Life with a kitten

Cagney is getting bored in my bathroom.  She really wants someone to play with.  While the dogs and other cats were eating tonight, she was in the bathroom SCREAMING.  Please release me, now!  When everyone was done and the dogs had licked the cat bowls clean, I put the dogs outside.  I then opened the bathroom door, and out Cagney dashed.  FREEDOM.  

Chow-Li, my gorgeous, but gigantic, long-haired Siamese mix was  lounging on the other side of the wrought iron gate between the living room and the hallway.  Cagney proceeded through the gate and started swatting Chow-Li.  I cannot begin to describe the ensuing “play/fight” session, but I’m going to try. 

Chow-Li  is easily 10 times the size of Cagney, however that did not deter Cagney from going on the offensive.  Cagney batted Chow-Li’s paws and Chow-Li returned the attack.  She kept her claws sheathed.  She rolled onto her side and Cagney tried to bite her tummy.  Chow-Li rolled back onto her stomach and Cagney swiped at Chow-Li’s face.  After several thrusts and parries, much like sword play, Chow-Li finally put her front paw on Cagney’s head (her paw being the size of Cagney’s head) and pinned her to the ground.  That didn’t stop Cagney.  She escaped the paw and ran behind the nearby bins.  She apparently decided on a sneak attack and approached from the rear, thinking she would catch Chow-Li off guard.  It didn’t work.  Chow-Li turned around and continued the play.  All I could do was stand there and watch the exchange, finding myself laughing out loud at times.  It was, seriously, such a cute and funny spectacle.  There is nothing like a kitten to make me smile. 

The dogs were barking to come inside, so I had to track Cagney down.  She had stopped the play and decided to venture further into the living room.  New territory to discover, other cats to bother.  They, however, weren’t interested in having anything to do with her.  I didn’t see her at first, so I called her name.  Don’t let anyone tell you that cats don’t know their name – she came running out of her hiding place and raced back into the hallway.  I managed to corner her and put her back into the bathroom.  I can’t wait until she’s a bit bigger and I won’t worry about her being around the dogs.  At this point my concern is that they won’t understand that she’s nothing more than a smaller version of the very same cats they ignore day in and day out.  When that day arrives, she’ll have all the company she could want and I’ll be able to reclaim my bathroom and clean it up.  For such a teeny thing, she can certainly make a mess.

Charlie Redux

The adventure (?) continues.  Charlie has failed to make any remarkable improvement since I began treatment for exonic pancreatic insufficiency, although he did put on 4 ounces in 2 weeks.  He's still under 5 pounds and in the past two days has required me to force feed him.  He's also developed a serious herpes eye infection, which is limiting his vision.  I've been debating (with myself) whether I should just give up and put him to sleep.  I've vacillated, with nights being when I say yes and daylight brings new hope. 

This morning I decided to check a blog I hadn't visited in nearly a year.  Jane Garrison had caught my attention during the animal rescues following Katrina.  She tirelessly saved so many animals as a volunteer.  She started Animal Rescue New Orleans, which is still operating today, run by local residents.  The post I read, I had read before.  One of her cats had been diagnosed with hemobartonellosis. It's now known of as Mycoplasma Haemofelis.  Maybe this is what has been afflicting Charlie for this past year.  I called my vet's office and asked if we could start him on doxycycline & prednisolone, the meds used to treat this disease.  To find out more about it, go here:  http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_feline_infectious_anemia.html

After checking with the vet, I got the okay to proceed.  Unfortunately, due to Charlie's weight loss, the doxycycline would need to be compounded at a pharmacy.  After speaking to the pharmacist, and relaying my frantic concern, she agreed to have it ready today.  I'll be meeting my friend from the vet's office in another hour to pick up the pred and then, hopefully, the pharmacy will have his antibiotics ready.  Keep your fingers crossed that this is what he needs to improve.  I just hope it's not too late to make a difference for him. 

This ordeal has taken its toll on both of us.  My emotional state has been out of control.  His struggles and confusion have left me in anguish, and feeling nearly helpless.  I'll keep you posted on any and all progress.

As requested..............pictures of Cagney

I took Charlie back to the vet on Friday and brought Cagney with us.  She has gained 6 ounces since Saturday.  She also likes to sit on shoulders.  So here are the pictures taken by one of the folks at the vet's office.

Isn't she adorable?

 Charlie had finally gained some weight, although not much - 3.5 ounces.  He has a raging herpes infection in both eyes so - yay! - not so much - even more daily meds for him.

I thought I'd found a home for Cagney with my assistant and his girlfriend.  Both of them fell in love with her.  Why not?  She's adorable.  Unfortunately, their cat Bella wanted nothing - but bloodletting - to do with Cagney.  So, Cagney just came back to me a few minutes ago.  Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be......

