The State of "Casa de Gato"

I've been feeling like I should be doing a 'state of the union' type post, to report on how all of my own cats are doing.  I originally started this blog to not only share how my foster kittens were doing but to also have a log as such on The Crew and if I want to be able to look it up I've got to put it down.

Jack:

Jack is doing well.  Sadly he is still hypothyroid and I'm having a hard time getting the extra weight off him. I'm thinking I have to increase his medication but I fear that because if his thyroid gets too high he starts peeing.  He seems to have adjusted to being fourteen pounds, but I'm not a fan. Sadly he has very few teeth in his mouth these days and the ones he does have are covered in tartar again and it is time for another dental. He is also excessively needy.  I spent two nights away from the house recently and came home to find his fur all matted up. I love that boy of mine.

Muffin:

Muffin appears healthy enough, but she has been whiny for several months now. She keeps demanding that I give her canned food like she is starved. I weigh her often, she isn't suffering weight loss. I took her in to see the vet and made them run a full check up with her with blood work, and nothing popped.  She still randomly has a slight tremor in her front legs, but it is very slight and you wouldn't even notice it unless you were looking for it specifically.  She is often attached to me if she isn't complaining at me and she is always there when I wake up in the morning - well unless breakfast is being served. Skippy and Twee have a tendency to get on her nerves, wanting to play, and we occasionally have a little scuffle where she tends to be a diva and not want to put up with their shenanigans. Yesterday someone rang the doorbell and I found one of her hiding places, as she really does not like having people in the house.

Eli:

Eli recently had a dental and is doing well.  His eyes have been watering a bit more lately than they had been, but no more so than they ever have - if that makes sense.  He's also having a bit of a hard time accepting that static season is just about over and he keeps asking us to give him static and gets disappointed when it doesn't happen. I recently ran a senior panel on him and he is doing well.

Twee:

Twee also recently had a dental. It always frightens me when she goes under sedation due to her history, but it has happened successfully now four times, so I should probably relax a bit about it. She also has issues with watery eyes. This has happened in the past but it cleared up when we cleaned her teeth, this time, not so much. She had senior work done when they did her dental and she is doing well there.

Kit:

Kit has been a hot mess for months now.  It has been fairly interesting and we still really don't know what is going on with her.  Kit tends to get abscesses from scuffles with the other cats. I rarely see them fighting, but every once in a while I see tension between her and Jack. When she gets one, it can be hard to figure out because she is so tiny and has so much fur, but she becomes depressed and almost mopey.

She became depressed and mopey at the start of this and we did some blood work. The vet reported she had a high globulin level and went immediately went to the worst case scenarios of FIP or bone cancer. He was quite sure it was FIP and mentioned several times that I should bring her in for a titer test.  Well having gone through FIP in the past, I knew that the "titer test for FIP" is absolute rubbish. I told him as much and said I wouldn't do it. He brought it up a couple more times which is when I had to stop him and explain to him exactly why I know that test is a waste of money - because it only tests for the coronavirus which I know for an absolute fact my cats have all been exposed to. Corona is not dangerous, and from what I can find doesn't really have a treatment, it is just something that is very common in cats. Sometimes it will mutate into FIP in young cats but with Kit being older and her demeanor, in general. I was absolutely certain we weren't looking at FIP and said what else were we looking at.  I was making plans to bring her in for X-rays when I confided in a friend as to what was going on, and she volunteered to talk to her own vet about what I was facing. Consensus was it was infection, which is when I went back to thinking it was an abscess. I put her on antibiotics and that night the abscess ruptured and we found a small amount of blood and fur on the bed she had been sleeping on.  It felt like we were on the right track so we continued with the antibiotic and she improved dramatically.  I wanted to wait until the course of antibiotics was up to retest her and see if her blood work improved.

I should remind you that Kit does not travel well and getting to the vet is very traumatic to her. My husband and I decided if she needs extensive medical care that would require numerous trips to the vet we might choose not to treat.

