Drug paraphernalia!
Morning chaos has escalated.
Let’s see if I can get this straight:
Willow is epileptic.
Penny is arthritic and hyperthyroid.
Toby, Tinkerbelle and Sikkim have recently joined the hyperthyroid club…
Penny and Sikkim get thyroid med twice daily.
Toby and Tinks get it once daily.
Penny also gets pain meds twice a day and a supplement on alternate days.
Sikkim additionally gets 1/4 pill twice a week for nausea, plus a supplement for hairballs, basically whenever we can get it in her.
Getting the 1/4 pill into Sikkim is proving a challenge.
She is small and easy to manhandle, but getting the mouth open and pill inserted is a whole different matter. We crush it and add it to the supplement but this seems to end up everywhere but in her mouth. And it’s sticky.
Sikkim is a really fussy eater and if we medicate her before breakfast it puts her right off. So we stopped doing it then.
It’s a two-person job and we have yet to figure out how to remember and both be at the same place with Sikkim at a good time.
Eventually I expect we’ll get it down pat.
Lily has trans dermal ointment for rodent ulcer, every three days. It looks exactly like the thyroid medication, so the syringes have to be carefully marked.
The idea of trans dermal ointment is that it is easy to administer by rubbing it into an ear. Hah!
Penny, Toby and Sikkim do not protest much.
Lily, the mind reader, disappears the moment the idea arrives in your brain.
Grant is in charge of Tinks. At the best of times she tolerates me but given an excuse she would like to shred me. Grant has to sneak up on her and lunge. She protests explosively.
It makes us all the more grateful that Willow volunteers to take her twice daily liquid medicine. Indeed she comes looking for it. I give her a couple of treats afterward but I only started doing so after her extraordinary habit developed. Maybe it tastes good?
Willow has some sort of neurological problem. A specialist, who was very caring told us it was most likely to be a form of epilepsy.
A more thorough investigation would involve expensive tests that would be traumatizing.
So I opted to try the medication which would prevent seizures and she has been on it ever since.
Sometimes I wonder if I should take her off the medication and see how she does without, but the seizure she had was so frightening. I really don’t want it to happen again.
Lately we have been a bit concerned about my little grey cat. She is so complex and she reacts to any change of dynamics in the cat population.
In a perfect world, she would be an only. Perhaps one of two. She appears to like being near me though she seldom climbs into my lap.
If any of the other cats is nearby, Willow takes herself off even though there is plenty of room for everyone.
When I go looking for her, Willow always purrs and enjoys being made a fuss of, but she does not like being picked up.
Recently, Willow has developed what I’ve come to call the “creepies”. She appears to feel a sensation on her back that makes her twitch and then she runs, as if to escape it.
Online I found a reference to hyperesthesia which more or less describes what she has and accounts for why she pees so frequently outside the box.
These accidents get very tiresome at times, but maybe it helps knowing that my poor girl can’t help it.
When Panther was dying of kidney disease I put pee pads down everywhere. I would have done anything for him. In the end it came down to the one thing that broke my heart.
One of Willow’s exclusive hiding places these days is Yeti’s old house.
A friend gave me the little cardboard house for Yeti, decades ago. When I moved I couldn’t bear to leave it behind, sentimental fool that I am.
Once in a while one of the other cats has gone into the house and come straight back out, but Willow curls up and sleeps there for hours.
Maybe it is a peaceful place where she can be undisturbed by her housemates.
Or maybe it’s a portal and she “channels” Yeti.
I reckon they should have their own TV show!
They seem to think so too. I’ll get a director’s chair for Dee Dee, ‘cos she’s bound to be in charge. Grant and I are the house slaves.
Looks like you need drug charts, a trolley, and a nurse’s uniform for doing your ‘ward rounds’, Carolyn.
Best wishes, Pete.
Oh my … I want to agree with Pete here, you and Grant are not just the house slaves, you are also the medical team! How you manage all of this, is difficult to understand. But that you do it out of pure love for your beloved pets, that’s true!