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!