elfs | Entries tagged with cat

Well, poor Necco's been lethargic and sick, and the veterinarian agreed she has fleas. So she's stuck in the house with us for the next seven days; the vet basically said she's a death machine for every flea in the house, so we need her to stay inside. She's going to every door and scratching and whining, "Let me out, let me out!"

It's gonna be a rough week.

Current Mood: annoyed
Crossposts: http://elfs.livejournal.com/1516309.html

Up in a tree(house)

Bosco has learned how to climb up into the treehouse. The other day, though, I was working in the garden and he got very vocal with me, meowing loudly. He seemed angry, or at the very least upset, at something, I don't know what.

I can just barely reach that ledge, so I tried petting him or coaxing him. He just meowed, seemingly still upset. I finally had to tell him that I was very sorry, but I don't speak cat.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: My Brightest Diamond, Inside a Boy

Sweetpea hiding

Looks like LisaKit's cat has found a hiding place. I should probably stand a small child next to that fort for reference.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Threshold, Freaks

We've tried the baby food with Dinah. She really seems to want to eat, she's just got a terribly unhappy tummy and only half her mouth working, but we're babying her through different food options as we wrestle with her health.

She didn't like it so much as a commercial brand (Fancy Feast right now), but she at least tried it. Omaha discovered that lifting the plate to chin height is more comfortable for Dinah than bending down, so we've raised it up on a box that used to contain fruit drinks.

Omaha told me that she was going to trek through the snow to get more baby food. Yamaraashi-chan overheard her and said, "Baby food? Why do you guys need baby food? Is there something you're not telling me!?"

After all three of us stopped laughing, I told her it was for the cat. We pointed out that given Omaha's slim, trim condition, it would be months before we needed baby food and Omaha would be making her own baby food herself anyway.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Jethro Tull, Skating away

Omaha and I know that we're dealing now with a cat that's in rapid decline. The neurological incident she had recently, the one that caused the weakness on the left side of her face, is now spreading, and she can no longer control her mouth on that side. She drools constantly, has a terrible time eating anything at all, and often has wheezing breathing incidents whenever she purrs. She's desperate for warmth; she sleeps on one of the heat vent registers whenever she can, dares the stairs only if she absolutely has to.

We've gone back to using an oral injector to get her food into her, and she protests it in a way she never did before. The only way to get food into her is blend it with chicken, beef, or fish stock (depending on the pouch we're giving her) using a stick blender, and pour it into her dish like soup. She still doesn't eat much, she's dropped from eight pounds to five, and I really don't think she's going to last much longer.

She still purrs, and she still loves us, but it's hard watching her slowly fall apart like this. Poor kitty.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Omnia, Wytches' Brew

Dinah with Dysautonomia

For the past two days, Dinah has been showing signs of dysautonomia, dilation failure in her right eye. Her left eye responds to the light, her right does not. It's more than a little disconcerting. She's mostly blind in that eye, too; she reacts very little to motion toward it. Last night, she started wheezing badly whenever she purred.

We took her to the vet today. X-rays showed nothing, and she's lost a little weight, but that's normal for a very geriatric cat– she's 17, after all. The vet diagnosed it as Horner's syndrome, probably due to a nerve block, which in turn is probably due to her increasing blood pressure. There's not much we can do for her other than keep her comfortable, although we've been told to up her blood pressure meds up to twice a day.

She seems very comfortable otherwise. She whines when we pick her up, but she's happy to be petted and snuggled. She really hates it when we comb out the knots and pils on her belly, though, but it has to be done or she'll twist the knots and they'll start to hurt.

Current Mood: grumpy

I took Dinah to the vet this morning. I swear, those people have not gotten around to maintaining a proper schedule like the rest of the world. These days, when I go to a doctor's office, if I'm on time usually so are they. But every time I go to the veterinarian's office, it takes forever for them to get around to seeing me. (Hmm, an interesting point for the Yowlerverse.)

Anyway, the vet said that Dinah's doing exceptionally well for a cat her age. Her arthritis has gotten to the point where she's no longer even trying to climb up on the bed and she still pees possessively on every article of clothing Omaha or I leave on the floor. Never hits the kids clothes, though. She's eating well, but is having even more trouble grooming herself properly, so Omaha and I have to spend more time combing and raking her fur. She's doing well with her nightly meds and fluids. We discussed arthritis medicines, but it meant my having to give Dinah a shot every night. I said one needle was enough, and he agreed. We haven't seen any more "neurological incidents" with her since that one seziure Omaha reported about a year ago.

