vet care

The ladies are home!

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I’m happy to say that Beep Beep and Fenrir are now at home, recovering nicely. They did very well at the vet today.

Once I lifted Fenrir onto the bed to remove the bandage on her “wrist”, she settled right in, and is still sitting there as I write this.

Beep Beep, on the other hand, has been constantly in motion! I was told she had a bit of a panic when the IV was removed, and she was pretty vocal for the ride home. They are now isolated in the room with me, and she’s only just now settled down on the bed, though she is sitting and staring at the door with great intensity!

It took a while to get that bandage off of her!

We’ve got different instructions than with the outside cats. Water only for now, then a bit of food to see if they can handle solids yet, this evening. Starting tomorrow morning, we have a pain killer to give them. The dose is based on weight, which they highlighted on the package in different colours. Beep Beep is over 3kg, or about 7 pounds, while Fenrir is just barely over 2kg, or about 5 pounds. I did ask about her small size, and if it should be a concern, and was told no. She is just a small cat. As for the pain killer, we have a syringe to administer it – a much smaller one than was we used to feed Cabbages!

If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.

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We can put the medication on their food, but only if we’re sure they won’t eat each other’s food, which… ha! Not going to happen. So we will dose them directly into their mouths.

Beep Beep is not going to like that!

It should be interesting to see if she has a “catonality” change, like Butterscotch did, after this surgery.

Once I got the call telling me when to pick them up, I left early to run some errands first. One of them was to pick up the soft sided carrier used to transport Cabbages to the cat lady for medical car. This time, it did make it to the donation bin at the shelter – and I was happy to see actual donations in there, too. Last time, it was empty.

I was also able to connect with our mechanic and talk to him about our brakes on the van. I told him about what the garage in the city told me, and then the warning light turning on the next day. He thought there might be some water in the fluid, and asked me to drop it off so he can check it with his tester. Once he does that, he’ll be able to tell me more, and give me an estimate. The estimate will determine if we can get it fixed right away, or if it has to wait until the end of the month. February, at least, is a short month! :-)

I’ll also be able to give him the printout and we can talk about the other things they listed as needing to be checked out, and make any future appointments needed, as the budget allows.

I’ll be dropping the van off the day after tomorrow. He did suggest tomorrow, but the girls have their own shopping list for a city trip, so I’ll be driving in with one of them, using my mother’s car. It’s due for a highway run, anyhow.

Tomorrow, we still have a forecast of 1C/34F. Today, we warmed up to at least -8C/17C. The thermometer in the sun room reached 8C/46F, so that was quite nice for the kitties in there! And now, even my other weather apps are showing a high of 3C/37F, a few days from now. If we do get that warm, it’s going to feel downright tropical out there! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Home Early!

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We just got back from picking Nosencrantz and Butterscotch up from the vet, a couple of hours earlier than anticipated.

She looks so betrayed!

Nosencrantz looks absolutely miserable! Especially since whatever they used in her ears has a red tinge to it, making the inside of her ears look bloody as well as oily. :-D

I got a call from the cat lady about them, first. She still keeps calling my cell phone instead of our land line, which worked out this time, because the vet called while we were talking! I couldn’t answer a second phone, so I let it go to machine, and we both got to listen to the message being left. :-D

The cats were just waking up from surgery, and were doing well, so they were good to be picked up between 2:30 and 3 instead of between 4 and 5. The cat lady informed us that they also had fleas, which was a surprise. We’ve never seen fleas on the outside cats, but of course, that doesn’t mean much, since most of them don’t let us look too close. She asked us to keep an eye out on the other outside cats for things like bald patches, and to let her know; she would come to our place and treat them for fleas herself.

I don’t see that happening.

Before we got off the phone, I asked how Cabbages was doing. I was so happy to hear that she is starting to jump around in the kennel they are keeping her in, and that she has gained almost a pound. This morning, the dry bowl was empty, which means she’s been eating on her own – and she really loves roasted drumsticks best!

