Jenya, my wife, likes to get flowers. When we started dating, she said she didn’t really like cut flowers because they would be dead in a few days. That’s changed. She likes the beauty that fresh flowers can bring to a home, and they elevate her mood. I was working one of part-time, on-call jobs at Fred Meyer when I saw that they had flowers in the bargain bin.

$2.64, to make my wife happier? That’s easy. I picked them up, realized I didn’t know if they would be cat-friendly, and decided to get them anyway. Surely, Jenya would know.

I brought them home. Jenya enjoyed them. Sima ate some parts of them, not a lot, but she’s a cat. That’s what cats do. They sat on our counter overnight.

The next morning, Sima got up with us but then went back to bed. She slept most of the day. It was overcast. I blamed the weather.

The next day, she vomited and went to the bathroom five times in one hour. Even though she was in the bathroom, she was only leaving little balls of mucus, and only one or two at a time.

The third day, she vomited again. For the briefest of moments, I thought about waiting until I pre-arranged appointment a week from this incident. But I decided that I didn’t know enough about anything to make that decision. I called the vet to see if we could get her in.

We went to the vet the next morning. Sima was running and jumping and behaving normally, but I had scheduled the appointment. Sima didn’t want to go, and she told us loudly that she was fine. We went anyway.

The vet examined Sima and looked at a photo of the flowers. “What are those?” We didn’t know, but the vet tech used her phone to google the types of flowers. “They’re lilies. They could be Peruvian or they could be white. It’s hard to tell. Let’s go ahead and do some bloodwork on Sima, check her kidneys. Some lilies cause renal failure. Some aren’t that bad. I’ll go look up the flower.”

The vet went to look up the flower, and the tech took Sima to do the bloodwork. When they returned, the vet said it was difficult to say which flower was in the picture. We’d need to wait 15 minutes for the blood results. When she returned again, she said everything looked normal, except for her renal measures, which were a little elevated. The vet wasn’t too worried. We’d arrived too late to provide any mitigating treatment, anyway. So, we would need to come back in a week’s time to do some follow up testing.

$447.74 for the vet visit. Those are the most expensive flowers I ever bought. When I messaged my sister, the first thing she asked was if I needed money.

To have to reduce this situation to the monetary stress it caused sickens me, even if I’m trying to make light of it. I had to take my kitty in to get help. Now, rather than rejoicing that she’s likely to be okay, I have to hope that I’ll have a job within the next month, so I have the money to pay the bill.