Alice went back to school today, yay!! Tomorrow’s her last dose of the antibiotic, which she is mostly tolerating now. She’s still coughing a lot, especially when she exerts herself, but I got some OTC stuff that is helping a lot with that. Other than that, she’s very close to her normal abnormal sweet self.
So, yeah, the cats have had diarrhea since we got them. And here I am talking about it again. Aren’t you glad you’re reading this blog post right now and not doing something else — something more pleasant, like smelling pretty flowers or hugging a loved one?
Anyway… The week-long course of Flagyl which was so stressful for George made absolutely no difference, and both cats had been dewormed with Strongid before we got them. But apparently they need some more medication, because I just discovered a truly massive pile of cat vomit (the first time either of them has puked since we got them), which included three 6-inch long segments of tapeworm. Oh my freaking lawd. I have lived with cats almost my entire life and I have never seen anything like that. Wow.
Sooooo, um, I have a call in to the vet and tomorrow I’ll pick up more meds. Man, I hope it’s pills and not liquid.
So Alice came home from the doctor yesterday and immediately fell asleep on the couch. She woke up long enough to take the first dose of her antibiotics, which was a double dose (by design — the Z-Pak is two pills on the first day, then one per day for four days), and eat half a sandwich and some crackers, then she fell asleep for another 90 minutes. She woke up at that point, all sweaty and clammy and feeling awful, and proceeded to throw up. (Stomach upset and nausea are common side effects of this drug.) But I think she’d pretty much digested the pill before that happened, because after she puked, she was obviously feeling better, and she stayed awake for the rest of the evening!
Today her temperature’s down, she can talk a little (although she still coughs if she talks too much), she’s been awake all morning, and she’s clearly on the mend. She doesn’t get the next dose of antibiotic until this afternoon; hopefully the rest of the doses won’t give her as much trouble because they’re half the potency of yesterday’s hit. No matter how good she looks, she’s not going back to school tomorrow, but I’m hoping that she’ll be ready to go back on Thursday.
The doctor checked Alice out and listened to her lungs for a long time. He thinks maybe it’s a virus, maybe not. He was willing to prescribe an antibiotic for us, just in case it will help, given how long she’s been sick and the fact that her temp has been 102° all day. So I just picked up a Z-Pak for her and gave her the first dose. He said she’s looking at at least another couple of days home from school. Going out to the doctor wore her out so much, she slept for an hour while I ran out to get the antibiotics.
I’m taking Alice to the doctor this afternoon. She’s been sick since last Monday — started out with “headache, low fever, sore throat and fatigue,” which morphed into “higher fever, LOTS of fatigue, wet-sounding but non-productive cough, and no voice.” The doctor’s office is SWAMPED today but they want to see her based on my report of symptoms and duration, so we’re going in at 2:30 and waiting until they can squeeze us in. She’s asleep on the couch now because she took a 3-minute shower (she hadn’t gotten to wash her hair in two days). Driving to the doctor and sitting in the waiting room for however long it takes (we normally wait 20-30 minutes there even with an appointment) is going to completely wear her out.
This new batch of pictures finishes out 2010. And I’ve got ¾ of 2011 processed and ready to post in the coming days. Imagine: someday I could be caught up with pictures!! Oh fond hope…
For those following the story… George took the pills with substantially less fuss; I guess he really hated the taste of the liquid. He’s done with his course of meds (Fred has one more dose of the liquid tonight), but the litter box situation is unchanged. I’m going to give it a week or so without me doing anything stressful to them at all, and then work on transitioning their food to one made for upset kitty tummies, and leave them on that for a week or so. If there’s no change at that point, then I think we’ll need to try a different medication (Albon). Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, since I’d really rather not have to do anything else mean to George for a loooong time.
Other than the fact that their litter box is a freaking toxic disaster site, they seem happy and unbothered by their symptoms. Fred seems to be sneezing and coughing less. George’s eyes are still irritated, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
Here are two very cute pictures of them snuggling with each other.
Tonight’s dose of liquid medicine went poorly. Fred took his easily, but George refused it mixed with yogurt, hid, struggled, required all four of us to chase him around and around the house, drooled, scratched, spat, flailed, and is currently cowering under a table or something. Tomorrow morning I’m calling the vet’s office first thing and asking if I can get pills for him instead of liquid, and then I’m going to try pill pockets. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to have to board him at the vet’s office over the weekend so they can give him the rest of his meds. I hate this.
