Do you know what is more fun than a cat coming down with something that requires a vet visit and medication? A cat coming down with something that requires a vet visit and medication, shortly before you are going to be out of town. And do you know what is even more fun than that? If the cat needing medication is the cat that won’t let anyone but me touch her. Sigh.
The cat in question for this little bit of excitement is Checkers, the extremely opinionated little tortie who lives downstairs in the master suite and who refuses to step one dainty paw outside the bedroom door (her choice entirely – the door is always open but, well, let’s just say that she has Issues and leave it at that). It started with just some sniffling and sneezing, but since she’s the sort of delicate creature that comes down with at least one cold per year, I know to just keep an eye on it because most of the time it just goes away on its own. Except this time, I noticed that her left eye was starting to look puffy and inflamed, and despite crossing all my fingers and toes and leaving it alone for a day or two, it wasn’t getting better. In fact, it was getting worse.
So this afternoon I left work early, dashed home, had an exciting few moments of chasing a furious cat all over the bedroom, was reminded yet again why it is that I am eternally grateful we do not have carpet (as she promptly peed all over the floor to express her extreme displeasure at this entire situation), stuffed the indignant cat into a carrier, cleaned up the floor, and set off to the vet.
The verdict – an eye infection of some kind. Luckily it doesn’t appear that she scratched anything, so it’s just a ‘simple’ matter of pinning her down and putting drops into her eyes twice a day. The vet indicated I needed to do it for 10 days, but knowing Checkers I will be lucky to get a full week in before she makes it impossible. I am just hoping it’s enough, because while I can dose her tomorrow morning, I’m headed out of town for another short work trip, and she’ll miss several doses until I return.
The one silver lining to all of this is that, while clipping her claws at home involves the two of us locked into a bathroom, a lot of screaming (on her part), swearing (on my part) and bleeding (also on my part), when at the vet, sheer fear turns her completely docile, and I was able to take advantage of the situation and hack off all her lethal weapons. Medicating her over the next week or so is going to be all kinds of fun (ha ha!), but at least now I have a fighting chance of coming out of this only minimal damage and loss of blood.
‘Tis the season for Holidailies
Good luck with the impending doom!
I had to laugh at this, because that’s my life in a nutshell. New parents are told that one parent should be the designated medicine-giver, so that doses don’t get doubled or missed. In our house, that’s me. From the 19-year-old diabetic cat with twice-daily insulin injections, to the current 19-pound cat with a daily thyroid pill (and really sharp fangs), through short-term infections, scrapes, etc. I’m firmly convinced that the reason our little black rescue kitty likes my husband best is because right after we took her in, I had to put antibiotic ointment on a huge infected cut above her eye for two weeks. She looked like Lister from Red Dwarf when he had the Space Mumps.
Hopefully the antibiotics kick in quickly as usual, and Checkers will be back to
normal before her claws grow out again.