What If It's Only Partly Broke?

Cammie is puzzling me. Yesterday evening, she was feeling off again - “all overish”, as Mr Parker might say - but during the day, while I was at work, the princess ate some food and drank some water. She didn’t want anything later, and threw up a little. She also vomited some this morning, yet ate a decent soft-food breakfast minutes later. What she spewed up was some pinky foam - not good, but also in small amounts, and with no food in it; there wasn’t enough to account for the water she had drunk, either. These are good in that it means nutrition is getting into her. But why is she throwing up at all?

It could be a hairball, but with her extreme allergies, I am loathe even to give her hairball medicine.

I won’t take her to the hospital yet. She is undoubtedly suffering something adverse, but it isn’t like her usual episodes. I could take her in for an injection of Cerenia, but if she is eating, the drug might upset that, while calming her stomach - which, though in some turmoil, is not rejecting all food and water. If that happens, she will need to see a doctor, and that could be the case when I return home this afternoon. I expect it to happen on the weekend, when the veterinary hospitals are closed…

It Would Probably Have Been a Bad Year, Anyway

Cammie was sick on Monday. She was fine Sunday evening but I knew immediately upon waking the next morning that she was out of sorts. She remained in her heated cat-bed, and did not get up to stroll about for her morning stretch as she usually does; had no interest in food or water, and didn’t get up on my bed to snooze before I left for work. She was no better when I came home and had thrown up at some point during the day.

I didn’t think this was one of her usual episodes, which I always ascribe to eating something, however small, to which she is allergic, which is almost everything. She had not thrown up during the night but, rather, later during the day - her vomiting usually comes sooner in such an episode - nor did she try to eat but not feel like actually eating. There was something that suggested another cause, but I thought of making a veterinary appointment for her nonetheless. Considering the current restrictions on social interaction, I was not looking forward to that.

Tuesday morning, I right away noticed a change in the princess. She was more alert, and she was ready to eat. She had a light breakfast, but it was food in her tummy, and when I came home in the afternoon, I saw that she had eaten some of her hard-food and drunk some water. She had not thrown up. That evening, she had a good dinner.

Today, before I left for work again, Cammie ate some food, but not a great deal. She was a little worse than Tuesday but still better than Monday.

This may be just a passing bug, a pale reflection of what the human world is experiencing, perhaps. It doesn’t have all the symptoms of her usual allergic reaction, and it has some that such an episode does not bring. Whatever the matter, the way Cammie was feeling on Monday took another year off my life. I hope she recovers swiftly and well enough to put a few months back on.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Bellenovich

Every day I usually find something interesting when I go home. Bear in mind that ‘interesting’ is a description, not a compliment or a desideratum. World War One is interesting to me. I wish it hadn’t been fought and hate the idea of humans killing each other, but it’s interesting. Every day I usually find something interesting when I go home.

Some days are a convergence of various interests. For instance, yesterday, I arrived home and was greeted as I usually am by Tucker, Raleigh and Josie. The others are more blasé about my return. The first thing I noticed that was out of sorts was that someone had vomited on the linoleum floor. That wasn’t too bad; it’s easy to clean up. Then I found where they had thrown up on the fitted carpet, just inches from the edge of one of the rugs I’d placed to prevent vomit landing on the fitted carpet. In the bathroom, someone had managed to throw up on the wall. That was a new one. I suspect these various-coloured patches were due to Josie, who was unwell in the morning. (She was better in the evening.)

Cammie had of course wet on the soaker pad in front of her litter-box in the bedroom, where she is sequestered during the day. She always does this. She doesn’t need to; she wets in the box at other times. That meant laundry to do.

Renn’s cold has returned and he was sneezing up a storm, often against window panes (more Lysine will be administered for him) and I observed that Raleigh was squinting in his left eye, something he hasn’t done for a long time: that eye was bothering him again. Fortunately, I still have some Tobramycin that hasn’t expired. He would have to be caught twice a day for that.

Someone missed the litter-box in the store-room and wet on the floor there. That was probably my Chubs. She normally puts her bum toward the rear of the box, but now and then she faces the other way and overshoots the box. I place a towel there to catch her residue, but it means laundry has to be done. Luckily, I already have to do it (see above.)

