Aging with Zuza

Now no one need panic!  Zuza isn't going anywhere soon, but she is showing signs of aging. Her face has grown so white that I almost forget how perfect it looked when she was young. Sophie, her breeder and self-named Grandma, used to say that she looked like a perfect, delicate carving, or maybe porcelain, she would say.  She did, and does, but we can see the aging and it's a little scary to me.  But what has developed in the last few months is more alarming.  It's her eye.

Her right eye appears to be entirely clouded.  A white filmy looking thing covers the whole eye.  The other eye seems unaffected.  I was at first afraid that she had, overnight, become blind, but this is not so, at least not completely.  It's a cataract, and suddenly she no longer looks like a puppy, but instead like the 10 year old dog that she is.  Rats.  We could have the cataract surgically removed and restore her sight in that eye, but it is really, really expensive and it is possible that the other eye will be affected and we will want to do both of them at the same time.

Her right eye is always dilated. It's been that way all of her life, we just didn't realize that it was the reason she squinted whenever in bright light.  Just when I noticed this change,  I began to have trouble with my left eye.  Two weeks later it also affected my right eye.  I have something called vitreous detachment.  It's also something that is inside of my eye, it's age related, I won't go blind from it, but it does seem like I'm looking at the world through a floating blob of amoeba. 

I must admit that I hadn't intended to include so much explanation.  I haven't even touched on what I wanted to say! 

What I have been thinking about is how our pets remain our babies, even as they age. For me it's this tiny creature who has become so much a part of me that I feel somewhat undressed when I go out without her.  It is almost unfathomable that I will actually be without her someday.  What an act of trust on our parts that we are willing to be so vulnerable to a being whose lifespan is so much shorter than our own.  We aren't thinking, when we fall for a little ball of kitten fluff that we are surely going to say goodbye long before we are ready to do so.

And so, I must accept Zuza's aging with at least as much grace as I accept my own.  Her blind eye doesn't seem to bother her any more than her broken elbow has bothered her for the last 10 years, which is to say, "What broken elbow?".   She doesn't worry about what will happen tomorrow or next week, (although she does seem concerned every night that I will simply let her starve).

I suppose, I will have to follow her example of just accepting each new development as it comes.  Somehow, my geriatric pet will always  be my baby girl, snuggling under my chin or tucking her nose inside my collar humming "Don't Worry. Be Happy."  

Zuza, sunbathing last week