shadesofmauve | Entries tagged with kitties

Just finished cleaning the extra holes in my cat. The puffy redness is gone everywhere except the actual drain-entry site (which is re-aggravated by cleaning, because you want it to stay open). I wasn't able to coax any more pus out, and there was a bit of clear fluid. Going to take him in to get the drain removed later today. :)

I’m exhausted. I suppose it’s rather like having a kid that’s sick, only instead of having to wake up during the night to help them, they get up to help themselves and then run into things because they have a cone on their head. Loudly.

Which isn’t very like it all, but still doesn’t equal ‘lots of excellent sleep.’

Monkey only seems to feel comfortable when he’s really close to me, so after every night-time foray to the litterbox or wherever he’d come back, get close to my head, and rest his chin on me. By which I mean ‘rest his cone on on my face.’

He was an absolute dear while I cleaned the drain sites. I gave him his kitty narcotics about half an hour before, timed to get him blissed. I'm expecting an award for ‘cleanest cat drain site’ when we go to get it removed, because all the times I had to clean my own pin sites came back. Sterile procedure for puncture wounds with foreign objects inserted, that you wish to remain open? Yes, sir, we can do that.

(It was actually really weird -- it was kind of relaxing, in that "Hey, this is something I am super competent at" way. Not that it's super hard or anything, but despite over a decade since the last time I had to do it, swabbing gunk away from an insertion site was comfortingly familiar. That's bizarre.)

Was able to get him all cleaned up, and encourage a little more pus to drain, in the process. And he was a very good boy through it.

He still can’t seem to figure out the cone, so even things that he physically should be able to manage — drinking from the big bowl, eating — he finds frustrating and gives up. I’ve been taking the cone off to let him eat and drink, under very close supervision (as soon as he moves away from the bowl he lifts his paws to scratch, and back on it goes).

Oh, and since he’s deprived of his normal relaxation behavior — licking his own belly until he’s nearly bald — he’s started self-soothing by grooming his cone.

Which isn’t very like it all, but still doesn’t equal ‘lots of excellent sleep.’

Oh, and since he’s deprived of his normal relaxation behavior — licking his own belly until he’s nearly bald — he’s started self-soothing by grooming his cone.

There is a cone of shame in Monkey's near future.

6 days after his annual vet appointment, I brought Monkey back in. Over the weekend he got in a fight. I did a cursory check of his war wounds, but Monkey gets in quite a few scrapes, and usually the wounds are minor. I thought his cheek seemed a little puffy, but that swelling disappeared w/i 12 hours.

Then, when checking for swelling, I found a lymph node the size of a marble. Monkey's vet is also a music friend of mine, who confirmed via facebook that it was something worth getting checked out, and that I was locating the lymph node properly (John also was a sweety and isn't charging me for the check-up part -- he said 'you were just in, and anyway you diagnosed it yourself. via facebook!'). I couldn't get Monks in yesterday, though (vet booked and I didn't have transportation). By yesterday evening the lymph node swelling was down but one of his scratches was seriously puffy and his whole cheek seemed a bit big. Sure enough, vet confirms that the whole side of his face now needs to be drained, he has a fever, and he's lost four ounces in six days. Poor kitty!

Monkey's there right now, probably under the effects of kitty tranquilizers, getting half his face fur shaved off and his skin opened up in at least one place. He may need a drain for a few days. They're going to send him home with a cone of shame and tiny little kitty opiates.

I wish I'd brought him in sooner, after the initial fight -- then he might have gotten away with just antibiotics. But he's had enough scrapes that I wasn't that worried about it, and for two days there the lymph node was his only symptom. Now I know that "Monkey in distress" looks a lot like "Monkey being entirely normal, except for being an even more cuddly cuddlebeast than he already is."

Doing better today.

I emailed Des and my uncle W about my lighting dilemmas, so I can get advice from actual professional people (a theatre lighting person and an architect, respectively). YAY for knowing nice, interesting people!

As a byproduct of that, I now have an annotated floor plan, so if anyone is curious I can post that somewhere.

Also, one of the bus drivers found the bill and insurance stuff that fell out of my pocket and mailed them to me, because she's a sweety, so I have stuff back and no longer have to freak out about my information being who-knows-where. (I received them last week; I didn't know it was her until I rode her bus again this morning).

Pinniped has a gig tonight (Business After Hours local business people thing) and one on Saturday (as the showcase group at the Bainbridge Open Mic), so that's cool.

In uncool news, Monkey has to go to the vet again. Because he couldn't get in a big fight and get all infected BEFORE his regular checkup, oh no, he had to wait for three days after. I'm kind of pleased that as of this morning it's clearly a wound infection, though -- yesterday the only symptom was a swollen lymph node, and I was kind of freaked out, since one of the first things that comes up for "Swollen lymph node in the absence of other symptoms" is leukemia. I'm hoping it's just his immune system working overtime to combat the cut on his silly little noggin.

I wish Mister Monkey Moo the Cuddlebeast would get in fewer fights. :( ~~Or maybe start winning~~. It makes me think I should keep them both indoors all the time, but that's a LOT of energy in a smallish house. Going to think about building a cat gym in the studio (maybe attached to the wall) to bleed off a little zoom and make indoors more fun.

Calliope spent Friday and parts of Saturday on self-imposed bed rest, being absolutely quiet and letting me carry her places without a twitch. By Saturday evening she was no longer trepidatious about jumping and started to remind me, vocally, that she's not really a pick-up-and-snuggle cat. Sunday she was quick enough to slip by me and spend ten minutes outside, and she stopped being stoically silent and started whining continually about how I was restricting her precious freedoms. Today I gave in and let her out.

Before I remembered that I had pill pocket treats I tried to pill her by force. I now have puncture wounds in my thumb and fingers, and I wish they'd heal as fast as hers apparently have. Thankfully she gobbles the pill in the treat right down.

I found other bite marks on the side of her neck, poor thing, but no heat or swelling anywhere.

Also, my backdoor neighbor came by yesterday while we were working, because he hadn't seen Calliope in a few days and he was worried. It was kind of adorable.

Calliope got chomped by another cat, a great big bite around her right shoulder. She came in yesterday evening all tail-floofed and stressed, and got really pissed at her brother when he tried to greet her, so I new something was up, but it wasn't visually obvious. By bedtime she was visibly favoring her right foot, and this morning she was moving like an old lady cat, so we went to the vet, where she got antibiotics from a rambly somewhat senile-seeming vet I haven't met before. No inflamation yet, so hopefully I caught it quick enough.

Now she's lying on the bed while her brother licks her ouchies. Good brother.

The vet wondered if Monkey was the one that bit her, but I doubt it. He'd already been inside for over an hour when she came in, and I suspect she was bitten just before she came back inside, since she was all floofed still. He does get aggressive with her every evening, but it usually only lasts about five minutes, until she cries uncle -- and judging by how fast Monks retreated when she hissed and swiped at him last night, I suspect that the evening tussles would go differently if she was really worried.

The vet also suggested the evening tussles might be misplaced aggression on Monkey's part, though, and that makes some sense. Monkey has come back with little battle scars himself after cruising the neighborhood, but never anything worth a vet visit. If he's feeling defensive/scared it could explain some of his neuroticism, though -- he's still over-grooming himself.

I'm going to keep Calliope in until she's moving well, at least. I may try to keep Monkey inside while I'm at it, but if he starts giving her shit he's going outdoors to work off the energy.