Eye-ing Buffy 1

Apr. 2004

Long-time no write?! Yeah, I can't believe it's been over 6 mos. A busy time. A difficult time. Then was the beginning of real Spring weather, and now it's the beginning of real Winter weather. Well, the leaves are well past peak here, the leaf-collecting machine just went by and snow showers are forecast for today & the next couple of days...brrrrrr.

So what's been going on in the meantime out here? Well, I'm going to skip over the summer, for now, and go right to the heart of this post: Buffy.

Apr. 2005

One of the first close-up photos I took of her in late-April 2004, picked up a large rust-red spot on her left eye that I assumed was just a "freckle" in the green pigment of her iris.

About a year later, thanks to a decision to redesign this website & a subsequent review of all the photos I'd been taking of her, I finally noticed the spot had grown & was now taking up an entire half of the iris. Still, I never thought it was anything serious, figuring it was just a rather curious but interesting & unusual change of pigmentation, nothing more.

May 2005

A month or so after that, I noticed that another photo showed the "spot" now had a small neighboring brown "freckle" on the other side of the pupil. Still, although part of my mind registered these changes, I was too clueless to be concerned enough to follow-up on them.

It took almost another year of photos before I stopped thinking it was all my imagination & attempted to investigate the condition. But when I Googled "eye pigmentation changes," with a tool where specificity can mean everything & nothing, those search terms unfortunately didn't lead me to the necessary or for that matter any useful information, at least to a mind like mine....

Mar. 2006

At our annual vet checkup that summer, I finally brought the eye to his attention. But as nice & good a vet as he was/is, this wasn't something he knew anything about.

However, he did tell me we could go to an animal ophthalmologist for a diagnosis, but the nearest one was 2 hrs. away in Lansing...waaay farther away than I could imagine driving Buffy at the time, especially since it didn't seem to be bothering her. In lieu of that, he said to watch it & if it ever seemed to tear excessively or have any other sort of discharge or if she pawed at it &/or it seemed to be painful, then call him.

June 2006

So I did watch it. Noting that it was now entirely, almost evenly brown. Noting that there were no tears. Noting that she didn't paw at it or seem bothered by it. Except. When spring finally came, I noticed that she wasn't as eager to go outside as she used to be & when she did go out it was only for brief excursions. She was sleeping a lot more too. But I figured, well, she's 13 (vet's best guess) or so & that's getting kinda old for a cat, so slowing down & sleeping more isn't that unusual. Sigh.

As the summer advanced & she still didn't want to go out much, I began to worry more but still, none of the signs the vet mentioned had materialized. Until.

Continued:  Eye-ing Buffy 2 and Eye-ing Buffy 3