I've had my cat Monte for 15 years. Poor thing has been dragged around every move and has been a trooper and fantastic company. I brought her with me here to Germany even though it cost a motza (is that an Aussie expression?). But since I fell pregant June 2002, the poor thing has hardly had any affection from me (though she certainly gets fed etc), as I wanted to be absolutely sure that ds wasn't affected. Then I brought ds home and didn't want to share my hands between the two of them and be washing them every 5 minutes (they were dry enough after 2 weeks in hospital being washed with alcohol before and after ever feed/change). Monte noticed the difference and went missing for 4 days.
Now she is getting older though her health is starting to go down hill and I have been guilty of delaying trips to the vets for the reluctance to take ds with us. The icing on the cake was that she got badly beaten up by a big nasty Tom cat this week at 3am in the morning (so unfair a it was right in front of our front door) and she went into shock and looked in a pretty bad way, but I still didn't want to get ds out of bed to take her to the vet in the middle of the night (home alone). I called dh - poor bugger - and he managed to talk the vet into coming to the house by exagerrating the extent of injuries, but the next morning I had to take her to the surgery and again on Monday.
The poor thing has gone from 5kg to 3.35kg. Whenever dh complains about her I remind him that I have had a relationship with her longer than him, but ds absolutely comes first with me and the poor old thing is really suffering. She still loves me and follows me about the house sitting down nearby wherever I am. The next big shock for her is going to be when ds starts crawling, which I expect in the next couple of weeks. Has anyone else been through this? Any advice or ideas would be great.