I lied!

As of yesterday, there is a new addition to the household.  A teeny, itsy bitsy, black & white kitten, gender undetermined.  Weight, only 1 pound and 4 ounces.  The baby's name is Cagney, although Screamer might be more appropriate.  She/he has very definite opinions and doesn't mind expressing them loudly and often.  I love vocal cats....................probably not very surprising.  I swore no more critters - I don't want them to outlive me.

She/he was most probably dumped at or next to my vet's office.  A man found the other kitten in the street a week ago Saturday.  He brought the kitten to the vet where the kitten was euthanized.  From what I was told, the kitten was suffering from heat exhaustion and appeared to have been hit by a vehicle.  I spotted Cagney on Tuesday, under a car in the driveway of a house next to the vet's office.  A few employees knew the kitten was there, but no one attempted to catch the kitten.  I was finally able to get a trap and dropped it off on Friday.  The young woman who lives in the house caught Cagney Saturday morning and I picked her/him up and brought her/him home.  Cagney is residing in my bathroom for the time being.  Prefers being held and will try to climb my legs if I don't pick her/him up.  Sharp, dagger like claws digging into bare legs - not a pleasant experience but, somehow, endearing. 

I'll post a picture once I get my camera operational again.

Charlie, Claudia and Cissy are hanging in.  Cissy had 4 teeth pulled on Tuesday and finally started eating normally today.  It's been a chore running a MASH unit for 3 cats lately.  I really am way too old for this!

For the Cat Lovers out there…….

With a house full of cats I usually can’t always react immediately when I notice something slightly wrong with one of the cats.  Last May I decided to take Charlie to my cat vet.  My previous vet, who treated both my cats and dogs, did not have a good track record when diagnosing or treating my cats, so I went back to the exclusively cat practice I had used years before.  PERSONAL OPINION – in my experience most vets know more about dogs than they do about cats.  Most of the vets I’ve used over the years have personal dogs, rarely do they have a cat or cats.  I don’t know if vet schools focus primarily on treating dogs or if dog “owners” comprise a higher percentage of veterinary clients than do cat “owners.”  Personally, I think that the veterinarians who specialize only in cats generally have a better track record when diagnosing and treating cats.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case this time with Charlie.

This is Charlie last Friday, after his last vet visit.  Thanks Carla for the photos.

Charlie was always the first face in the food bowl, but he was losing weight.  My first thought was hyperthyroidism, possibly even diabetes.  His blood panel said no to both.  In fact, his blood work didn’t point to anything wrong.  He had some teeth extracted several years earlier due to plasma cell stomatitis.  The vet said he needed the rest of his teeth removed and felt this was the reason he was losing weight.  Although he was severely under weight, I agreed to the surgery, and he came through it quite well.  In fact, he started doing a bit better…..for a while.  Fortunately, he stayed stable while I was in the hospital in August and September.  Focusing primarily on my slow recovery, I didn’t take him back to the vet until February.   He had lost even more weight.  His blood work did show elevated levels for his kidneys, but not renal failure.  Nothing else appeared to be troubling with this second blood panel.  I continued to feed him 4, 5, 6 times a day, whenever he wanted to eat.  I gave him from 60cc to 100cc of fluids daily.  He was seriously dehydrated in addition to the weight loss.  I lost his brother Chaz in March and my eldest dog, Caleb, and another cat, Colin, in the ensuing months.  I took Charlie, Cissy and Claudia to the vet.  Cissy’s kidneys weren’t in great shape and Claudia had developed hyperthyroidism.  Charlie remained undiagnosed – his problem was a mystery.

Back in May, 2010 I had suggested to the vet that I thought Charlie had a malabsorption problem.  Basically, I felt that although he ate well enough, he simply wasn’t absorbing the nutrients from the food.  I was told that definitely could not be the problem.  During the past year, with the loss of so many animals and my health at its lowest ebb, I was frustrated and depressed.  I was watching Charlie struggle to stay alive and depending upon me to make him feel better.  I had declined a sonogram and the TLI/PLI test (which requires fasting – something I didn’t think he could or should be subjected to).  I had continued, throughout this treatment period, to ask about malabsorption.  The vet felt that he could have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, although he had none of the typical symptoms.  I asked to try the treatment for IBS – steroids – but they failed to produce positive results. 