I am so thankful for the cat lady and her vet. Cabbages would not be alive right now, if not for them.

If you would like to read more about Cabbages and our fundraiser to surprise-reimburse her for vet expenses, click here. Or, you can go straight to the fundraiser page here.

When it was time to pick up Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, my daughter went in to get them and got more information.

Those fleas the cats had?

It was one flea.

On Nosencrantz.

That’s all they saw.

The tech was a bit concerned, saying she’d heard something about the cats going back outside. She was GREATLY relieved when my daughter explained we had a room set up for them to recover in. She was equally relieved to know that they did not go inside the house, either. Otherwise, we’d be having to treat the remaining 15 cats for fleas and ear mites – and treat the entire house for fleas, too!

I am so glad to have that sun room to use as a buffer zone!

Because of the ear mites and the flea, Nosencrantz needs to stay in the sun room for at least three days before we can consider bringing her indoors. That will give her time to get used to using a litter box, too. We are to keep a close eye on her for fleas and ear mites. The de-worming pill she got should also take care of those, but if it still seems to be an issue, we can come back and get another pill.

Butterscotch had a surprise for the vet during surgery. As they removed her uterus, they found it was “tattery and falling apart.” Yes, that’s an exact quote!!!

No wonder she was such an unhappy brood mother!

Apparently this is a reflection of age. We don’t know how old Butterscotch is. Just that she is more than 7 years old.

Everything else seemed to be fine, but we have been asked to keep an eye on her. In particular, on her gums. If they start looking white and anemic, we are to bring her back.

Not that she’s going to make that easy for us. As soon as we let her out of the carrier at home, she disappeared behind the swing bench. We can’t get at her without moving a lot of stuff. We’ll be coming in regularly to check on them, of course.

Butterscotch will be in the sun room for at least 7 days. Preferably 10, before going back outside.

If she stays on pattern, once she’s outside, she’s going to be avoiding us for at least a couple of months, so the longer we can keep her indoors to monitor her, the better.

It will be a while before her belly fur grows back, so if it gets cold again after she’s outside, we’re supposed to try and bring her back in again. Ha! I doubt she’d let us!

We still haven’t seen the surgical sites on either of them. Butterscotch disappeared as soon as the carrier was opened. Nosencrantz had to be poured out of the soft sided carrier; she would not leave on her own! She then immediately went under the heat bulb. She had a bandage for the IV on her leg that she was trying to shake off. We were told it could be taken off after half an hour, which had passed in the time it took to get them home, so I did manage to get that off. She didn’t make it easy, though at least she didn’t try to run away.

We will have to visit them frequently over the next while. That will be mostly on the girls, since tomorrow I’ll be going to town to finally get a much needed oil change for the van, and will most likely be heading to the city to do our Costco trip the day after.

Hopefully.

Our storm warnings have become blizzard warnings, but for the south of the province. We’ve seen no sign of the system in our area, yet. It still doesn’t look like we’ll be getting much snow, but the main concern will be high winds. From the weather radar, it looks like the most severe weather we’ll be getting won’t happen until 8 or 9pm tonight, with blowing snow tomorrow, plus several colder days.

Whatever ends up hitting us, I’m glad we were able to get the cats done first.

The Re-Farmer

Well, they’re in

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This morning, we got Butterscotch and Nosencrantz in to the vet.

There’s a storm on the way that’s supposed to start with sleet, then 6-10cm (2-4in) of snow. It was supposed to start about 8am, and drop off time was 8:20, so we headed out early, just in case. Not that these forecasts are accurate for where we are, most of the time, but why take a chance?

When I came into the sun room, I found Butterscotch and Nosencrantz had been using the swing bench, completely ignoring the beds we made for them, and even the space under the heater bulb. Clearly, it never got cold enough for them to give up those soft cushions! :-D

Butterscotch was not a happy camper when I put her in the carrier! I’m actually surprised she let me put her in so easily, considering she’s had this ride before, to get stitches on a gash we found on one of her back legs.