In the interest of not doing any of the things I’m actually supposed to be doing, I’ve posted more pictures. These are from our trip to the Adventure Aquarium in New Jersey in late 2010, and a few other holiday-related things.
I’m feeling really low and exhausted and demoralized today. The last week or so has been crazy busy. Sammi was sick with a lingering cough & fever combo all last week and Alice has been sick with a sore throat & malaise duo this week. Nothing is working right and everything is irritating me. Anth is super-stressed about work and stuff and everybody’s just grumpy and like this – D:
The worst thing right now for me is the cats. We took them to the vet on Monday — as predicted, it was somewhat traumatic, but everyone survived. Unfortunately, I did get meds for them… The fecal sample was negative for parasites, so we’re not sure what it is causing the (severe) diarrhea; she prescribed a course of Flagyl, twice a day for a full week. This is a liquid (I could have gotten it in pill form but chose liquid because I foolishly thought it would be harder for them to spit out the liquid) that I have to squirt in their mouth (0.5 ml for Fred, 0.7 ml for George) every morning and evening. Fred is surprisingly mellow with it — doesn’t really struggle much, swallows it down and kinda shrugs when I let him go. George, however, is a nightmare; I have an 8 inch long scratch on my leg that he gave me during this morning’s dose. He now runs away and hides whenever he sees me (so much for building a relationship), and when I squirt the medicine in his mouth he doesn’t swallow, just drools. Worst of all, after 5 doses (out of 14 total), I’ve seen absolutely no improvement in the diarrhea. So I’m stressing an already-stressed cat, making sure he hates me before he even gets to know me, restraining him and shoving crap down his throat twice a day, and it’s not even working. I bought some unflavored yogurt today for them. Hopefully the probiotics will help their guts. I might even try mixing George’s meds into the yogurt, if he likes it. If he’ll even take it from me. *sigh*
Besides the diarrhea, George has some sort of virusy thing causing a weepy and inflamed eye, and Fred is sneezing and coughing a lot. It seems like Fred’s trying to work out a hairball, but as far as I can tell he never actually coughs anything out. I was Googling around for different strategies for the hairball thing and saw that really severe hairballs that are too big for the cat to cough up can cause diarrhea and may require surgery to remove, but the vet palpated their abdomens really thoroughly on Monday and didn’t notice or report anything like that. I’m just so bummed about how unhealthy they are, and how traumatic the medication is for George.
I haven’t posted pictures in a while. *sigh* So I’m grievously behind again, posting pix from Halloween 2010, and it all feels deeply anticlimactic. I need to change my attitude about this, make pictures less of a momentous occasion, so that I can put them up more often without building it up into a big chore that I keep putting off. So in that spirit, there are pictures up from, like, 18 months ago if you want to go see ‘em. No biggy.
What’s been up…
- We had a disastrous visit to our dentist last week. We’ve been going to her for many years but we’ll never go back there again. *sigh* Without getting into too much detail, suffice it to say that we’re in the market for a new dentist, preferably someone who’s not prone to taking his/her bad days out on the patients.
- I seem to be unable to fully learn this lesson: Crock pots and slow cookers are only a convenient means of meal preparation if you get the food in there in the morning. I’ve got a batch of ribs cooking right now that isn’t going to be done until almost 10:00 tonight. Grrr.
- Alice had her ballet recital — her last ballet recital — yesterday. She’s pretty firm that she’s decided to stop ballet at this point, for various reasons. Here she is, backstage with one of her classmates. Here is the last ballet bun I ever have to achieve. And here she is, in costume as the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty, posing after the show.
- The cats continue to adapt. Fred’s pretty much a-ok with living here; George is still rather skittish, but has long stretches when he just hangs out and sleeps in a box in the living room. He’s mellowed a lot. Moving the food upstairs has helped considerably with drawing him up into the living space. They both really love the girls, and they’re pretty chill with Anth, but they don’t really seem to like me a whole lot, possibly because I’m the mean one who put them in a cat carrier and drove them in a scary car far away from their homey pet shop, or maybe because I’m the mean one who cleans the diarrhea off their butts and their paws (both of them have had terrible sick poops since we got them, even though (???) I’m feeding them the same stuff they were eating at the store), or maybe because I’m the mean one who runs the dishwasher and the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner. (I dunno, they don’t hate me or anything, I guess I just want a lap kitty and neither of them is up for that at this point; they mostly want to play with the girls, or eat, or have horrible poops in the litter box….) Unfortunately, I have to get them back in the carriers and drive them to the vet tomorrow, which I predict will be unpleasantly traumatic for both of them and which will undoubtedly reinforce their opinion of me as the big scary monster. Fingers crossed that the diarrhea, etc. is fixable with a change of food or something, and doesn’t require a course of medication, because I don’t want to also be the mean one who shoves pills down their throats twice a day. *sigh*
The kitty boys continue to settle into the place. Fred obviously has an absolutely smug self-assurance that this is now his home full of devoted servants. George is still pretty skittish, but he has his mellow moments as well.
