Now, here’s someone who knows about that! I’d show her photo, but she has disabled linking, but do go and read the piece.
Beautiful. And makes me roar with laughter every time :)
A few people have (very kindly) enquired as to how Igpuss is doing on his new regime and, to tell the truth, we don’t know.
He was doing absolutely great on the two injections a week for his arthritis, and then as soon as we dropped him to one a week, as directed, it all seemed to go bad again. Also, it didn’t help that he decided that he’d really not have the jabs after all, thankyouverymuch, which means he has to be stalked and stabbed while he’s asleep.
We’ve settled on one every five days for now, which seems to be helping him, and see if we can stretch it out over time.
In other news, Henry has a cold, and is spluttering and sneezing all over the place, but he’s still eating, so I don’t worry too much.
We took Iggy back to Chants Vets Monday before last – 6 Feb, for them to look at his mouth. Sarah was very pleased with his progress, and said to bring him back in ten days so we could look at the options for treating his osteoarthritis. Pete and I do both feel that this is getting worse quite quickly :(
The standard treatment feline arthritis is Metacam, but it is a steroid, and thus not great for cats with impaired kidney function – yes, he has this too. She asked us, carefully, if we would prefer him to live a longer life, or a shorter and happier one without pain. It seems extraordinary to me that anyone would give the former answer, and of course we didn’t. But we are first going to try something called Adequan, which is some sort of magic potion which miraculously grows cartilage back (no, I don’t really understand it either). It was developed for horses, and is not actually licensed for use on small animals in the UK, so we had to sign a release form. The downsides are a) it’s £60 for a 5ml phial (!), but he will be on one 0.2ml dose per week in a couple of months (two a week for four weeks, then one a week for four weeks, then one a month), and that – oh dear lord – it has to be injected. We can hardly wait, especially as he was extremely displeased to be given his first dose (by the vet) today. Kevlar gloves may be required.
We’re also starting him on Benzacare today, which is used for the treatment of chronic renal insufficiency in cats. These pills claim to be palatable. We shall see. Half a 5mg tablet daily; perhaps we should keep an ambulance and a blood bike on standby … The vet gave us 3.5 pills, i.e. a week’s worth, and charged £6.81. She is perfectly happy to give us a prescription, so I have sourced them online, at £17.99 for 28, which seems rather better to me. It seems impossible to buy the Adequan except in packs of 5, at about £250 or more, so I don’t think we’ll bother.
We should know within the month if Adequan helps his arthritis, and if it doesn’t, we’ll have to put him on Metacam, with the risk that carries. Ho hum.
Cost today: £87,50. And I have to buy a load of syringes and needles, and we now have a sharps disposal bin in the house!
Iggy has been suffering from pain in his hips/back legs for a little while; it seemed to come and go, but on Friday we determined we would take him to the vet this week, and so fetched one of the cat baskets out of the loft while we were getting some other stuff down.
We were away for a couple of days, and when we got back, he seemed quite miserable, and wanted a lot of company, so I phoned for an appointment this morning. As he sat on the stool in the kitchen, I said to Pete that his mouth looked a bit … crumpled, and we wondered if he’d had a mini stroke or something.
Anyway, off we trundled to Chants Vets, and explained why we’d brought him. Sarah said he would need an X-ray under anaesthetic, but obviously wanted to have a general look at him. She went to open his mouth, and he really didn’t want her to. I held him while she managed to take a look and, to our horror, his mouth was in a dreadful state; he had a hard lump in there, and there was no question but it would have to be properly investigated. She said it might be an abscess, but it might also be a tumour, and if it were the latter, it would almost certainly be kinder to not let him come round from the operation.
We came home about 10.30, and just waited. They phoned about 1, and said they’d done a blood test which showed his kidney function was a bit poor, but that really they had to go ahead with the operation, he couldn’t be left as he was. I phoned at 2, and was told he was still in the theatre, and phoned again at 3.30 as instructed, to find he was out, and could be collected at 6.
Along we trundled, to find that all four canines had broken (one of which was causing the abscess), and had to be removed, two other molars ditto, and several small incisors. We have an opiate-based painkiller for him, and he has to go back in a week to see what to do about the kidney function, and the arthritis – our options on the latter are a little limited due to the former, but there are several options. We were warned that he probably would have little appetite today, and to try and tempt him.
Cost today: £525 (ouch), and we will be paying for various treatments for him for the rest of his life. And the chap is worth every penny. He’s now sitting in front of the stove, which we lit before we went out so that it wold be properly warm for him, and it’s exceedingly nice to have him home, given that we thought he might not come back at all … Oh, and his first action on coming out of the cat basket was to wander into the kitchen for some ham, and then to the bikkit bowl :)
Pteppic: seal point Siamese. August 1997-December 2011
It is with much sadness that we have learned that Pteppic, the world’s first – and only – Siamese walrus has been put to sleep. He, together with his lifelong companion Esk, went to live with my daughter in Norfolk about four years ago,and it’s a miracle he was still going, because He Nearly Died back in 2003 (although he didn’t like to talk about it). The vets never did work out what was wrong with him, and they didn’t expect him to pull through, never mind make the full recovery that he did.
He has been becoming more and more ill with IBS in recent years and in the end, the only proper thing to do was to let him go.