Nosencrantz was much, much calmer about going into the soft sided carrier. She is a much more easy going cat, and I think she will transition into an indoor cat very easily.

Once they were safely tucked away, I could quickly take care of the outside cats.

It’s been a while since this was done while it’s still dark out!

Tuxedo Mask is looking at the water, and the water is looking back! :-D

Once the critters were taken care of, my younger daughter and I headed out. We got to the clinic quite early, but they were okay with an early drop off. We’re expecting a pick up between 4 and 5pm, but they will phone us if the cats are ready earlier.

Once at home, I finished my rounds before heading back in. Things are still looking good out there, and we’re only at -12C/10F. We are expected to reach a high of -3C/27F by late this evening. Looking at the weather radar, the Alberta Clipper heading our way looks like it has already dissipated a fair bit. We should get bit of snow this afternoon, but it will likely have passed over us by the time we have to go pick up the cats. The rest of the system is looking like it will hit us in the evening and overnight. Where we are, I don’t think we’ll get any sleet at all, but who knows. We tend to have a strange climactic bubble over us that seems to push away a lot of these systems. I think it’s part of the lake effect where we are.

As long as we can get the kitties safely home today, we’re good with whatever the weather throws at us. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Keith is home!

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The boy is back!

My daughter and I brought Turmeric to the vet for a check up (driving into a wall of fog on the way!), as she was the most recovered of the cats that had gotten sick – all of which started just within the past few days. The vet checked her over, and she’s fine. It was just difficult to listen to her lungs, because of the purring! It did not take her long to settle in at the clinic at all, and she was more than happy to jump at the vet for attention. :-D

As for Keith, it was decided to try him on antibiotics for two weeks, first. He got an injection at the clinic, and we’ll be giving him half a pill, twice a day. If he gets and stays better after those two weeks, then he just got hit with what the other cats got, but harder. If he doesn’t, then it’s heartworms, and we need to take him back and figure out the next course of action. The vet does think it’s heartworms because, when she did an ultrasound of his heart, she thinks she actually saw a worm. It could have been a “heartstring”, but those should not be visible in an ultrasound.

Personally, I am leaning towards respiratory infection. Even this morning, he seemed a bit better than yesterday, and after we brought him home, he actually showed interest in food and water. Not much, but at least enough for a nibble and a lick. As for the other cats, after examining Turmeric and hearing the descriptions, it sounds like a feline herpes flare up. The clinic knows that both the inside cats and outside cats have it – we’ve brought various kitties for treatment over the past few years. What is possible is that the outside cats have a different strain than the inside cats. While treating Tuxedo Mask, as careful as we were about hand washing, etc., we could have exposed the inside cats to a new strain and, as the vet put it, the two were fighting it out, and some cats were being affected by it more than others. Which makes sense to me.

Also, if it does turn out to be heartworms, this will be the first time the vet has personally seen heartworms in a cat. She sees them in dogs fairly regularly, but it’s just so unusual for cats to get them.

So we will be monitoring Keith and medicating him for the next two weeks (unless he takes a turn for the worse and has to be taken back, of course). Thankfully, my older daughter filled all her slots for quick commissions and was able to pay for it. All those tests added up. :-(

As for the couple of other cats that seem to be having a harder time of it, it was recommended to have them in a steamy bathroom. So my younger daughter will be taking a long, hot bath tonight! With feline company :-D

I am hopeful that Keith will recover just fine.

The Re-Farmer

Another Keith update

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Well, this is curious.

We just talked to the vet. She thinks Keith has heartworms, but she can’t say that with complete certainty from the X-rays.

Heartworms are really unusual in cats. Especially indoor cats. And we have 16 indoor cats, and for all the coughing and sneezing, there is no way they all have heartworms.

So this afternoon, we are bringing in Turmeric. She had similar symptoms, but seems to have recovered. This will give us a comparison.