By the time I felt comfortable enough with her improvement to take her back, she backslid. I took her back to the vet for a check up, and more treatment. She improved again. We did blood work and her globulin levels improved but were not perfect. We saw a different vet and she believed it pointed to an infection. More antibiotics. More blood work. She was on a bit of a roller coaster, going from feeling okay and being herself to being mopey and having issues.  Then almost overnight her ears nearly blocked with infection drainage. Back to the vet more antibiotics and ear meds.

This was hard on her. She is not a fan of my medicating her which is also hard on me, and it is hard on my husband. Fortunately, this medication and ear meds seemed to fix it. Things were going along nicely and we thought we were out of the woods.  We went and did a final round of blood work which showed everything in the normal range. Now she came down with a cold. She is blowing snot bubbles and one ear became infected again.  While I do have other cats with watery eyes, no one else is getting sick so I wondered for a while if this might not be something else and we should get some x-rays done, but the antibiotics seem to be working. We are going to give it a few more days and see what happens.  We are doing a lot of supportive care and being more aware of her and what is going on with her and her environment and her interactions with the other cats. I am hopeful this is the end of it, but if not we will dig deeper and see what else could be going on, hopefully without too many trips to the vet.

Fleurp:

Fleurp is still our mystery kitty. At the moment, she is doing very well. She becomes anemic each spring, and truth be told this year it started early. Her weight started to drop and she became pale, so with the vet's advice, we put her on prednisolone.  Her weight increased and she pinked up, so after a week of good weight, I started dropping the amount I gave her until I was down to 1/2 a tab every three days.  It felt like I was giving her unnecessary medicine so I stopped altogether and she is currently holding her weight.  I weigh her every couple of days, and probably will right up until June. I am hopeful, but I will tell you I wish we didn't have to deal with this. It is scary and frustrating.

Skippy:

My husband was attempting to pack for a trip. 

Skippy seems to think it is not necessary.

Skippy is also doing well.  I recently decided to do a rabies titer test on him as I was curious and questioning my decision to stop vaccinating my cats. I've read enough studies to say that my cats are still well protected despite not having been injected in four to five years, but there are so many who insist that if you don't vaccinate on a regular basis you are putting your cats in danger. I figured Skippy would be my best test of the science for me since he only has had his kitten vaccine. His titers are still well within the protection levels that I have become more comfortable with my decision. Sadly it was a fairly expensive way to appease my curiosity. It was about $200, and considering the fact that giving the vaccine only costs about $20, I can see why people choose to simply give the vaccine.

I would also like to add that I am heartbroken over the death of Prince. I have been a fan of other artists and performers and celebrities, but he held a special place in my life. At the time I write this, I want to say I am so incredibly impressed with how little speculation is going on (aside from TMZ) and how everyone is waiting for the actual facts of the case to delve into how he died. There is some talk about his recent health issues, but they are simply bringing it up because it happened, but they don't seem to be jumping to any conclusions.  I have been watching (probably way too many) tributes and one of my favorites is his interview on the Today show when he seemed half asleep talking to Matt until the music comes on, and you watch him blossom and comes to life.

So far, my favorite tribute is from Mayor Betsy Hodges:

Prince was unapologetically different and he made it okay for his fans to be different and to celebrate their individuality. His social conscience challenged us to look deeper than the skin color of our neighbors. “Baltimore” challenges us today as much as “Sign o’ the Times” did in 1987. His voice was vital and will be missed.

I wore a purple shirt on Friday and I dropped my phone on my chest and it took that photo.. I just really liked how it came out.

Happy National Jelly Bean Day

So, which is your favorite flavor of jelly bean? Do you prefer the large beans or the wee little petite ones?

Getting up close to the kittens

I literally can not help myself.

Art3mis and the grabby hands

I was telling my husband the story of how Art3mis reached out and touched me and before I got to the point where I said that I cried, he interrupted me and said: "you cried, didn't you?"

