea for rent or grocery money, so please don't worry if you can't contribute; we are housed, fed, warm, and by and large healthy, and likely to stay that way. We just want to put as much as we can of that back in our crisis fund so we can be ready when the next hit happens.

Cat Tax Included.