If we treated him for heartworms, it would be a long term thing, and the medication has risks, because there really is no heartworm treatment for cats. Not a risk we want to take for something he might not have. Alternatively, we can go with an antibiotic treatment, because we do know the cats have feline herpes, and that is much more likely to be an issue.

We will talk about it after Tumeric has been checked over.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.

The Re-Farmer

A quick Keith update

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I was hoping to have more news before now, but I figured I’d better post while we wait.

My daughter and I headed out to the vet first thing, shooting to get there when they opened at 8am. My daughter tried calling shortly before, and on her second try, someone answered. She quickly explained our situation and told them we were on the way.

They had three surgeries booked for this morning. Depending on the timing, there was a possibility the vet could quickly check Keith out before going into her first surgery. If not, we could drop him off and she would try to look at him in between surgeries.

She still hadn’t arrived when we got there, one minute after opening, so my daughter did a drop off. We will get a call when they are ready. They got permission to do various types of tests, if necessary.

As for Keith, he was isolated with me for the night, but one of our other cats joined us, too. It seems the coughing and sneezing has finally affected one of the cats we brought with us during the move. He’d been fine until last night. He’s 10 years old now, so we seriously considered bringing him in, too, but after observing him for a while, decided against it. They both had access to food, water and litter, but touched none of them by morning. Keith did have a coughing fit until he threw up, then did that face grabbing thing, once during the night, but thankfully there was no blood this time. He almost looked a bit better.

Most of the cats are actually fine. Just a few are coughing or sneezing. Beep Beep has her occasional coughing fits, but she’s always had that, even before she became in indoor cat, so that’s not out of the ordinary for her. Susan does the same thing, so they don’t seem to have picked up anything new.

Hopefully, we will have good news soon, but with three surgeries, it might be a while before the vet can even look at him. We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

The post I intended to write

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Oh, what a day!

At least I have some good news to share, after having to make fruitless run to the vet just a little while ago.

Tuxedo Mask is free!

His eyes got one last dose, and then we left the door to the sun room open so he could leave whenever he wanted. It took him a while to trust he really could go out!

Where he was immediately sniffed at by several cats. :-D

He slunk around for a while, and didn’t seem to sure about his freedom!

Today was a nice warm day – not as warm has had been forecast, but we still hit 0C/32F – and calm, so I was able to use the burn barrel. The barrel is not too far from the junk pile, so I got entertained by cats. They are really going to miss that mess, when we finally get it hauled away!

I found Potato Beetle quite funny, enjoying the sun from inside the old oven! :-D

He’s so sweet, when he’s not being mean to the other cats! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Not the post I intended to write

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Okay, so this has been a weird day, but I’ll get right into what just happened.

I had just settled at my computer and started a post when I heard a cat having issues behind me. I found Keith, who has been having an odd cough lately, horking like he was about to throw up. He didn’t actually throw up more than some spit, but then he flung himself to the floor and began using both front paws to pull at his face, as if trying to get something out of his mouth. When I tried to reach him, he ran off. When he headed up the stairs, I called on the girls to check on him.

Then I went to clean up the little bit of a mess on the floor.

Wipe, wipe… red?

Which is when one of my daughters came rushing in to tell me that Keith was throwing up blood.

I quickly went online to find the emergency number for the vet. Their website says they are open 24/7 for emergencies, but they also had extended clinic hours. They were still open! I tried calling, but no answer. Just a machine giving their new hours, and saying to call back later if calling during office hours.

My daughters, meanwhile, got Keith into the carrier. While we drove to town, my younger daughter kept trying to phone the vet.

No answer.

We finally get there, and they were closed! There was a quickly made sign on the door saying they were closed and, for emergencies, had the name and phone number for a veterinary hospital I’ve never heard of. I called while my daughter updated the family (I love technology!).

The emergency vet turned out to be in the city.