After the litter-boxes are scooped, the store-room floor washed and swept, the vomit treated and the rugs vacuumed, I went to the kitchen to prepare everyone’s dinner. There I noticed that someone had wet on the floor. That was extraordinary. Almost no one goes into the kitchen, except to chivvy me into hurrying with their food. But the urine looked odd. I sniffed it, but it had no smell; it was very diluted, apparently. It was all liquid, so it was very unlikely to be vomit. I wiped it up and started the food.

Then I saw that there were drips coming from the cabinet under my kitchen sink. Not urine: leaking tap-water. I had a leak. After dinner - the cats’, not mine; that comes much later - I removed everything from under the sink, wiped up the water, re-laid tin foil on the floor of the cabinet (I do that to reduce stains and wear on the floor’s wood), found the leak and put a bowl under it.

At last, I was able to prepare food for myself, eat and have a cup of tea. Then I started the evening’s chores.

Every day I usually find something interesting when I go home. Yesterday was just another day.

Like Houseguests in a Russian Novel

I was reading some of my original entries regarding Raleigh, and how he came to be in the Cosy Apartment. Early on, I wrote about preparing Peachy for adoption, but somewhere along the way, the idea was discarded. He just sort of ended up staying, like the family guest in a Russian novel. By the time it was obvious that he would remain, it had also became obvious that for him to go to another home, unless it was necessary, would be a bad thing. He is so very timid, and distrusting, that it would take a very long time for him to grow accustomed to his new environment. It was a year or more before he started coming to me for petting, and even now he is quite jumpy. Add to that year the possible effect of being moved and a good portion of the remainder of his life could be spent in merely getting used to new surroundings.

Raleigh’s case illustrates how some cats end up staying in their foster-homes. Most, I imagine, are conscious decisions. Of my current beasts, Josie was an straightforward adoption, after a trial period, but Renn and Tucker were foster-cats I simply decided to keep. I liked them, and they seemed to like living with me, so the decision was an easy one. But each of these three would adapt in a reasonable amount of time to a new home. My Chubs and my big boy would, I think, suffer little from the transition, and Tucker, after a respectable mourning period, would reconcile himself to a different human, I’m sure.

Such a shift in the world would be much more difficult for Cammie. It is not just her blindness. She took an extraordinarily long time to trust me; her sightlessness has, of course, accentuated this characteristic. Hers is a third type of foster-failure: in addition to the ‘evolutionary’ adoption, such as Raleigh’s, and the decision based on mutual affection, as was the case with my others, I made a determination that Cammie would stay, not entirely based on affection but on what I considered was best for her. To be honest, I was more than a little apprehensive at keeping her, and having to deal with a cat who seemed ready to claw and bite at any sign of coercion (such as going to a veterinary or taking medicine.) But we have overcome that (really, I don’t think she was ever much of a danger), and like many arranged relationships, I would now make the decision based on my feelings toward her.

Though there may be a limited number of ways a cat comes to be a part of a family, the details are as varied as cats are themselves. Each one comes to a home for a different reason, and it may not be the reason why the cat is still in the home years later. But then, that is the nature of relationships: they change and evolve. The only thing that doesn’t change, for those of us who are cat-people, is our basic affection for our feline families.

Old Acquaintance Ne'er Forgot

I was able to renew my acquaintance with Adah on the weekend. Once a month, the rescue-group of which I am part, the Lethbridge PAW Society, has a ‘show-and-tell’ event at a local pet-supply shop at which we feature a cat who is available for adoption. This time, Adah and her foster-sibling, Flint, were in attendance. While neither feline was at his or her best - it can be a bit stressful for some, while others shrug off the occasion - I was glad to see Adah again.

For those who don’t know, I found Adah behind my work-place the day she was born. She and her two siblings, whom I call brothers for convenience, were being nursed, on open pavement, by their mother, who was far too young to care for the kittens. Left unattended, the kittens were vulnerable, so I placed them in a box with a sweater as a mattress; their mother watched this done and later returned to them. The next day, though, I discovered two of the kittens on the pavement in the hot sun. One, whom I named Seraph, had already died; the other, Jacob, passed away soon after. The third, whom I called Esau (the mother was a cat we thought was one we had named Rebecca, but it turned out not to be), was in the shade and screaming his head off. Clearly the mother was not capable of looking after the little survivor. Another cat, Miss Mew, was living with a family and had just lost all her kittens; she had milk to spare. Esau was rushed to her and Miss Mew raised him as her own (along with four other orphans). Soon we learned that Esau was a girl, and so she was re-named Adah.