Pteppic was a sleek creature, a cat who always knew when you were feeling down, and would come to comfort you. He purred like a walrus, and if another cat was poorly, they got the Ptep treatment too; I well remember when Iggy had an appalling respiratory infection, and was on space blankets to try to keep him warm – the walrus came and curled his long body around Iggy and stayed with him all night. His nuturing nature also extended to kittens, and he was never happier than when there was a baby cat in the house for him to look after.
Ptep was the campest cat in the universe – the Noel Coward of the feline world. We felt he wore a virtual bottle green velvet smoking jacket, and drank very dry sherry. You could pour him from your arms to the floor, and when he was fully grown I had to stand on a stair to do it, because he grew into a huge, and hugely elegant, creature, with many limbs.
We missed him a lot when he left us, but he had a wonderful home with Clare, and she will miss him so much too. I hope she can take comfort from the fact that she did the last, best thing for him that she could, and we salute her strength.
I wanted to wish Pteppic “good hunting”, as I do every cat who leaves us behind, and she reminded me, quite rightly, that:
… there certainly won’t be any hunting. He’ll be on a soft, soft blanket that he so adores, with some tuna and someone to snuggle and shove with his snout. Ptep at his absolute happiest :)
On 18th November, I Twittered that I hadn’t seen Mustrum that morning. And we didn’t see him again for ten days, by which time we were both sure he was gone for good. He is microchipped, but a lot of places don’t automatically scan for them, I know.
He was a real roamer in his day, but Mussum is 13 years old now, and likes to be at home in the warmz, with his blobs to make a fuss of him, and it’s really not like him to be away for any length of time any more. We put notices up on local web sites, and went calling him – not helped by the fact I was ill and had lost my voice. We resigned ourselves to never seeing him again, and I felt positively cheated that I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
On the 28th, at about 10.30 in the evening, Pete was talking to me; out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Mussum in the living room by the sofa. I looked away, and looked back and HE WAS. He was home! I just croaked at Pete, right across what he was trying to tell me – we were overjoyed.
Muss was thin – about 20% of his body weight, I would guess. We live in a grid of Victorian terraced streets, and he’s never been far; our feeling is that he got spooked by a car or a dog, and just ran for it, and then got completely lost. We opened two tins of fatted calf meat (well, tuna Hilife) – one for him, and one for the rest of the Tribe. He got his bowl up on the worktop, and shouted while he ate it. I think he was as pleased as we were to be home. The others, remarkably, stood back and let him finish their bowl too, so perhaps they missed the old chap as well.
Two weeks on, he’s putting some weight back on, and settling back down. He was very clingy for a few days, which is why we believe he was lost and confused. Mind you, he’s often confused; I maintain he is not very bright *at all*, although Pete says I’m being unkind :)
Anyway, he’s home. Don’t do it again please, Mustrum – my nerves couldn’t take it.
The weather has become quite seasonal here, after a late flurry of warm weather, and we’re noticing a distinct increase of Cat in the house. Here is an unseemly heap on the chair in the bedroom, with Mustrum protesting slightly underneath Iggy and Ron. The heap inhabitants remained unchanged most of the day, although the positioning did alter from time to time.
There were two cats – Henry and Mustrum – on the bed when we woke this morning, and more cats are predicted in this position. They haven’t actually noticed that the stove is being lit yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
It’s so nice to see Iggy in again – we’ve barely set eyes on him this summer, poor old man. I do fear he’s not going to see another winter after this one …
The other evening (well, Tuesday 4th, for our records), we noticed a lot of black fur on the dining room rug. Black fur=Ron, so we had a good look at him; he had an abscess on his face, and a nasty hole under his chin. So, the next morning, he was inserted into a cat carrier – with some difficulty, I might say. Ron is the most amenable of chaps, but he really doesn’t care to be confined. Pete then conveyed Ron to the vet in his bike trailer, where he was cleaned, jabbed and prescribed 7 days worth of antibiotics.
He was as good as gold with the pills, once he was convinced that after pills came chickie! as a treat, and we had no trouble at all – just called “Ronkin” twice a day, and he’d come down to the kitchen and sit on the stool for his dose. We did use a pill popper, as it’s quicker and easier for all concerned.
Cost a fortune in chickie!, of course, as anycat who was in would appear for their share, but worth it all the same. He has healed up nicely, and now we’re just waiting for his beautiful black fur to grow back in.
Further note to self: Henry and Ron Advantaged today – Frontline just doesn’t seem to do it any more.
During the latter part of this morning, I could hear a cat going mew. It didn’t sound like any of ours – Mustrum gurgles and squeaks and shouts, Iggy rowls, Henry and Ron squeal. Lilith doesn’t speak much – she might say “hello” outside, but by and large she is pretty much mute indoors.
It drove me crazy – first I thought it was coming from the back of the house, but there was no cat in the yard, and nobody under the floorboards (we’re in the process of bathroom renovations). Then I thought it was coming from the front, but there were only the spotty boys out there.
This went on for about half an hour until a thought struck Pete; he’d bee putting some stuff in the loft. And where oh where was the devil cat? He opened the hatch, and out came Lilith – slowly, making an entrance as befits her station. I had no idea she could make so much noise!
Don’t do it again, Lil.
