Hugo Flash Update

For those of you who’ve been following my Instagram feed, this is old news, but for those of you who aren’t on Instagram…. I wanted to share an update on our little furball, Hugo. I blogged last week about how excited we were to have a little fuzzy kitten in our lives…. well on Friday of last week, his health took a scary turn for the worst and we spent the whole weekend in and out of emergency vet offices praying for his little body to miraculously heal. Since he was a rescued kitten, he went from the street to a shelter, to a rescue home, and finally to us… a lot of places to be taken in a short 11 weeks of life. We had many vet appointments those first 5 days trying to identify and get rid of an intestinal bug that was causing diarrhea. We were given several medications to give him, and one of them called Metronitozal (a common med to treat diarrhea quickly in dogs and cats) ended up being the cause of his “almost death”, but no one knew it at the time.

Friday he was wonderful and perky as usual, but Friday night after being gone for 2 hours, we came home to a drunk looking kitten. He was stumbling and falling over and was irrationally hungry and thirsty. Christopher and I were pretty freaked out, so we took him to an emergency clinic to figure out why he was acting so strange. They weren’t much help in this early stage of neuro shut down and they sent us home with frustrated feelings of helplessness and another de-worming (the 5th round) medication to give him. That night, Hugo’s neuro function went downhill FAST and by 8am the next morning, he couldn’t move his back legs, his front legs were too weak to hold him up, and his equilibrium was non-existent. Driving to the vet that morning was awful. He was crying, confused, and was incontinent all over himself. As we expected, the vet said it didn’t look good and that we needed to brace ourselves for the high likelihood we’d have to put him down that day. He wasn’t sure what the cause of all of this was, and neither were the other two vets he would see that day.

We were heartbroken and felt completely defeated that this little fuzzy kitten we had gotten only 1 week before might die. We had no control over anything, no one knew what was happening, and all we could do was keep him on an IV and feeding tube and wait….

So we waited, and waited, and after a shoot that afternoon, Christopher and I visited him, held him, and said our goodbyes for the night. No one expected him to live through the night. It was the worst.

Sunday morning though…. we got a call. I answered it, dreading the worst had happened. The voice on the other end of the line was not sad, but sounded shocked. She said to come pick Hugo because he was practically a brand new kitten. WHAT?!! Apparently, Hugo had an adverse reaction to the Metronitozal and got something called Metronitozal toxicity. Even though we had given him appropriate dosages, he had been on it for too long and his blood became toxic. The toxic blood went to his brain and caused the paralysis. The vets were amazed because normally cases of toxicity end up being fatal.

I’ve always been skeptical of healing stories. I suppose the scientist in me has always found instant healing “unscientific” or implausible based on biological facts. So this whole experience has blown my concept of science and biology out of the water. I did EVERYTHING I could to keep him healthy. Each and every vet did EVERYTHING they could to keep him healthy and diagnose his problem. Everyone did EVERYTHING and yet this poor kitten was on the brink of death. It was apparent and obvious that the only thing that could possibly save his little kitty life was an act of God.

But I had given up hope. I had resigned myself to the fact that this “too-good-to-be-true kitten” was going to die and there was nothing else I could do about it. But then God acted. Hugo was back to “normal.” How?! Why?! For real?! I’m still floored that he’s here.

All of you who prayed, He heard our prayers! Thank you! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Thank you for believing when I lost hope. I know he’s just a cat. I know people die everyday and there are bigger tragedies that happen all the time. I know that praying for a little cat may seem lame and insignificant, but I thank you for praying anyway…. from the bottom of my heart. I believe God hears our prayers, no matter how insignificant they seem, because He cares about the littlest details of our lives. My God cares about the details. The little fears, the little worries, the little insecurities, the little joys, and the little triumphs….. he cares about those things because He loves us. So, for this little miracle, and for our story to take such an unexpected turn…. even if it was just to show us He’s present with us through every circumstance…. I’m so thankful.

At the moment, Hugo is curled up in my lap in a food coma from eating almost a whole can of cat food. His balance and equilibrium are still on the mend, but all things considered, he’s doing wonderfully.

Here are some photos I posted through the process…