We took the new kitten into the vet on Saturday, as well as Rex. We too her (“Patches”? maybe, undecided if that’s a good name) in to get her sneezing checked out and basically just make sure that she was in good shape. I wanted to get Rex’s eye looked at again to see if there was anything more that could be done, and he’s also had a strange “click” noise from behind his ear lately that I wanted to find out what that was all about.
Apparently Patches’s congestion is a slight infection of some sort, so she gets antibiotics twice a day (not horrible, but she gives us the cold shoulder afterwards. She also has ear mites (wee) so she also gets ear drops, so more fun there. Some Advantage to deal with her fleas (thankfully a one shot deal), and that’s it. Other than that she’s fine and dandy, as expected.
Rex is a different story. Where to start? His eye, as I knew, is bugging him due to the bottom eyelid being still curled in. The doc figured he could get him fixed up pretty good by doing the same operation that was done several years ago, removing a small amount of skin from under the eye which will pull the eyelid back out of his eye. Hopefully this will allow the eyeball itself to heal up and get back to normal.
The clicking noise in his ear was a bit worse though. Turns out he had an infection in his inner ear, beyond the eardrum, and the clicking noise was puss and crud in there 🙁 There were also growths within his eardrum, I forget what they were called. Basically little bumps on the skin of the ear canal. The solution was to basically do a cleaning of the ears. Flush them both out, and suck the crap from the inner ear.
We decided to get these done at the same time, as well as a tooth cleaning cause his breath was pretty bad. Also it’s safer to get him put under only once instead of multiple times, and hopefully it would be better to do it all at once instead of drawing it out over a couple of trips. It was expensive though.
We picked him up from the vet, luckily only a couple of minutes down the road, instead of right across town, Sunday night. What a poor pathetic old boy. He had to have a cone on his head to keep him from scratching at his eye, and he had had parts of his head, face, neck and front legs shaved. The shaving is only for appearances, but still, it added to the “oh I am so pissed off at you” look of him. They also had left some sort of sticky stuff on the fur on his head and around his ears, which had dried, and was no doubt pretty nasty for him. His eye was pretty gross from the surgery, but the swelling and ickiness will go down soon I hope.
We locked him in the bathroom with a bed, litter box and food for the night, to let him get settled down after the car ride and let everyone settle down. I went in a few times and hung out with him, and he was very happy to have his people around, and just sat on me and purred. He also tried to convince me to scratch his face for him, but settled with some chin scritchin’. I cleaned off the goop from his head as best I could as well, but will have to try at it again tonight. Maybe the other cats can do a better job for him though.
This morning I let him out, partly because he wanted to go out, and party because there was pretty much no way to have a shower and get ready for work with a cat, cat food and a litterbox in the tiny bathroom. He was quiet mellow though (as is his nature) and wandered happily out. He’s going to have to learn to adjust his walking though, and learn that his headspan is now twice as wide as it was before. Hopefully he’ll get used to things soon. From what I saw this morning he’s still kinda pathetic. Still hugely happy just to sit on someone and get petted though, he purrs and purrs and purrs…
The meds we have to give him though…. well, if I’d known how many and how often I might have reconsidered getting all this work done on him 🙁 Ear drops, ear wash, painkiller in pill form, antibiotics in liquid form to be given orally, and stuff to be applied to his eye/eyelid. The eye stuff is probably the most pleasent for all of us. We found out that if you don’t swallow the painkiller pills they dissolve on his tounge and he looks like a rabid cat. Firefly wanted to follow getting the pill into his mouth with the oral antibiotics, but I wanted to wait a few seconds to let him relax, and shouldn’t have as squirting the stuff into his mouth would have forced him to swallow the pill, instead of having it dissolve and foam up 🙁 Live and learn I guess. Rex is a bit and strong cat, with sharp claws as well (as I’m sure Raskal remembers), and I really feel bad to have him wrapped up in a towel with Firefly forcing stuff into him 🙁
I’ve had a gross feeling in the pit of my stomach all day after giving him his meds this morning. I don’t like doing things that cause pain or discomfort to my cats. I never considered not having the operations done, as they would both improve his quality of life and hopefully make him a happier cat. I never considered putting him down either as I didn’t believe at the time that that would be an easier alternative for him than not. I still don’t. After experiencing one session of meds though (and this is supposed to continue for two weeks, or at least until his follow up in a week), I’m wondering if I’m wrong. At least the painkillers only are needed for four days. Hopefully we’ll both get used to it. There is the danger of further complications down the road from his ear infection though, which we’ll have to deal with when we come to it. Hopefully he’ll be back up and running around and warming up the bed for me, happily licking my nose when I’m trying to go to sleep, and being my alarm clock soon.
Please spare a few good thoughts to Rex and his speedy recovery.
Update: My rockin’ wonderful girlfriend Firefly called up the vet and asked if we could put Rex’s oral meds in food and let him eat that way. Turns out we can, so he’s right now munching up his afternoon dose in some wonderful wet food. This is a great relief to my mind, and hopefully his (if he understands the implications, which I wouldn’t doubt he does).