Cat story from my husband:
“When I was at UNCC, I was living on the third floor of our building with some friends. Whenever I let Purr-Zha out, he wouldn’t go downstairs to the outdoors like you’d expect. He’d go one floor upstairs and make a beeline for the Cipriani twins’ bedroom and lie on their bed. I swear I didn’t train him to do that. Good boy.”
I took Purr-Zha back to the vet’s office this morning, after he sneezed and blew thick ropes of saliva all over himself. They did a full body X-ray, and even I could see the large spots on his lungs that meant cancer. He’s down to six pounds, for a loss of a pound and a half over the last five months. He’s just had so many health problems that any one of them could have explained his weight loss and lethargy. I don’t blame anyone for not making this diagnosis sooner.
For the moment, he’s okay, but it’s a matter of days. After talking with the vet about what he could expect as far as the quality of his death at home versus being put to sleep at the vet’s, we’ve decided to go ahead and end his life at the vet’s. They asked us to check in on Monday and let them know what we wanted to do. So we’re spending some quality time with him here, and unless something dramatic happens one way or the other, we’ll be bringing him in early next week.
He’d been on prescription diet, but the vet gave him some commercial cat food, which he ate well. He also got fluids under the skin and some prednisone and such to help him feel better. It did help, as he managed to jump onto the couch and go to sleep. The fact that the prednisone helped him makes me wonder if maybe he isn’t arthritic as well.
We’ve been told we can stop the thyroid medication, since he has an empty stomach so much of the time and is probably upsetting his stomach more. I’m off to the grocery store to get him some cat comfort food. Needless to say, he’s also getting some major loving. If nothing else, this will be a nice last weekend for him.
Can we have ONE FREAKING MONTH where one of the cats doesn’t break down?
Yeah, I said cats. You heard me.
Stupid orange pumpkin.
ETA: Here’s what was wrong with her. The faint of stomach should probably not read this.
They thought it was – and I am not making this up – abcessed anal glands. Yes, our little 17-pounder is now so fat that she cannot clean herself, and instead lies around with one leg in the air, displaying herself for the entire world to see.
We know she should lose weight. However, I feel we have to tend to the needs of the worst off cat in the house, namely the black and white one in the picture. He is diabetic and cannot afford to switch to a low-calorie diet. And I do not have the time or energy to maintain a rigorous feeding schedule in which one of them gets locked in the bathroom while the other one eats, and then vice versa. So the cat’s just going to have to stay fat until the black and white one kicks it.
Fortunately, her glands were not abcessed. Her nether region was just really, really filthy. As a result, she was quite pinkish red and raw down around her anus and vulva. We had cleaned her some last night, but apparently it was still filthy. Like, Exxon Valdez filthy. Like, requiring professional care filthy. As the vet said, “she’s gonna want to be sedated for this.”
Anyway, they got her cleaned up, and now I have antibiotic pills to give her twice a day, and also a salve that I have to rub around her anus two or three times a day for a few days until she’s not so raw.
I love animals, I really do, but this is the same little freak of nature that cost us $3000 in vet bills last Thanksgiving. And now I’m smearing diaper cream on her ass.
You know anybody who wants a cat?
So I’m zipping along on a sock, turned the heel, decreasing for the gusset on the instep, doing okay, not able to knit on it that much but still enjoying it…
…and then the cat craps on the pattern.
Stupid cat. I should take that stupid hat away from you.
The bad news: The eyedrops that we got for the cat, the stuff that cost $100.49? It was supposed to be refrigerated. The vet’s office didn’t refrigerate it. So the cat was in medical boarding for the last three days, getting medicine that was improperly stored. This stuff was supposedly critical for the cat to get, and had to be administered every two hours. So now there’s a concern that the cat may not have gotten the full benefit, AND that we wasted our money.
The good news: I can be very polite and diplomatic but firm, as anyone who’s dealt with me in Dragonrealms knows. (Okay, actually I apparently am getting a reputation as a pussycat, but I assure you it masks a steely interior.) As a result, the vet refunded the boarding charges for the last visit, bought new medication, and had an employee deliver it to our door, about 20 minutes away from the vet. I believe dropping 2 large on a cat at their facility was helpful to them in making this decision. However, this was absolutely above and beyond. They didn’t have to do this, but they did, and it really turned me around from “severely pissed off” to “happy and smiling.” Kudos, Animal Medical Hospital. Also, their vets say that the medicine shouldn’t have lost too much efficacy over the last 48 hours, although I have a call in to a friend of mine who is a vet who will confirm or deny that for me.
