This afternoon, one of my daughters and I brought our inside mama cat to the vet for a check up. She has been acting very ornery and out of sorts, and my daughter, sweetheart that she is, wanted to get her checked out.

They did some blood tests and even a quick ultrasound to make sure she wasn’t pregnant (ha!), and everything checked out okay. As she is an estimated 10 years old (we’re guessing she was about a year old when she first found us), it is most likely she is in pain from arthritis. My daughter got 2 weeks of pain killers, one every 24 hours, to try her out on and see if she improves.

They’re supposed to taste like cat treats, but she did not want to take it! Normally, I’m able to get the cats to take pills fairly easily (we just gave all of them worm pills, not long ago), but she was pretty upset and fought us off. We gave her more time, then tried giving her the pill in with a piece of meat.

She ate it right away.

Hopefully, this will make a difference. We were instructed to stop giving them to her immediately, if she starts to throw up. I don’t know how long it’ll be before we should be noticing a change, if any. After these are gone, we will know whether or not this is something to continue.

Thankfully, the bill wasn’t as high as we feared it would be. The vet recommended getting her fixed, even at her age, as apparently females that aren’t have a higher risk of urinary tract infections. With my daughter’s reduced hours at work, it’s going to be a while before she can afford to do that.

I really, really appreciate that she’s doing this, because we sure as heck can’t. :-(

Later in the day, my daughter and I disturbed the kitties. I wanted to give them clean bedding, which meant we had to take the babies out of their nests, then persuade the mamas to follow. We had a crate with one of the cat mats I’d crocheted at the bottom to put them in, which meant I could get a good photo of both litters in the process.

Here are Butterscotch’s babies. We now have a soft bed in the old radio she’s made a nest in that is large enough to cover the entire floor, plus go up the sides a bit. The babies will have softness and warmth around them, even when they start getting more squirmy and moving around in there.

Getting them out was a challenge. Two of them were attached, and did not want to let go of the nip! Butterscotch, at least, was fairly easy to lure out after the kittens were taken out.

Beep Beep, on the other hand, needed more persuasion! After taking her babies out, she stayed in the box her next is in and would not come out. The box is under a chair, and I ended up having to take the chair away, then we had to upend the box to get her out. I moved the box aside, as even the floor under it was damp, but as soon as I put it on the floor, she was right back in it!

We don’t have another box the same size, so we flipped it so the damp cardboard is now at the top and able to dry out, put a new clean bed inside, then shifted which chair it was under, so it was on dry floor.

The good thing about concrete floors; we’ll be able to clean and sanitize any messes much more easily!

As soon as the box was set up again, Beep Beep was right in there, and happy to get her babies back.

I think they were all glad to have new bedding, too!

Those furry little worms are so adorable!!

The Re-Farmer