Adah has been in foster-care since. While she is content and devoted to her foster-mum, she remains one of those cats who should have been adopted long ago. She is very friendly to people, and a good companion to every feline who will let her.

She is a bit of a top-cat, but not aggressively so. She has recently been helping a few new cats adjust to foster-life. She was cosy with one of the formerly feral youngsters we have tamed, and last week a fully socialised five-month old was abandoned and taken in by our group. She has bad dreams and cries in her sleep; during one episode, Adah hurried over and started licking the newcomer’s ears and face.

Who could not want to adopt such a cat?

As Close as Fuzz on a Peach

Raleigh is an odd cat. While he will react to other felines, almost always in a friendly fashion, he doesn’t seem to think that he himself will elicit any response from others. He has no sense of another cat’s personal space.

I woke up in the night during the weekend to violent growls and hisses from Cammie. Turning on the light, I saw that she had climbed to the top of one of the bedroom cat-trees; the air outside was warmer than usual that evening, and the window was open. This had attracted my blind princess, and she had ascended to sniff the fragrances of the outside. It had also lured Raleigh. The Peach was calmly crouched beside Cammie, a bewildered expression on his face, his innocent mind unable to grasp that she was enraged at his proximity. Because of Cammie’s sightlessness, I had to urge Raleigh down, so that Cammie could make her retreat.

Raleigh has attempted friendship with Renn and with Neville, but neither of those fellows seem to find the idea appealing. This does not affect Raleigh’s position or passage next to them, or next to any other of the beasts. He will squat beside anyone, trot by, and in one or two cases, over, others, without regard for their presence. If, as sometimes happens, Tucker will whap at Raleigh, the latter will move away; the next time, he will walk just as close, oblivious to the previous whapping.

Peachy carries this characteristic to interaction with me, as well. Once he trusted me enough to approach (and I still need to be slow in my physical contact with him), he had no problem with putting his face as close as possible to mine, a level of comfort not always seen in cats.

The cats of the Cosy Apartment have generally been very conscious of each other and, unfortunately, rather stand-offish. If they lie next to each other, it is accidental, and one or another is probably too lazy to move after getting comfortable. They will sniff each other now and then (especially Renn, with that big nose of his), but being in the same location at the same time is not something any of them relish. Yet to Raleigh, it matters not.

How did he decide on this? Was he raised in great closeness with other cats? Did this behaviour develop after he had been lost or abandoned? His is a very gentle nature; he wants no trouble from anyone and wants to give it to none. I’ve seen him whap - and that in self-defence - only once (when Renn’s sniffing grew too invasive). Otherwise, he has been more of a pacifist than Josie. It’s a character I wouldn’t mind seeing my other beasts adopt. But I would still like to know how it came to be.

The Grey Puzzle

Neville is proving a bit of a puzzle. Not only has his diabetes resurged, but it is deciding not to be greatly affected by the insulin I am giving him. For a week, I gave him one unit a day, increasing to one twice a day. That did not make a great dent in his numbers. I have since put his dosage up to two units twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening.

While I was gratified to see his initial reading in the morning (before insulin) had decreased to 15.0, six hours later, after receiving two units of his medicine, it had dropped to only 14.4. This is mysterious to me, as such an amount of insulin should have had a greater influence.

I won’t put up his dosage again, as I don’t favour endlessly increasing an amount in the face of small effects. I believe the insulin (from a different source than his first) is lowering his blood-sugar reading, but the amount is enigmatically small; I still do not believe he is insulin-resistant. My intention is to continue his current dosage (two units twice a day) for a couple of weeks, reading his numbers periodically, to see what a longer-term programme does to them.

I am reluctant to take Neville to the doctor for this, because of the stress he would undoubtedly feel, and the fact that I would in likelihood receive a prescription very similar to what I am doing now: having started with a small dosage of insulin, raising it a little but not greatly, and seeing what happens on that amount. There is a possibility of course that the doctor would find something else wrong with Neville, but I see no other worrisome signs in him. I will watch for any warnings; even if I see none, I may take him to the veterinary if we have no adequate response from his new insulin dosage.

In the meanwhile, Nevsky is not happy, thinking that I am coming to stab his ears every time I approach him. He has not, even though he has been in the Cosy Apartment since September, really reconciled himself to being here, or to me. I think he prefers it to his previous setting, but I don’t believe he is pleased to be here. I hope that this is just a matter of time.