Takin' Care of Dinah

[elfs]

Geriatric cat care

When we set out camping, we had to contract with a pet sitting service to take care of Dinah. Our old service had folded, so we found someone else local at Little Furry Things and a young woman there named Jill. She came out the day before and I like her, walked her through the set-up and showed her how we water the cat.

The basics are simple: Dinah gets one pill each from the little containers on the left, one for her blood pressure and one for acid reflux. For the sitter, the pills were pre-filled into pillpockets, little meaty things that are apparently shelf-stable for a while at room temperature.

After the pills, she gets watered. After swapping the needle on the line of lactated Ringer's solution, she gets approximately 100ml of water under the skin every night. I try to make it less uncomfortable by pre-warming the Ringer's in a tub of warm water and lying her on a towel, and she tolerates it very well.

She gets two food packets a day plus a half-cup of dry food (not shown), and we have to rotate her diet because even with the acid reflux pills she sometimes gets nauseous and decides she's not going to eat anything that smells like what she just ate. Rotating her diet prevents her from remembering what made her nauseous, so she'll eat day after day. Eventually the memory of what ailed her fades, and we have just enough varieties to accomodate that.

Jill is local to Burien and areas around here, and having a stranger come into your house and care for your cat can be a strange sensation, but she did great. She was a little more expensive than our previous sitter at $36/hour for about one hour every day, but worth it for peace of mind and Dinah's comfort while we were gone.

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

We warm the saline in a sink full of hot water -- and tend to take it wherever our Mouse already is, because for the most part she doesn't like being moved for the experience. I love that, like us, you call it "watering the cat."

[elfs.livejournal.com]

What else would you call it? It's a good shorthand for exactly what you're doing.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

We say "hydrating" sometimes, but "watering" seems a little funnier. :)

[purly.livejournal.com]

Just noticed the Natural Choice packets in your picture-- we buy those for Remy. In the grand scheme of pet foods that are available, the Natural Choice seems to have slightly better ingredients... did your vet recommend it?

Do you mind my asking what happened to your pet that she requires pills and an IV?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Not at all! It's simple: she's 17 years old and has mid-stage renal failure. What's left of her kidneys can be made to flush toxins out of her bloodstream by putting more water into her than she would normally drink in a day, so that's the IV. Her kidneys also flush out gastrin, a hormone that aids in digestion but must be regulated carefully, and since her kidneys can't do that she gets acid reflux medicine. Because her system is so wacked she has high blood pressure, so she gets a cheap beta-blocker as well.

As for the food, Natural Choice is just what she happens to like. That and Wellness seem to keep her going just fine, so that's what we give her. Our doctor really wanted her on a low-residue, kidney-friendly diet, but her nauseau wouldn't allow that, so we went with what we could find that she would eat.