The better news: I have made a gift for a friend who has no idea that I have done this, and no idea that it is coming. Doing this always makes me feel somehow giddy and at peace at the same time. I think this person will be very pleased, and that puts a smile on my face above and beyond the usual Christmas cheer.
Well, the cat’s ears are doing much better. Another week of twice-daily antibiotic drops and they should be okay. The ulcer on the eye is clearing up too, although now there’s a complication with that.
The vet says that the cat has the herpes virus, as many cats do, and the stress to her immune system has caused it to flare up. Dendritic uulcers have formed around the point of the original ulcer. Apparently, when the eye is stained, this looks like little fingerlings radiating out. So now we will have to do drops every two hours for the next 48 hours. And the drops will probably cost 50 to 100 bucks. We have to get them at a regular pharmacy.
Because there’s no way we can give her eyedrops every two hours, antibiotic ointment in her eye every six hours, artificial tears every eight hours, and eardrops every 12 hours, she will be boarded again for a couple of days at Christmas. We have passed the $2000 mark on the cat. A cat, I will remind you, which we don’t even like.
Merry freakin’ Christmas, everyone.
ETA: The drops came to $100.49. And they have to be kept refrigerated. Yeah, it’ll be a blast putting fridge-cold eyedrops into a cat’s eye.
The fat orange cat is back home again! It turns out she had bad ear infections in both ears, which completely demolished her eardrums. Because she had trouble closing her eyes and controlling them, she also developed a corneal ulcer. So now we put drops in her ears every 12 hours, and put goop in her eye every six hours.
She’s not exactly 100% yet. She has a pronounced head tilt. It looks like she’s paranoid and constantly looking over her right shoulder. She also has very poor balance, causing her to flop over every time she shakes her head or sneezes, or sometimes when she walks. Mainly she just holes up in a big cardboard box right now. However, she is at home, and she should continue to get better. We take her back in two days for a re-check of the ears and eye.
Welcome home, freaky paranoid drunken half-blind hermit cat!
We have an incredibly fat cat. (The orange one in this pic.) She’s prone to weird behavior, just because she’s so danged fat.
At 11pm last night, she was just fine. Her usual freaky self. Sometime during the night, she started breathing through the mouth, which we didn’t think much of, because hey, she’s fat.
Later on during the night, she knocked a toy off of the dining room table. Again, no big deal, she’s a cat, cats knock things over in the middle of the night. That’s what they do.
At around 4:30 this morning, she was standing near our bed, mouth-breathing, but this time she was also making erratic scratching sounds, like her claws couldn’t get purchase on the hardwood floor. We turned on the light. She was foaming at the mouth and just kind of… crouching there. We called the vet. While we were on the phone, she peed right where she was standing. Cleaning up just now, I notice she also defecated a little, very loose and with a little blood. She had also thrown up in a couple of spots in the hall.
My husband is en route to a local animal medical emergency clinic with her.
Please, please don’t let this Thanksgiving be remembered as the one where I had to explain to my daughter that our cat died… and what death is all about.
UPDATE! They’ve tentatively ruled out their first guess, which was FUNGUS OR BACTERIA EATING FROM HER EAR INTO HER BRAIN and are thinking maybe toxoplasmosis – which is treatable. So far, she’s still doing okay under the care of the hospital.
This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that we have the ability absorb (with difficulty) more than a grand in expenses for a cat that is honestly not our favorite. I’m also thankful that we always have Thanksgiving here at home, and thus weren’t out of town last night. AND that we live in a major city with two emergency veterinary clinics. Here’s hoping it all works out for the freaky, fat little girl.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE! Now they’ve ruled out their second guess and are leaning toward the ears again (so to speak) as the probable culprit. Our cat generates enormous quantities of hard black wax. This, apparently, is weird to the point that whenever we take her in to have them cleaned, the vet calls over other vets to look at it and marvel. So they think now maybe an inner ear thing. They’ll sedate her later (goodbye, $300!) and clean her inner ears and see what’s going on. If that’s all it is, she should recover with time, leaving her with nothing more than a mild tendency to lean her head toward the right. Because she’s not weird enough, I guess.