He said that we've done a remarkable job of keeping her weight up, but when I described what we have to do to keep her eating-- rotate her diet every day, different brand every other day-- he shook his head and said, "Well, if that's what it takes. I still wish you could keep her on a kidney-safe diet." Yeah, so do we. I've gotten to the point where I stack the food packets in separate stacks in the shopping basket, so the folks at the store can just shoot the barcodes rapid-fire and be done. They're grateful for that.

She's in today for her annual teeth-cleaning. She doesn't even try to eat hard food anymore, so this has become an expensive necessity. Other than this, she needs only another visit next year in April for a vaccination update, and another one a year after that. I wonder if we can hold off the vaccination six months and schedule it at the same time as her dental appointment.

She's whiny and needy but healthy and holding together, and I expect her to be around next year for that expensive cleaning, too.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: The Orb, From a Distance

I feel happy! I feel happy!

I suppose this should wait until next Monday, but I've been feeling it for at least a week and it deserves to be talked about. This coming Monday, the 17th, is the first anniversary of Dinah's being diagnosed with geriatric feline kidney failure. She was losing weight fast. "Aggressive" treatment consisted of a dose of gastrin management every night (it's amusing that both Dinah and I are both on omeprazole) and 100ml of water injected under her skin between the shoulder blades.

The veterinarian said that she'd probably last a month or two without it, or six to eight months with it. If we went "aggressive," he said, the end would come much, much quicker when it did since instead of a slow buildup of renal toxins over weeks, it would happen more or less within a few days when her kidneys finally did shut down. Omaha and made the decision to do the aggressive treatment-- we loved our old cat and, besides, what a great lesson for the kids, that you don't abandon someone just because their care has become onerous.

But it's been more than six to eight months. It's been a year. And I look at her and think to myself, "The doc said it would be a gentle, painless decline. You're not supposed to be getting better. You're not supposed to be putting on weight!" I immediately feel guilty for thinking that, and I understand that it's a common thing for caretakers to feel, the whole "I had this much time allocated to this part of you, and now you're taking more than your fair share" moment.

I do love the poor old fuzzball, even when she pees on my gym clothes, the laundry, goddess knows what else. I've become a master with the steam cleaner. And we have to work extra-hard to keep her litterbox clean because overcharging her kidneys means, well, you can guess what it means. So we soldier on. Enjoying her presence, even when she's so demanding about cuddles and hugs, taking care of her. And feeling a little guilty every time we grump over our responsibilities toward her.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Lo'Jo & Django, Jah Kas Cool Boy

Really, she's very sweet.

Current Mood: giggly
Current Music: Dream Theatre, Through Her Eyes

I know it's traditional to do this with dogs, but we have a cat. After our Dies Natalis Solis Invicti dinner (thanks,

blaisepascal, we put the big pig bone on a plate and left it on the floor for Dinah, who immediately went at it. It was quite the sight. I am lion, see me take down the wild boar and eat of its flesh! I am young! I am powerful! I am... ow, damn, I'm missing a quarter of my teeth! Damn!

Poor kitty. Anyway, she seems to have much enjoyed her Solis Invicti dinner as much as the rest of us. She's been eating pretty well the past few weeks, which has us heartened.

Current Mood: tired

Dinah.

This afternoon Dinah went up to the front door and chittered. She did not meow, softly as she does now, being sixteen years old and much of her voice gone. She chittered, a sound she makes only when a moth has entered the room, or her arthritis medicine is working for her and we pull out the laser.

I wondered what caused her to do that, so I looked out the window. A pair of ravens were on the grass outside, digging at the ground and looking simultaneously ominous and coy. "Do you want to go out?" I asked. She knows what that sound sequence means and butted her head up against the door.

I opened it and she stepped out onto the front stoop and in the loudest voice her aging throat could muster, growled at them. It was quite the sound; I don't believe I've ever heard anything like it.

I do believe I've now heard the feline equivalent of "Get off my lawn!"