Please help save my cat Bioux

Hi, I'm Noëlle, and I live in Michigan with my little black cat Bioux (pronounced "boo"). For the last few years, Bioux has been my almost-constant companion (I do have to leave the house sometimes), and has been a wonder for preserving my mental health.

Now, he's in the hospital with a life-threatening condition, and I need help to bring him home.

I discovered Bioux at the local Humane Society. He was in a room by himself, with some odd shaved and almost-bald patches on his head and paw; they told me later it was because he was recovering from ringworm and a broken leg. (I, too, have a broken leg that I've never quite recovered from, and to this day he folds that paw under himself kind of funny when he sits.) I spent some time with him, and he was charming and affectionate - and then when I opened the door to leave, he bolted and I only barely grabbed him before he reached the outer area. He was my kind of cat, but he was going to be a handful.

The first week I had him, he was so anxious in my home that he was having trouble eating, drinking, or using the litter box, and it took a trip to the emergency vet and some anti-anxiety medication before he could calm down enough to really get used to his new house. For a few months after that, things were going great - and then, two weeks before his first birthday, he had a seizure. As it turns out, Bioux has mild epilepsy; he tends to have seizures about once a year, and at this point I know how to deal with them.

This week, though, he stopped using the litter box again - although he would try to go in other places, without success. I took him to the vet on Monday, and they prescribed the anti-anxiety meds again and some medication to help clear up a UTI. Things were okay for a day or so after that; other than the litter behavior he was his usual self. But then, yesterday, he began running back and forth to the litter box, straining to get something out, failing, and then crying when he couldn't, and as the day went on he became more and more lethargic.

Last night, we took him to the emergency vet again. This time, it turns out Bioux has not only an obstructed urinary tract but a badly-impacted bowel (the latter likely caused by not drinking because of the former), and between them, those two conditions are life-threatening. Right now, he's been hospitalized and catheterized, and he's under the best care they can give him; unless they find something else wrong, they have high confidence that he'll be able to come home this weekend or next week, which is a great relief to me.

However, the cost of hospitalizing a cat is pretty high. The quote for this hospital stay is $1,000 a day - and they told me to assume he'd be there for five days. So I could use some help putting together the $5,000 it's going to take to bring my beloved cat Bioux home. 100% of your donation will go to this hospital bill, and since this is a teaching hospital, your donation will also help educate the next generation of veterinarians - maybe even someone who will work on your animal someday.

Thank you for anything that you can spare, and thank you for sharing this where you can.

- Noëlle and Bioux