I was woken up early this morning by a rather distraught wife holding an even more distraught cat. I could easily ascertain this with my yet sleep fogged brain by the expression on my lady’s face and especially by the way our old cat’s head was whirling around from one side to another. Apparently BV (the name of our oldest cat) had suddenly ended up taking a ride on some virtual carousel but had found he was the only one not moving. He wasn’t taking this too well. He was also clinging to my wife’s body for all he was worth.

To be honest about the whole thing, BV, who is heading into his 18th year if not there already, is on his way out. He knows it and we know it so we’ve all been very watchful of the situation. However, we hardly expected him to have an “all of a sudden” massive dizzy spell and start running around smashing into things and falling down a lot when he was fine the moment before. We’ve another much younger cat who’s spent half his life being massively dizzy due to something that happened to him when he was a stray on the street but at least he has enough sense to lay down when this sort of thing happens. Unfortunately, BV is one of those cats who needs his world “just so” and at that moment–it wasn’t.

So I rose from the bed and gently removed the cat, who was hanging on by his claws for dear life, from my poor honey’s body and held him down on the bed rubbing him in all the usual places that tends to relieve a funky inner ear just in case that was the problem (being an ex-submariner has come in handy in the oddest situations). Apparently it worked because suddenly the old cat’s head stopped whirling about and he looked up at me as if to say–”What!?”. He’s been fine since then.

I’m hoping his world stays on an even keel from now on especially for my wife’s sake. Not only because she doesn’t like those kind of surprises so early in the morning but I worry about the loss of blood. It’s not easy finding and plugging all those pinhole leaks you know.