We brought our new kitty boyz (Dooley & Cream, rechristened Fred & George) home on Friday. They spent the first day/night in the downstairs area (with the pool table and the litter boxes and lots of stored stuff to hide behind or under). Yesterday morning we opened the door to the rest of the house; Fred was all, “it’s about time” and dashed upstairs to explore. George was more, “what fresh hell is this???” and slunk back under the pool table. Since then Fred’s had the run of the place and seems quite happy. George is pleased to have visitors in his hidey-hole lair but is nowhere near ready to venture out to the living areas.
Concerns so far: Fred’s a jumper, so it’s going to be a challenge keeping him off of the counters, making sure none of the plants on the windowsills get knocked down, etc. He’s also extremely interested in the guinea pigs and jumped on top of their cage last night, which freaked them out (understandably). It’s impossible to tell whether this is “wow, those are cool wiggly things, I want to smell them” interest or “wow, those things look delicious, I want to rip them apart” interest. As for George, besides the extreme shyness, he is an eater, which means (a) he’s a big fatty boy, (b) he’s going through the food in a nervous eater way, hitting the food bowl every time anyone comes down to see him, and (c) he will eat scraps and bits of anything he finds on the floor — like dead leaves tracked in from outside, spiderwebs he finds in the corners, shiny bits of the toys that were sent with him from his foster home, etc. We’ll definitely have to be extra-careful about any little bits we leave on the floor.
On the upside, there’s this.
Another reason I’m freaking out about the cats (who are coming to live with us on Friday! Yay!!): I have no idea how they’re going to react to the guinea pigs. I’m extremely worried that they’re going to stalk them, climb on the cage, and otherwise be all bloodlust-y about them. When we brought the piggles home to Lilith, she was like 18 years old and she was like, “guinea pigs? Okay. Whatever.” So I have no experience introducing healthy full-grown guinea pigs to healthy full-grown cats. If anyone has any encouraging experiences to share, please do…
Since Lilith died in September of ‘10, we’ve been a cat-free household — just us and the guinea pigs. This has been an unusual state of affairs for us, obviously. We had Lilith for 19 years, her sister for most of that time as well, and there were other cats before them for both Anth and me. Going over a year without a kitty in the house is not the norm. The girls have been ready to add to our family for months and months and months now, but I’ve been dragging my feet, because it never felt like the right time.
I’m not entirely sure it feels like the right time now, either, but last night we submitted an application to adopt this guy and this guy from a local rescue organization. We went to the pet store after school yesterday to buy hay for the piggies and “Cream” (we won’t be keeping those names, BTW) and I just about fell in love. “Dooley” was sleeping for a long part of our visit, but he did wake up after a while and was quite friendly, especially with the girls. I’d said right from the start that, if we were going to get cats again, I’d want “teenagers”, ideally around 9-12 months old, so that we could get to know them as actual cats with personalities and not interchangeable balls of adorable fluff before we decided to adopt them. I wanted males, because I’ve found boy cats to be reliably sweeter than girls, and I wanted two cats who were already friendly with each other. Meeting these two last night just felt really right, and we’re going for it.
This is not to say that I am not freaking out. I am freaking out. This is because (a) we have not had any cats in over a year, so I’m “out of the groove” as far as cat care, and (b) the last few years of Lilith’s life were increasingly intensive in terms of the care and accommodations that she required, so that last time I had to provide cat care it was a real pain in the butt, and of course (c) I am living with a really uncomfortably high baseline level of stress these days, and I kept saying that we’d think about cats when things settled down a little bit, but of course that’s never going to happen, so I’m just taking the leap. But I’m feeling really intimidated and overwhelmed about it, making up disaster stories and worst-case scenarios and really losing track of the fact that people have cats and they get more cats and the cats just hang out and it’s totally fine and not a giant deal. Hopefully once the application process is completed and we get to visit with them some more and they come to live with us, the stress reduction of having cuddly furry things to pet will outweigh the increase in my workload that results when it turns out that, shockingly, 92% of the workload of caring for them falls onto me.
Beanmom blogs about life, food, kids, links, and various random topics of mildly passing interest.
