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Sick Kitty
2 years ago
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Buy me a pumpkin spice latte on Ko-fi: Mikakitty on Ko-fi
Also find me on these platforms: Twitter (X), DeviantArt, Discord, Picarto, Patreon
Hey everyone!
I realize I sorta dropped off the radar again. It's been a long, hard fight with my poor pet cat.
Some of you already know that I have a chronically ill, very disabled cat that I've had for ten years. His backstory is that he was born to the cat colony that showed up to my parents' farm ten years ago. (The neighbor was hoarding cats after his wife left him and took the kids. Eventually there got to be 40 cats and instead of doing something about it he turned them loose into the neighborhood. They all showed up to our farm and were desperately eating chicken feed they were so hungry. So instead of having them put down we registered the colony with the ASPCA and had them spayed, neutered, vaccinated.... at a discount. We paid for each and every cat to get care.) My cat was in the first litter dropped on the farm. The colony was sick and badly inbred from only a small number of cats.
Freddie was born with bilateral hip dysplasia and it was pretty severe. (He walks like a penguin most of the time.) He has a heart valve disorder, his nails don't grow right because he doesn't walk right. He caught feline herpes at birth from his mother when she licked him clean and it colonized his entire body because his immune system was always weak. As a result his corneas became so ulcerated that he is blind and has been his entire life. He can see shadows and some movement out of one eye but largely he is not able to see. The herpes also gave him permanent mouth and lung blisters. It gave him a permanent sort of colitis. He has kitty irritable bowel disease. As he aged, he also developed dental issues as a result of the semi-permanent mouth ulcers. About two years ago he had to have 80% of his teeth removed due to this.
The cat colony was extremely hostile towards Freddie. He was frequently beat up, chased off of food, and terrorized into trees that he couldn't get out of. He was terrified of cats and humans alike. His sister was the only friend he had. She would lead him around shoulder-to-shoulder to encourage him to eat and would fend off other cats. If he was crying in a tree she'd go up and talk him down to follow her meows. It was incredible to watch. But it was apparent it was taking a toll on her. My parents asked me to take Freddie in because he was so disabled and I had just had experience with Wicked, my cat that I had to put down two years prior for advanced lymphoma. So I came out to the colony three days until eventually Freddie came close enough to touch. I gave him some pets and he immediately melted. That was it. He was hooked. He had, in that moment, decided humans are good and kind and that he could trust me. I took him home and he took to indoor living immediately. The soft couch, the air conditioning on his scarred lungs, the quiet, the available food without a fight. I'm sorry to say, I don't think he even missed his sister. (And she began to thrive without him in her care.) He never once in his whole ten years ever went outside the litter box despite being "feral". He loves all humans and trusts them indiscriminately. He has never in his whole ten years ever hissed, clawed, or tried to bite. Not even when the vet draws blood. Not even after surgery while he begs the vet techs to carry him around like a baby because he doesn't feel good. He is.... a truly remarkable cat. I've never seen a cat so trusting, so full of faith in humans that it doesn't occur to him to flinch if you want to put ointment in his eyeballs. He deserves the fight we've had to go through for his whole life.
His life expectancy from the start was only five years. No vet that I have ever taken him to had expected him to live for very long given his problems. He doesn't purr. He gurgles. His right eye is permanently bubbled out and is totally blind. But he made it twice as long! I have used every ounce of my nursing knowledge to care for him to the highest degree.
However, he's now 10 years old. He started having some trouble two months ago. He was becoming less active. Then he became very constipated. I took him in for subcutaneous fluids and they sent him home saying he would need to have another surgery on his mouth. But that he had largely done well because they figured the rest of his teeth would have to come out six months after the first surgery and it has been a little over two years. Freddie is a trooper. But two days later he was badly bloated and his abdomen was rock hard. I took him in again (the second $600 bill in a week). This time they did IV fluids and an enema. The blood work and x-rays didn't really show anything of concern the first time but with the second episode in only a few days the vet didn't like how it was looking.
He was on pain medicine for six days and that wore off. A week after the enema he started getting sick again. My vet told me that he was no longer going to see Freddie anymore because he needed a specialist. He recommended one about 50 minutes away and I called. They were booked up for two months in advance. There was no way Freddie was going to make it that long. The vet suspected an abdominal mass (like cancer) or renal failure. This confused me because I would have thought that it would show up on X-rays or blood work. The vet was agreeable to doing a consult and the specialists have a 24/7 emergency room they said I should take him to if he worsens and I MIGHT be able to get in earlier if that's the case.