I took him back to the vet last week and asked to have a T4 test, for thyroid, run.  The vet ran a full blood panel and the T4 came back normal.  His kidney values had decreased somewhat, which was a good thing.  We talked for an hour after the results were in.   Malabsorption and IBS were discussed again.  I explained that I had suffered from IBS several years ago and I was/am convinced that was not his problem.  I don’t remember how she finally told me about exocrine pancreatic insufficiency.  This occurs when the pancreas does not produce the normal digestive enzymes.  Needless to say, I latched onto that.  It was the answer I had been searching for since last May.  I feel certain this is what has plagued him for all this time.  I’m also convinced that this is what killed Clark last year.  He wasted away until he simply no longer had the strength to eat.  I am, at least, hopeful now that Charlie has a chance to recover.  He’s on medication that gives him the pancreatic enzymes needed to digest his food.  He’s had a shot to bolster his production of red blood cells as well as a B-12 shot.  He also has to take folic acid tabs to help boost the iron he needs. 

The moral of this story:  don’t take “I don’t know” for an answer.  No vet has all of the answers and your cats/dogs are depending upon you to be their advocate, to search for the cause of whatever is causing their illness.  It’s okay to question a vet.  If your vet won’t listen to you – FIND ANOTHER VET!  Your animal’s life depends upon it. 

NOTE:  my favorite veterinary website online is - http://marvistavet.com/html/the_pet_web_library.html  It was this site where I discovered plasma cell stomatitis, which affected so many of cats several years ago, and nearly killed Chase.  My vet, at the time, was not concerned that I had so many 5-6 year old cats who needed multiple tooth extractions.  Even though I frequently expressed my concern that there was some root cause, she did not bother to dig any deeper to find what could be causing this.  My cats had been exposed to calicivirus years before, with only some of them getting sick from it.  Calici is a known cause of plasma cell stomatitis.   

BTW, according to the internet, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency is RARE in cats.  It is most commonly seen in dogs.  Personally, I don’t think it’s rare.  Instead I think it is misdiagnosed.  I doubt that most people request a necropsy to determine cause of death.  If they did, I think the incidence of this disease would show that cats suffer from it much more frequently than veterinarians believe.  

Charlie & me last Friday

My World - It Sucks

Wow, I hadn’t realized that I haven’t blogged since the end of January.  Life has been getting me down even more than usual lately.  The visits to the hospital for wound care slowed down to once a week.  I had about 11 derma grafts, to stimulate skin growth on the wound.  Then, surprise!  I got another infection and was back on antibiotics and the derma grafts stopped.  Once the antibiotics were done, we’ve been in slow motion, allowing the skin to grow at its own pace.  This fun stuff has been going on since August……………nearly 8 months.  At least now, I can get into the shower instead of giving myself sponge baths at the sink.  Showers are a wonderful thing!

On the critter front, life hasn’t been any kinder.  I found Chase dead about a week before Christmas.  I haven’t blogged about it because it simply hurt too much to think about it.  Several years ago I nearly lost her due to plasma cell stomatitis.  After vet bills of nearly $2000, which put me deeply into credit card debt, she pulled through.  She remained terribly thin, but a real pistol.  She had been a feisty girl since she was a tiny kitten.  She got her name because she would make me Chase her every night when I tried to corral her and keep her in the bedroom.  I started loving on her for an extended period of time once I caught her in hopes of conditioning her to come more willingly to me.  Ever since that time she would so love to be held and petted.  I told people she was the cream cheese and I was the bagel – she would smear her entire body over my arms and chest, ecstatic with the petting/rubbing/loving.  She also liked to eat with her paws, scooping food from the bowls and plates and eating what she had “caught” off her paw.  Sloppy, messy eater but darling, none the less.

When I returned home from the hospital last September, both Chaz and Charlie (littermates) were sickly.  Charlie is still hanging in, with numerous ups and downs in his weight.  The vet can’t tell me exactly what’s wrong with him.  We go through periods where I have to give him sub-cu fluids frequently and he’ll only eat baby food.  Chaz developed an inoperable tumor in his left ear.  It had a major growth spurt in February and I finally euthanized him.  He was such a mellow, sweet and unassuming cat.  He was just a well mannered gentleman cat.  Then Colin and Claudia both got sick around the same time.  Colin succumbed to kidney disease and I euthanized him in March.  Claudia has hyperthyroidism and is on daily medication.  My friend Barb treks across the street twice a day to hold her so that I can pill her.  She managed to bite me last Monday and I ended up at my doctor’s office and on antibiotics.  Thumb is healing nicely.

 Sorry, no picture of Charlie or Claudia.  This was Colin in much better days, several years ago.

