I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.
- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.
- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.
- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.
That's love. 🐈⬛🐈❤️
cats are so very unclear on what is wrong with us but they want to help
Last time I had a really bad migraine my cat curled herself round my head and purred sympathetically, and actually stayed there through two of her normal mealtimes. It wasn't until I was able to stagger to the kitchen and grab a protein bar for myself that she gave a very small, polite miaow to the effect of "while you're up... could you get something for me too?"
I once broke my arm falling down from a bunkbed.
Ever since then, my kitties make a POINT of sleeping in the border of my bed, to create a "bump" so If I EVER rolled over? I wouldn't fall. They even taught the ones that came after to do the same.
Sure, I have never slept in a bunkbed again, but they don't care. "Mom fell from bed, Mom got hurt, so we make sure Mom doesn't fall from bed again"
I adopted my cat as my ESA, and I'm proud to say she's well-suited for the job. Besides the usual stuff, like helping with grounding and seeking me out during big emotional events, I found out early on she was amenable to some at-home service tasks. Small things, like being a medication reminder and hanging out with me when I've fainted.
What I (foolishly) didn't expect is that she would keep teaching herself tasks to caretake me. She aggressively guards me when I catch an infection. If it's been too long since I've eaten, she will pester me until she watches me put food in my mouth. I had to train her out of trying to drag me to safety after fainting. Just wild things for a cat to choose to do.
So imagine my confusion this year when during the height of one of my scariest health episodes, this same cat is constantly acting up. It felt like she timed it to me finally being well enough to get out of bed. No matter what I was doing, this little grey cat would be right there: pacing, pestering, and absolutely demanding that I lie down to cuddle her. Cuddling isn't even her thing.
Amid trying to settle her, my symptoms would inevitably catch back up to me. So I'd just drag myself back to bed – and suddenly, she was an absolute angel again. And this cycle just kept repeating, seemingly without rhyme or reason. The only time my cat didn't start doing this was when my wifey was around.
Fast forward a couple months. I find out my migraine disorder has progressed (a thing untreated migraine can apparently do) to a rare form that sometimes mimic stroke (a collection of symptoms that can apparently happen outside of stroke). It's a huge relief, but one with big health considerations. Key among them, it means my migraines needed to urgently be detected, prevented, and treated due to the possibility of hemiplegia. So, I start the arduous process of logging my migraines, and aggressively treating any first signs of them.
My cat has continued bugging me during all of this. And while I'm venting about that and going over my migraine logging with my wifey, they suddenly stop me, point at a day I'd marked, and say, "Hey. Wasn't that one of the days she was really acting up?"
It was like a light bulb moment. We went over all our shared messages, cross referenced them with my logs, and yeah. Yeah, my cat had been bullying me for getting out of bed every fucking day I had a migraine. The only days she hadn't were when I'd spent the entire day with my wifey... the person that takes care of me and gets me to bed when my health gets bad.
TL,DR: my cat figured out what was making me sick before the doctors did, made it her job to alert me and enstate bedrest, and only takes a vacation when she knows somebody else can do the work.
Cats are fucking wild, man.
[Image description: A grey cat with green eyes sitting with its tail curled around its legs and looking at the camera with a very polite expression. End description.]
