Friday before last, I noticed that Shimmer was acting a little quiet. By that Sunday the best way to describe her was lethargic. I called the vet first thing the next morning but there were no openings until the next day. I took her in and dropped her off. When they checked her out, they found she had a temp of 105.5. They ultra-sounded her and took an x-ray and found that her chest cavity had fluid in it. It sounded a lot like what Friendly had when I lost him. They consulted an internal specialist and were advised to lavage her chest and of course start her on an antibiotic IV. Her temp started to come down but later spiked again. They lavaged her chest again but only got a small amount of liquid. Her temperature finally came down and she started eating again. They keep her over the weekend and she continued to do fine. I brought her home yesterday and will continue giving her 2 kinds of antibiotics for the next 2 weeks. I’ll take her back for a recheck and to get her chest tube stitches out on the 14th. She’s happy to be home and is running around like nothing happened. It was a systemic infection and they think was either caused by trauma or pneumonia. The good news is that it’s not contagious and won’t affect my other cats. I hope they’re right. At any rate, things are back to normal, though my bank account is considerably lighter.