My best little buddy, the kitty I’ve had since I was sixteen with braces still on my teeth, in 1994 there were two kitties left, an adorable ball of fluffy kittiness and the wee grey runt I chose who became Gus, now at fifteen years old has been having some health problems and I finally had to take her to the Vet. We hid the kitty taxi when we brought it up from storage so she wouldn’t see it and on Friday morning when I went to put it on the bed to put her in it, of course she knew instantly where she was going and went mini insane and I ended up feeling like an asshole tryingto get her in the thing because one of her problems is arthritis and here I am trying to push her on already sore paws into a hard cage. Poor little buddy. Once inside, she started to meow at a heartbreaking pitch I had never heard before. Heart breaks some more and I’m not even at the vet’s office yet.
Up until very recently we’ve been able to hold off some of the aging pain with over the counter products designed for aging animals, we had been giving her Zukes, Hip Action for about two years, she seemed to like them except when they’d go hard and weren’t fresh and we noticed an instant improvement in her mobility, we also made the apartment kitty friendly building her an apparatus out of Guitar Hero boxes in the bedroom that she uses as a step up and helper getting down. She also took to that right away. We have the living room arranged so that she can walk from piece to piece while getting progressively closer to the ground as she is doing so and we also pick her up if we she is attempting to jump off something higher up, behaving like the young virile cat she used to be instead of a lovely grey senior citizen.
Gus started to limp and favour her right paw, it made me sad. We tried to up the Hip Action to two a day but it didn’t do anything. She had also started to have these extremely odd and creepy breathing episodes where it sounds like she is wheezing but can’t seem to catch her breath it scares the shit out of me and I get pretty upset it lasts around a minute, you can only monitor something like that before you start to feel like a bad parent for so long, so once the limp started she had to go in.
Things didn’t go real well at the vet. The general examination was fine, meaning her behavior, but apparently she has a heart murmur which I didn’t know, very bad arthritis that I did know about, possibly something simple like Asthma or something serious, and she has sores around her mouth from scratching her face so much, we got her some cream for that.
I had to enable the vet aka give them money so they can find out what to use on her pain-wise for the arthritis and because of her breathing problem and the heart murmur they needed to do blood work, of course they wanted to do xrays that day too but I’m not stupid one step at an overly expensive price first please.
Anyone who knows Gus knows that saying she’s curmudgeon central is putting it rather mildly, I never saw this coming, oddly now I think I should have. They took her into another room to do the blood work and the small area they had to shave off and the blood extraction went fine and then while the assistant was pressing the needle spot to prevent a lump she apparently flipped, I did hear her yelp once fromother room, but not just a regular flip out she flipped so bad they came and got me and I went and tried to get her but she was CRAZY she bit a hole into my finger deeper than any bite I’ve ever had from any animal in my life, thanks for trying to give me rabies little buddy, it looked like a really bad cardboard cut, if you have ever had a cardboard cut as opposed to a regular paper cut. This lead to the veterinarian having to throw actual work gloves on and towel her to get her back in the kitty taxi. I have NEVER in fifteen years seen her that mad and inconsolable.
As of now, she’s on temporary pain killers until they know how bad things are so they don’t make anything worse, but this is it, pain meds for the rest of her life. And there are NO fun ways to try and get her to take the pills. We will likely switch to glucosamine shots that eventually we’ll be able to give her ourselves. We also had to get a urine sample out of her with this special litter, I don’t think she had even gone to the bathroom since Friday (vet day) so today we put the special litter in, it doesn’t absorb, and we waited till around four this afternoon for her to finally pee syringed it and it is now in the fridge.
I’m finding this all pretty hard because she is of course different hasn’t slept with us since Friday and I couldn’t sleep Friday night because she never cam wanted e in acting and this is very overwhelming I didn’t go to therapy on Friday because I couldn’t leave her alone she was flipping out so badly. She won’t eat the pills mixed in her food, we got one down her throat then the second time she no part in it the plastic dissolved so we put that over her food and again she wouldn’t go for it. Awesome two pills and two bowls of food wasted. She’s supposed to take two pills a day but we can only get one in her a day. The pain meds are giving her horrid breath but they are helping. We managed to get another one down her throat yesterday and one today, you can really see the difference in her limp even only getting three of the pills down and to think she is supposed to have taken six of them by now.
This is going to get worse for a bit before it gets better getting her comfortable so I got her a new Petmate carrier so it’ll be easier on all of us getting her back and forth to the vet. In the morning I’m dropping off her pee and picking up some treat pill cover things that are actually cheaper at the vet than at the local pet store, apparently the glucosamine shots are cheaper over time and last longer but we have to wait for her blood and urine to come back before we can take the next steps.
Thank you very much for the Hugs for Gus and I + Adam over Twitter and Facebook it seriously means a lot. I hate seeing my little buddy hurting so much. She is starting to demonstrate affection towards us again as shown by this photo from earlier today.
