An Occupied Bed

My daughter is currently with me for a week while we visit the different theme parks in Orlando. Tomorrow we go to Savannah, Georgia for a day and a half before she has to return home and I head on to North Carolina. The cats are ecstatic that she is here. She gives great belly rubs and pays attention to them when I am not. They also provide another bed for them to occupy. They love to lay on the bed when someone is in it. If the bed is empty, it's not near as much fun to be there. So while I am working on the computer, she is in bed reading and all the cats cozy up to her. I have to go get them when I get ready to go to bed. They won't understand that and will glare at me like I am an ogre taking them away from one of their favorite people. Silly cats. I am supposed to be their favorite person but they seem to forget that whenever she is around.

Godiva lost her MoJo

Godiva has lost her car MoJo. Last three or four trips she was just fine. Not so today. She got sick and threw up in the front seat just as I am traveling through a toll booth. There was absolutely no place to pull over and clean up or help her or anything. Poor kitty. We did not even do a lot of curving roads either. Of course, I messed up and put out some food in case they were hungry in the car and she had helped herself. No more food in the car for the first several hours until they get their car legs again.

Time to move on

The cats know something is happening. They always know when their lives are about to be in turmoil. SO I am awake at 3:30 a.m. and trying to get my mind to shut up so I can go back to sleep for a little while. Of course they both went back to sleep once they woke me. I keep thinking of things I need to do before I leave this house and what still needs to be packed. How long can it take, for gosh sakes, as I have been doing this for awhile now and this is not the only place where I have stopped for a month. Geez. You'd think I was brand new at this nomad thing. OK, that's it. gotta go back to bed. shut up mind, stop whirling. Everything will get packed and I will be in Orlando before I know it. Hello Mickey, Hello Harry. Here we come.

Living on Borrowed Time

Puff got the all clear this week from the vet. He has recovered from his ordeal. He's not limping anymore either. However, the bad news is that his blood clot could occur again. He is now more susceptible for this to happen. If it does happen again, I would need to get him to a vet just about as fast as we did the last time. Getting treatment within a hour or so saved his life. Dang, this is not a good thing to have for a cat on the move, a cat on the road. So I think what I will have to do is map out a few vets along our routes, just in case. We would like Puff's "borrowed time" to last a very long time. Love ya Puff.

Cat Fur Drifts

As my hubby is leaving to go get his hair cut, I walked out onto the porch with him to start getting the dive gear ready for a dive this afternoon. As I am walking out, I pick up various little tufts of cat fur lying on the floor. My hubby comments, "we don't get dust bunnies, we get cat fur drifts." Oh how true. Puff shed a ton of fur this week in his panic at being sick and not knowing what was happening to him. Godiva sheds a ton of fur on a regular basis. She is not a long haired cat but a medium haired cat that seems to grow fur on a prodigious basis and needs to shift a lot of it into corners and under furniture. I can't even imagine how much fur there must be adrift in a house with long haired cats! We had a cleaner come into the rental house this week and the main thing she did was vacuum up cat fur. wow. There is just so much of it. I wish there was a market for it because I think I could make some serious money off of it.

Things back to normal

Puff had his catheter out yesterday and spent a good deal of the evening cleaning that foot and leg. Must have been really itchy because he sure did scratch it a lot. Then to bed as usual around 10:30 or so. And both cats were up again, as usual at 3 a.m., 4 a.m, 5 a.m, and 6 a.m. Things are back to normal and it was as irritating as it ever was but I'm not saying anything anymore about being nasty to them for waking me up early.

Balloon Paws and Cat Massage

I am happy to report that Puff is doing really well after I jinxed him and he had a blood clot. The vet thought the first night that he had about a 5% chance of survival. Now, 4 days later, Puff is doing good, the vet is amazed, and his chances are up to 90% or so. He still could have a relapse so we have to monitor him closely but he's looking good, only limping a little, and had the catheter removed today.

Last night, Puff was feeling better and the tranquilizer was wearing thin (we have had him sedated since the beginning because he was so panicked). He was busy trying to pull off the tape around his leg and around the catheter. I tried to tighten it up and keep it in place. I was a bit too thorough. It was a tad too tight and as we are watching television, my hubby notices that Puff's paw is about the size of a small balloon. opps. I had to unwrap all the bandages down to the skin and try and re-wrap without getting it too tight. I was successful but whereas we would have stopped the tranquilizers last night, we felt he needed one more night on the dope so he would leave the bandage alone.

Today the vet removed the catheter and Puff has a small bandage on his leg which I can take off in an hour, if he doesn't beat me to it. We have to continue giving him baby aspirin, which is something that normally you wouldn't give a cat, but he needs it for another 5 days. Because his pulse still isn't that strong in his back legs, I now need to massage his back legs and groin every night. That Puff! he's getting spa treatments now! And we think it all started because he didn't want to go on a diet. We're just very glad that he is still with us. Love that Puff.