Last Friday, Barb called to say that Caleb, my eldest dog, wasn’t able to stand.  Although he’s had bouts of spinal problems for the past several years, this was something different.  She feared that he had a stroke.  I came home from work and we took him to the vet.  Even with injections of steroids, muscle relaxants and pain meds, he remained throughout the night in bad shape.  Around 4:30 Saturday morning he tried to stand unsuccessfully and was obviously in pain.  I gave him a pain shot, which didn’t help much.  Barb went with me to the vet when the office opened on Saturday.  The vet felt that he had most likely had a stroke and I chose to euthanize him since it was highly unlikely that he would recover from this.  I had written about him earlier this year and his recovery from his previous spinal problem.  I think he was about 15 or 16 years old, which is remarkable based on his early life and his size.  It’s unusual for medium sized dogs (shepherd mix) to live quite that long.  He was a sweet old boy and is sorely missed.  

With all of this going on, I haven’t been able to muster my regular outrage over the political climate.  Suffice it to say that what is going on in our nation’s capital, Wisconsin, my dear Florida, my birth state of Ohio, Japan and the Middle East qualifies as CRAZY.  The only bright spot on the political front?  JON STEWART!  He never fails to make me laugh at the lunacy.  If you don’t get Comedy Central, check out the videos on their website.  His recent imitation of Glenn Beck had me in stitches.  At least I’m still able to laugh…………………………………occasionally.

Killing Cats IS NOT the Answer

In a perfect world, all cats would live indoors where they are well cared for.  We don’t, however, live in a perfect world.  People still dump their cats when they no longer want them.  Even well educated people will allow their beloved cats to go outside for at least a few hours a day.  Other people leave their cats outdoors 24 hours a day, with no concerns for their safety nor what the cats might be doing, either to a neighbor’s yard or the local wildlife. 

Cats have been documented as a part of human society since the great Egyptian dynasties.  When Europeans began sailing the world, cats were on board those ships to control the rat populations.  As humans colonized/invaded other lands, the cats (and rats) came with them, and were often left behind.  Humans were the first invasive species, and to this day continue to be the most detrimental of any invasive species to all natural habitats.  We have created a swath of destruction wherever we have gone, and this continues to this day.  Yet, instead of placing the blame for declines in native species on humans, governments and wildlife agencies have chosen to place cats in their crosshairs.  If only they could simply KILL all of the cats, all would be right with the world.  At the very least, this is faulty logic.  At the worst, an unattainable goal has been set. 

The best way to work toward a solution to the concerns of governments and wildlife agencies about cats preying upon threatened and endangered wildlife would be to work with the people who KNOW the domestic cat and cat behavior.  Although a few, and mostly flawed studies have been done about cats and predation, scientists do not consider cats worthy of SERIOUS scientific study.  However, the much maligned, so-called Cat Lovers actually are experts on cat behavior and the issue of community cats. 

Choosing to KILL cats has NEVER worked.  There are plenty of examples to support this fact.  Community animal control agencies have been rounding up “loose” cats for many, many years.  Even so, the number of cats picked up and killed has increased, instead of decreasing over that time.  Government agencies have trapped cats on public lands for many, many years, yet there are still cats to trap.  The “supply” has failed to diminish despite these efforts.  Hundreds of millions of cats and kittens have been killed through these practices, yet estimates say there are still millions of cats out there.  WHY?  It certainly isn’t due to lack of will on the part of government employees – either city, county, state or federal – to kill each and every cat they can catch.  Put simply, it is because the real culprit and cause of this so-called problem has been ignored.  It’s not the cats – it is the humans. 

Our government, on all levels, has taught their lesson to the people well.  Cats, and animals in general, have NO VALUE.  Killing them is okay.  They are easily replaceable.  There are plenty more where those dead ones came from.  So, people continue to move and leave their cat(s) behind, or they drive to the “country” and pitch their cat(s) out of the car and drive away, or they dump them at a “shelter” and absolve themselves of their responsibility. 

Without a shift in our cultural values, there will always be free-roaming cats.  By working together with people who care about and understand cats, a campaign to change attitudes, to attack the problem at its source, a viable plan could be formulated.  Instead of working at odds with, or simply dismissing the concerns of those who are trying to humanely decrease the populations of free-roaming cats, it is time to work together.  

Yes, SOME cats kill wildlife.  SOME cats are more prolific hunters than other cats.  Some habitats cannot tolerate another predator.  But, not all free-roaming cats hunt, not all habitats are seriously impacted by the presence of cats.  There are HUMANE solutions and that is the choice that should be made.  

For more information about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's proposed plan, go here:  http://www.fws.gov/nationalkeydeer/predatormgmt.html 

To send a quick and easy response, go here:  http://capwiz.com/alleycat/issues/alert/?alertid=24181501&PROCESS=Take+Action&external_id=10519.0