2 Babies or 2 Cats?

Almost 2 months ago, when I was head deep in the toilet with morning sickness and not anywhere near capable to function as caretaker to anyone let alone myself, our cat got very sick. We came home from a 3 day weekend trip to find our almost 6 year old cat laying on the floor in a mess of blood and vomit. We thought he was dead or very near death.

This cat had been to the vet more than once already because he would spend forever in the kitty litter doing his business and then rub his butt on our carpets when he emerged. The vet decided there was nothing wrong with him and charged us $300 to drug him up and pop his anal glands. The cat seemed to lessen the but rubbing for a few months, or at least he did it when we weren't around, but we still would find vomit every so often and since we have 2 cats we were never sure if it was one cat or both.  

We called the animal hospitals, human society and finally got a hold of the same vet who had looked at him before who agreed to see him late on a holiday. The vet finally discovered the issue was a urinary tract infection, which apparently if not treated right away can be fatal to cats. My husband refused to pay the full amount for all the treatment needing to be done for the procedures, since we felt this should have been caught a year ago when we first brought him in. To save our cats life, I suppose, the vet gave us a discount and threw in a free bag of special food, which we were told he would need to have for the rest of his life and the antibiotics for 1 week. We were told the UTI is something some cats are prone to and this condition is one that may come back. It was then we decided we would be best off to find another home for our 6 year old and 5 year old cats. My husband would be away on business in two weeks and I was in no position to be cleaning litter or taking care of a sick cat. The plan was to have family members come over every afternoon to watch our little boy so I could focus on myself and just getting to and from work everyday, which at that time I sometimes was unable to accomplish. If I had been in my normal healthy state I would have been more upset about giving away our cats, but I knew I couldn't take care of them and having a sick cat around a pregnant woman and a baby was bad news.

First we asked family members and friends if they were interested in taking them in; no one was. They were willing to help out with our one year old, but not our cats. We called shelters, but this would be a last resort since most didn't take adult cats and the one that did was a drop off service that promised to keep them alive for 72 hours, but after that there was no guarantee if the shelter was too crowded. I knew our younger cat would never survive in a shelter because he is wild and scared of people. Knowing him he would get scared and scratch someone and that would be the end of it. Not thinking there was much hope we decided to try posting an add on Craigslist. If you go on craigslist under pets you'll find at least 25 new postings for cats and about 2 for dogs. We didn't expect much but figured why not try anyway. That night at about midnight I got a text. We expected it to be a prank, at that hour, but it actually was an interested family! They had a big mouse problem and we had put on the ad that our cats were great at keeping rodents and roaches away.

 I have to say there are some moments now where I miss our cats but ultimately this was the right decision. I am only now beginning to feel less sick and it is still difficult to chase around an energetic one year old in my weakened hormonal state. Now our only problem is the visiting roach family who got the memo that our cats are now gone.