I asked if there was an emergency vet in our area, because there’s no way we were going to put Keith through such a long drive.

Turns out there are none. At least none in this town.

So much for 24/7 emergency vet care!

Keith seems to be stable, though still coughing, so we will take him to the vet when they open in the morning. Until then, he is isolated with me in my office/bedroom for the night.

It seems to weird to not have any emergency veterinary services in our area! I just finished doing a search, and found one in another larger town, but they are connected to the one we usually go to – in fact, I got directed to the same website.

As to the clinic we tried, they should have been open, but given the type of sign they had on the door, it seems like they had to close unexpectedly.

We plant to be there before they open in the morning.

The Re-Farmer

Tuxedo Mask is okay!

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We had some maintenance related issues that prevented me from posting an update as soon as we got home, so I figured I’d just cut to the chase with the title!

We were not able to catch Broccoli, though.

She and Caramel just did not want to leave the cat’s house, even when I started scraping ice and snow off the roof – a noise that usually sends them running.

She did eventually come out just as we were heading to the van with Tuxedo Mask (with a delay I will write about in my next post). We tried again to get her, but she just would not let it happen.

On the plus side, her eye looked much, much improved since this morning, so that’s encouraging.

Even with the delay, we got to the vet early, which gave me time to pop across the street to a hardware store. My daughter went in with Tuxedo Mask.

It’s basically a herpes infection. He was coughing a bit, too, which would also be from herpes. She prescribed eye drops for him. She legally could not prescribe extra for Broccoli, though. Anyhow, he is to get the eye drops twice a day for a week longer than when his eye clears up. Considering that his eye was looking dramatically better by the time we took him to the vet, that should not be too long. And if we happen to be able to catch Broccoli and be able to hold her, well, it’s up to us if we happen to give her eye drops, too!

Honestly, I don’t see that happening.

Once we got home and were let into the house – more on that later! – we set up a nest for Tuxedo Mask in the sun room, along with the extra ceramic heat bulb, similar to how we set things up for Ginger. He will stay in the sun room, where we can easily catch him to treat his eye, until it’s no longer needed, and then we can let him outside again. We were warned to watch out if the eye starts to get cloudy, though, and if it does, to bring him right back.

Considering he’s already recovering, I think that will not be a concern.

On top of all that, the cost of the visit and the prescription was way less than I feared. I keep wildly overestimating how much things will cost, but he didn’t need any Xrays or anything like that, so there weren’t any add on’s to his exam. Just the prescription. Such a relief!

Getting to and from the sun room to treat his eye might be a challenge over the next while, though, depending on how we manage things tonight.

That is a story for my next post!

The Re-Farmer

Eye update

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When heading out this morning, I made extra effort to take a closer look at Tuxedo Mask’s red eye.

He even let me pet him, while he was in the kibble house!

The eye is still really gross and leaky, but looking a lot better than yesterday.

Then I saw Broccoli.

Who also has a red, leaking eye.

*sigh*

I was able to get some decent photos, though. Once back inside, I called up the vet, then later emailed them a couple of photos.

I got a response, and they have an opening for us this afternoon, if we could bring them in. My younger daughter and I went out and we were able to bring Tuxedo Mask into the sun room. He remains there now, with the cat carrier, food, water and litter.

No luck with Broccoli, though.

She was in the cats’ house, watching me through the window, but would NOT come out. Not even for treats. She was bundled up with two other cats.

One of which also had a leaky eye.

*sigh*

It turned out to be Caramel. Her eye wasn’t red, though, so at least there’s that. We have more chance of catching Broccoli than Caramel. We’re going to keep trying, but I really don’t expect we’ll be able to get her.

I have, however, let the vet know we can bring in at least one cat, though.

I suppose this is a good time to promote the donation button! If you would like to donate towards the care and feeding of the kitties, you can buy us a Kofi. All donations are for the cats only, and any amount is greatly appreciated.

I will update on how the vet visit went as soon as I can!

The Re-Farmer