So, now that I have touched her, and she has touched me, what's next? Just how far would that trust extend? How much am I willing to risk losing some blood and push? Apparently quite a bit.

She still growls at me when I walk in the room, and she growls at me when I lay down in front of the couch, but once she sees it is me she stops.  I can even talk to her now without being told off which is nice. She is still not a fan of my taking her kittens away from her, but as long as they don't mew she puts up with it - and I try not to keep them out too long. For some reason, all of the kittens calm down once I put them on Happy Bear.

So, I thought I might try to expand on the foot touching. I spent a good amount of time reaching out to her and imagining scratching her ears. I formed the mental picture in my mind and then let the image wander where it would go. I imagined scratching all of the favored spots on my own cats, but we kept coming back to the ears for some reason. I like to believe in animal communication and I like to believe that I have a very primitive ability to do it, so I assumed that scratching her ears would be okay.

But that is a lot of assumptions to risk my fingers on so I proceeded very cautiously. This is what happened in fifteen minutes or so condensed down to a minute and a half.

Last night I tried it again, but I wasn't able to scratch her ears, probably because I skipped the visualization step. I offered her some food and she ate it.  I then asked her if I could visit her on the side of the couch - something she has not allowed before. I told her what I was going to do, and then I did it.  I moved the baby gate away from the side of the couch, which she has always growled at before, and she just looked at me.  I sat down and asked if I could reach in and then I reached in and she did not growl.  I reached in further and she just looked at me. I asked if I could touch her leg, and she said she was uncomfortable with that by pulling her leg in toward herself. I talked more about just touching her like I did when I was in the front of the couch and she started to relax, so I asked again. She didn't move, so I slowly reached in, and she curled herself around her kittens. I backed off and asked her again, I asked if I could just touch her leg once, and I waited until she relaxed again and when she did I slowly went in for one more try. She slowly contracted up as I slowly approached, and I very gently ran my fingertips over her leg as she contracted herself around her kittens... so more progress. Nothing huge, but considering just a few days ago I didn't think any of this was possible, it is very nice.

National Garlic Day - make sure your cats don't participate!

Today is National Garlic Day.  Garlic is one of my favorite foods, and I'm often of the opinion that if it pairs well with garlic, it pairs better with more garlic.

Garlic, however, is one of the foods that are toxic to cats. Garlic and onions are often paired together as things to stay away from since they are often found together in human foods and because they are both members of the Allium family which include onions, shallots, and chives.

These plants are healthy for humans. They help prevent heart disease, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.

Cats can not digest these plants as humans do because they lack the digestive enzymes that humans have. To cats these plants are toxic. It causes hemolytic anemia, a condition where red blood cells are destroyed and removed from the bloodstream before their normal lifespan is over. Red blood cells are vital for bringing oxygen to the organs of the body.

Consuming Alliums can also lead to gastroenteritis, an inflammation of the stomach and intestines.

But how much is too much?

Garlic is about five times as potent as onions and as little as 23 grams of onions can be toxic to an average 10lb cat. This means just 4 grams of garlic can be a problem.  A lick or two of your spaghetti sauce on your lasagna isn't going to be an issue, but it actually might be over time; it is believed that chronic consumption of small amounts can be harmful.

I heard garlic is good for fighting fleas, isn't that true?

Garlic has actually been debunked as a treatment for preventing fleas, and since there is a risk of anemia why would you want to try it?

If you think your cat has ingested more Alliums than they should,  be on the lookout for symptoms of toxicity. These include breathlessness, lethargy, diarrhea, vomiting, pale gums, an elevated heart rate, an increased respiratory rate, red or brown urine, and weakness. I deal with anemia every year with Fleurp who for some reason becomes anemic every year in the late spring. It is not something that is fun to deal with, and it can be quite scary.

Hemolytic anemia is treated with supportive care of fluids and oxygen therapy. In serious cases, a blood transfusion might be necessary. The longer you wait for treatment, the harder it is to treat.

So enjoy your Garlic Day celebrations, but leave your cats out of it.