Taking Care of Coincidences OR Puff gets sick

Taking Care of Coincidences

I feel so very, very, VERY guilty. I wrote that I was so angry at my cats for waking me up all night long and especially Puff for his meowing and wandering, usually right after we have gone to bed. I wrote that I might murder both cats. A week after I wrote that, Puff almost died. We were sitting in the house and doing our nightly type of thing when Puff started in on his meowing and wandering and I was admonishing at him to be quiet because sometimes he listens to me and shuts up. Suddenly his meowing changed to one of panic and distress. If you have a pet, you know that their cries can sound different and when you have lived with a pet a long time, you can recognize when something is wrong. We looked his way and noticed he had fallen over on his left side. As we are watching, he tries to get up and falls over again. We immediately get on line to find a vet in the area even if it is 10 p.m. at night. My husband calls the vet and the vet asks some questions and then tells us to bring Puff to the office and he will meet us there.

Puff in the meantime and skedaddled and gone under the bed. Hubby has to get him out and Puff is really unhappy and scared and panting. Poor Baby. We stuff him in his cage and away to the vet. We were flying by landmark and almost missed our turn. Came really close to hitting the car on a road sign but we made it safe to the office and in a couple of minutes, a car pulls up and the vet has arrived. Puff is so distressed that he pooped in his cage which he never, ever does. So now we are on the vet’s table with cat poop, a scared and panic cat who is panting and trying to jump away but unable because one leg is not working.

The vet does his thing and then tells us that Puff has developed a clot in his femoral artery. It is a fatal thing but usually it is both legs and not just one. He cannot feel a pulse in Puff’s left leg. He cuts one of the claws very short, into the quick, and there is no blood. This is bad. He pinches Puff between the toes and no response. Very bad. So the prognosis is Puff will probably lose the use of his other leg sometime tonight. The best we can do is give him some Heparin (a blood thinner) and a baby aspirin, a tranquilizer, and wait and see. He’ll either get a bit better or he’ll lose the other leg and have to be euthanized. Poor Puff, Poor Us, Poor Guilty Me for starting the whole thing by jinxing my cats

We are able to drive back home, through the tears, with Puff now quiet in the cage. He had some Heparin in the office and we will give him a baby aspirin when we get home. The vet was really willing to go some measures because normally, a baby aspirin is not something that is good for cats. I give Puff his tranquilizer and he settles down for the night.

Puff made it through the night and we took him back to the vet the next morning. The vet was amazed that he made it and had not lost the other leg yet. So another shot of Heparin. Because the treatment seems to be working, Puff got a catheter in his leg and I have to give him a nighttime shot of Heparin. Puff doesn’t like the catheter so he got a “cone of shame” too (If you saw the movie UP, then you know that is what the dogs all called the collar put around an animal to keep them from gnawing on a bandage or wound). It took Puff about 5 minutes to work his way out of the cone. Cats are somewhat smarter than dogs!

We are now on our third day since the incident. Puff is doing better. He went from a 5% chance of survival the night it happened, to a 20% chance the next day and while not out of the woods yet, he’s up to about a 50% chance of survival. Yea Puff! I’m so sorry Puff. I’ll never get that angry at either of my kitties again. It just might start something bad. Love Ya Puff!

Smells Bad

Smells Bad!

We had to take our Puff to the emergency vet last night (more on that later). He was poked and prodded and handled by the strange human in the strange office full of chemical smells, other animal smells, and just yucky stuff. When we brought him home, Godiva decided he was some stranger because he didn’t smell like himself. He smells bad. My sweet little Godiva turns into a snarling, hissing menace when anything “vet” happens be it to her or to one of the other cats in our household. First thing she does is hiss at Puff.

Poor Puff had not had a good night so he wanted on the bed to sleep with us. That is his usual nighttime location but he wanted closer than usual and took Godiva’s spot which is between us and between the pillows. That did not set well with Godiva. She came and hissed at him for awhile and when he did not get out of her spot, she went to the end of the bed and pouted for awhile. Puff finally left and went elsewhere but now Godiva’s favorite spot smells bad too. Several times during the night, she tried to get comfortable in her spot but she just couldn’t. She would hiss upon lying down in her spot, then growl and fidget and finally growl and leave. No one got much sleep. Godiva thought I smelled bad too at first because I had been holding Puff at the vet’s office but she finally stopped growling when I was holding her. She still thinks Puff is a different cat and she isn’t too sure about my hubby now either. It will probably take the rest of the day for her to decide all is almost normal.