Today was not the day we’d hoped for. It started out in style with a brilliant weather forecast suggesting it’d be the hottest day of the year so far. The pair of us were up early, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, ready to make the most of it. Jet, our cat had given us a break and slept in his own bed last night, he only leapt on this morning after Dawn had got up.

My plan was to eschew slide scanning for the opportunity to catch up with blogging, paperwork and reading. I was sat in the office typeswiping when Dawn told me that Jet had been sick. Nothing much – just some bile. It’s not unusual as we thought he’d probably been trying to bring up a furball. Then he was sick again. This time we could see there was something wrong. He retreated to his heated mat (we bought him one to ease his arthritis as he’s 18.5yrs old) and lay there looking very sorry for himself.

The both of us were concerned but decided the best thing we could do was keep an eye on him. It was easy enough for me to shuttle between my office and the bedroom so I kept him under observation. He didn’t stir for several hours and was very quiet, which is very unlike him, he’s normally a very noisy cat and often wanders in to me for some attention. This wasn’t like him at all. In the afternoon Dawn looked in on him and decided to phone the vets. We managed to get the last appointment of the day at 17:50, so all we could do is look out for him until then. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day, which was another concern.

With the weather being so glorious I relocated to the front garden to soak up some sun and crack on with writing as well as reading up on the current news from the rail industry. The day was a real scorcher so popping upstairs to check on Jet every so often was a useful cooling off period. Poor Dawn was stuck inside at her desk as the amount of paperwork she has to deal with makes it impossible to move outdoors in the way I can.

When it was time to take poor Jet to the vets we dug out his cage and Dawn lifted him in, which produced the only noise he’s made all day. He was clearly in pain. Normally, when we take him in the car to the vets I sit his cage on my knee and leave the top off as he’s a curious cat and he loves watching the world go by. This time he lay at the bottom of the cage without as much as a peep out of him. The vets had a system where the building was closed but one of the nurses would come and collect your pet off you before taking it inside for a check-up. We had an anxious few minutes sat in the car until the vet rang Dawn to say that Jet had Pancreatitis and was obviously in pain. They were treating him with opiates, hydrating him with a drip and would be keeping him in overnight to monitor him and do some blood tests. It was a relief to know he was in good hands, but a wrench to leave the poor little bugger…

Neither of us felt up to much after that. It was already 19:00 so we went and sat in the sun with a drink and talked about the day and our concerns for ‘the boy’. With everything going on right now we really could have done without the stress of this, but what can you do?

Let’s hope tomorrow brings some good news…