I was so disappointed. I had asked my vet for pain medicine after his 6 days ran out and I knew he wasn't going to last 3 more weeks before his scheduled dental surgery (before he worsened). He was given gabapentin and so I put him on it. He has been on it for two weeks now and.... I'm really happy to say that he is actually making an extreme recovery!
He is eating better, he's no longer constipated, and he's not bloated. Cancer and all didn't make sense because an enema wouldn't have worked if there were a physical blockage. Well, I think I've solved it. I think he has VERY bad arthritis in his hips. When he is on pain medicine he is fine. When he's off, he's not. We spent so long looking at his mouth that no one bothered to look at his back end. Turns out, he is struggling to squat to poo and that is what is causing the constipation. He is just physically unable to. And with SEVERE hip dysplasia it makes sense. He was never expected to make it to this age so I think vets are fearing the worst with no reason to. I recognize he's very disabled but.... this isn't a herpes thing. He's just an old man.
He's a week and a half into his pain medicine and doing great. If I can get him to two weeks with no episodes, then the vet says he'll believe me that it is just arthritis and we'll go ahead and schedule his dental surgery. During that time, they'll use the opportunity of him being on anesthesia to x-ray his hips properly (because it'll be very painful to do if he has arthritis since they must spread his legs out so far). I feel REALLY CONFIDENT that he is going to be positive for significant arthritis.
The best news about that is that he'll only have to get a monthly injection of medicine to help with the pain and then he should be completely back to normal. There's no reason to believe that he won't make a full recovery and live for several more years. An unprecedented feat which couldn't happen without Freddie's extremely kind and trusting disposition.
In addition to this, my classes have both been extremely project heavy. I've been getting work done around multiple rounds of medications for Freddie per day and many vet visits and care. So, as a result I've been a little MIA. I'm easier to reach on my discord, which I do have on my phone so that makes me more accessible.
Thanks for reading. I know it was long!
I realize I sorta dropped off the radar again. It's been a long, hard fight with my poor pet cat.
Some of you already know that I have a chronically ill, very disabled cat that I've had for ten years. His backstory is that he was born to the cat colony that showed up to my parents' farm ten years ago. (The neighbor was hoarding cats after his wife left him and took the kids. Eventually there got to be 40 cats and instead of doing something about it he turned them loose into the neighborhood. They all showed up to our farm and were desperately eating chicken feed they were so hungry. So instead of having them put down we registered the colony with the ASPCA and had them spayed, neutered, vaccinated.... at a discount. We paid for each and every cat to get care.) My cat was in the first litter dropped on the farm. The colony was sick and badly inbred from only a small number of cats.
Freddie was born with bilateral hip dysplasia and it was pretty severe. (He walks like a penguin most of the time.) He has a heart valve disorder, his nails don't grow right because he doesn't walk right. He caught feline herpes at birth from his mother when she licked him clean and it colonized his entire body because his immune system was always weak. As a result his corneas became so ulcerated that he is blind and has been his entire life. He can see shadows and some movement out of one eye but largely he is not able to see. The herpes also gave him permanent mouth and lung blisters. It gave him a permanent sort of colitis. He has kitty irritable bowel disease. As he aged, he also developed dental issues as a result of the semi-permanent mouth ulcers. About two years ago he had to have 80% of his teeth removed due to this.
The cat colony was extremely hostile towards Freddie. He was frequently beat up, chased off of food, and terrorized into trees that he couldn't get out of. He was terrified of cats and humans alike. His sister was the only friend he had. She would lead him around shoulder-to-shoulder to encourage him to eat and would fend off other cats. If he was crying in a tree she'd go up and talk him down to follow her meows. It was incredible to watch. But it was apparent it was taking a toll on her. My parents asked me to take Freddie in because he was so disabled and I had just had experience with Wicked, my cat that I had to put down two years prior for advanced lymphoma. So I came out to the colony three days until eventually Freddie came close enough to touch. I gave him some pets and he immediately melted. That was it. He was hooked. He had, in that moment, decided humans are good and kind and that he could trust me. I took him home and he took to indoor living immediately. The soft couch, the air conditioning on his scarred lungs, the quiet, the available food without a fight. I'm sorry to say, I don't think he even missed his sister. (And she began to thrive without him in her care.) He never once in his whole ten years ever went outside the litter box despite being "feral". He loves all humans and trusts them indiscriminately. He has never in his whole ten years ever hissed, clawed, or tried to bite. Not even when the vet draws blood. Not even after surgery while he begs the vet techs to carry him around like a baby because he doesn't feel good. He is.... a truly remarkable cat. I've never seen a cat so trusting, so full of faith in humans that it doesn't occur to him to flinch if you want to put ointment in his eyeballs. He deserves the fight we've had to go through for his whole life.
