One at the Hospital, One at the Vets

This is turning into a fun, fun seven days.

Emily and I went out craft-y shopping at The Range this morning; she gave tai chi a miss as her cold has got a lot worse and we didn't think the lovely elderly ladies who go to her class would appreciate being lurgied. When we left, Voldemort had been playing happily and schnuggling on Emily's lap. By the time we got back, he was lying by the big cats' food bowls breathing very oddly, crying when touched and moving very stiffly and slowly. He was clearly in discomfort or pain. I had to rush back out again almost straight away to take Grandad into Hull hospital, but Jon and Emily took Voldemort to the open clinic at the vets to have him checked over.

The vet thought his bowel might have folded in on itself (!!!!!!!!) - apparently this is quite common in kittens and would cause a lot of discomfort and trapped gas etc; by this time Voldy's stomach was bulging out on one side. They kept Voldy there this afternoon for x-rays to see what they could find out. The x-rays didn't show anything sinister, but he's still extremely listless and won't eat or move, so they're keeping him in overnight for observation since, as the vet put it on the phone when we rang, if he does go downhill it will happen very quickly :-((( They're giving him fluids and antibiotics in the meantime. Our poor baby, he's really having a tough old kittenhood. Meanwhile, Severus is feeling very lonely without his brother, I think, and I don't want to think about how Voldy is feeling all on his own with strangers all night, poorly and with no Sev Sev or big cats :-(

Grandad is now in Hull hospital; he was given a bed straight away despite his fretting that he would have to wait for hours. The staff nurse looking after him couldn't be nicer. If all goes according to plan, he'll be having renal treatment this afternoon, the angioplasty tomorrow and then coming home on Saturday morning. If they can't do the angioplasty - they couldn't do it last time as the arteries were too blocked, as far as I understand, which is why they're trying again but going in from a different direction - we're looking at another heart bypass, but I don't know whether they'd do that immediately or send him home to go on a waiting list. When he had his first heart bypass, ten years ago in London, I think there was less than 36 hours between him being taken by ambulance to the hospital in Reading and then being transferred to the Middx Hopsital in London for the emergency surgery - this time though, I guess it won't be treated as an emergency, so it could be a long and tense wait. Here's hoping it doesn't come to that for Grandad, and here's hoping our baby kit can come feeling much better tomorrow morning.

It's extremely odd only having one little black thing running around :-(