His life expectancy from the start was only five years. No vet that I have ever taken him to had expected him to live for very long given his problems. He doesn't purr. He gurgles. His right eye is permanently bubbled out and is totally blind. But he made it twice as long! I have used every ounce of my nursing knowledge to care for him to the highest degree.
However, he's now 10 years old. He started having some trouble two months ago. He was becoming less active. Then he became very constipated. I took him in for subcutaneous fluids and they sent him home saying he would need to have another surgery on his mouth. But that he had largely done well because they figured the rest of his teeth would have to come out six months after the first surgery and it has been a little over two years. Freddie is a trooper. But two days later he was badly bloated and his abdomen was rock hard. I took him in again (the second $600 bill in a week). This time they did IV fluids and an enema. The blood work and x-rays didn't really show anything of concern the first time but with the second episode in only a few days the vet didn't like how it was looking.
He was on pain medicine for six days and that wore off. A week after the enema he started getting sick again. My vet told me that he was no longer going to see Freddie anymore because he needed a specialist. He recommended one about 50 minutes away and I called. They were booked up for two months in advance. There was no way Freddie was going to make it that long. The vet suspected an abdominal mass (like cancer) or renal failure. This confused me because I would have thought that it would show up on X-rays or blood work. The vet was agreeable to doing a consult and the specialists have a 24/7 emergency room they said I should take him to if he worsens and I MIGHT be able to get in earlier if that's the case.
I was so disappointed. I had asked my vet for pain medicine after his 6 days ran out and I knew he wasn't going to last 3 more weeks before his scheduled dental surgery (before he worsened). He was given gabapentin and so I put him on it. He has been on it for two weeks now and.... I'm really happy to say that he is actually making an extreme recovery!
He is eating better, he's no longer constipated, and he's not bloated. Cancer and all didn't make sense because an enema wouldn't have worked if there were a physical blockage. Well, I think I've solved it. I think he has VERY bad arthritis in his hips. When he is on pain medicine he is fine. When he's off, he's not. We spent so long looking at his mouth that no one bothered to look at his back end. Turns out, he is struggling to squat to poo and that is what is causing the constipation. He is just physically unable to. And with SEVERE hip dysplasia it makes sense. He was never expected to make it to this age so I think vets are fearing the worst with no reason to. I recognize he's very disabled but.... this isn't a herpes thing. He's just an old man.
He's a week and a half into his pain medicine and doing great. If I can get him to two weeks with no episodes, then the vet says he'll believe me that it is just arthritis and we'll go ahead and schedule his dental surgery. During that time, they'll use the opportunity of him being on anesthesia to x-ray his hips properly (because it'll be very painful to do if he has arthritis since they must spread his legs out so far). I feel REALLY CONFIDENT that he is going to be positive for significant arthritis.
The best news about that is that he'll only have to get a monthly injection of medicine to help with the pain and then he should be completely back to normal. There's no reason to believe that he won't make a full recovery and live for several more years. An unprecedented feat which couldn't happen without Freddie's extremely kind and trusting disposition.
In addition to this, my classes have both been extremely project heavy. I've been getting work done around multiple rounds of medications for Freddie per day and many vet visits and care. So, as a result I've been a little MIA. I'm easier to reach on my discord, which I do have on my phone so that makes me more accessible.
Thanks for reading. I know it was long!
It's been frustrating and hard work. Mostly because I've had to fight the vet every step of the way to get the care needed. Like... I'm not dumb. Just at least have some faith in my nursing ability to know what an impending impaction looks like. Or at least take into consideration what I'm saying. It looks like I finally won.... but not without spending weeks gathering evidence to fight them. Which is shocking because he was always a great vet and loved Freddie.... and then suddenly was like "nope, I wash my hands of this and I'm not comfortable dealing with it". He didn't even like.... take a second look at what could cause this and just decided to opt out. Kinda asinine, really. So, I'm back on board with this but until the surgery and diagnosis it's like multiple rounds of medications per day and a lot of care. His teeth are still bothering him and all.