Stealth Kitteh!
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Speaking of pets … that’s a large part of why I haven’t been around here much for a while.
Our Senior Cat, Lorenzo, started eating less and less over the past several months. Near the beginning of May, we took him in for his periodic internal medicine checkup (he’s on medication for liver problems) and we’d noted he’d lost some weight. The vet suggested checking his weight at home and seeing how he does over the course of a few weeks.
A month later, he’d lost about 700 grams. An ultrasound found a mass in his abdomen, but tissue sampling was inconclusive. We weren’t quite ready to go to surgery, so the vet added some medications to his routine, we changed food, and we started keeping a very close eye on his eating habits. By July, he was down another 750 grams, was very lethargic, and it was obvious he wasn’t feeling well. We made an appointment with the vet for later in the month, but he stopped eating entirely. We took him in for an emergency visit.
The mass had not moved, but it was clearly causing him to not eat. My partner and I talked it over with each other, as well as with the vet. We did not want to put him through a surgery if he wasn’t going to recover or if it was just going to be an exercise in keeping him alive without regard to his quality of life. In the end, we went ahead with the surgery, as he was still well enough to undergo surgery, even if there was no guarantee as to what would be found once they opened him up.
The surgery went well, although it took a bit of time for him to recover enough to come home. All in all, he was in the animal hospital for 5 days total. He came home with a line of staples closing an incision from the bottom of his sternum to the bottom of his abdomen, as well as an esophageal feeding tube in the side of his neck. We’ve spent a week now feeding and medicating him through the tube and generally looking after him more or less around the clock. (We have a spreadsheet to track medications and feeding schedules. I’m so glad to have a flexible work situation and that I work from home!)
At this point, he’s still not eating on his own, but his fur is looking much better, his energy level is improving, and he seems much happier. The biopsy on the mass was negative for cancerous cells, and was probably from an irritation in the bowels, possibly from something he ate that wasn’t food! (We’ve noted that this was apparently his oyster imitation.)
Latest fun time? Yesterday evening, about 45 minutes after his evening feeding, my partner asked if I’d noticed his e-tube being so “high” on his neck. We checked him out, and found that he had pulled the tube loose, and most of it was now out of the hole in the side of his neck. Oh joy, we get to make another emergency run to the vet! They restored the tube and checked him out, adjusting some of the specifics on the medicine, and sending him home with us. Of course we have an appointment today to remove the staples, so we get to go right back up there, about 14 hours after we left late last night.
He still had one final feeding for the day once we got home. He hopped up on the futon, curled up on a pile of towels we had there (we’re going through a lot of towels in this process) and slept through the entire feeding process.
Cats, man, I tell you.
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Awww, hugs and better health for all the people and all the cats.
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I think cats, at least, like to nap on clean laundry because their scent is inexplicably missing from the fabric and they are making everything smell just like them. Also, clean laundry has a disturbing lack of cat hair, and they hate that. Everything is better with a layer of cat hair, or so Manny Pearl tells me.
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After 8 weeks of recovery, Tabitha was finally cleared by the vet of any restrictions last week. No more cage or supervision needed. Her knee surgery seems to have been a great success and I haven’t seen her limping in weeks.
Hopefully we won’t need to go through this again on her other knee. The luxating patella on her right leg was pretty low level so if we’re lucky it won’t degenerate and need intervention like it did on her left leg.
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Sonatina got a good biopsy report a couple days ago! Benign lump removed, edges clean, all gone. (Near the groin; ouch). She’s 14 3/4, so gettin’ up there. Pic from about 2 yrs ago.
Yay!
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After all the mentions of office cats I should mention that years ago our cocker (English not American) was also the company security officer* and deputy HR manager after the discovery that people he liked fitted in, and people he didn’t like did not. His judgement on clients was pretty much spot on too; if he pointedly walked to the other side of the room and watched them, they were going to be trouble; if he went to sleep under their feet, not.
Sadly missed.
*Legally too; he was an excellent watchdog and so his costs could be claimed against tax.
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Someone does need to rep for the puppers and doggos. 
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This little sweetie is more photogenic than most models. It’s like a dang shampoo commercial over there, or a celebrity lifestyle magazine. 
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This little guy likes to visit whenever his human walks him by. We also go to the beach and meet other doggos whenever we can.
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He really is ridiculously good looking.
And like all the really really good looking guys, he disdains most people, and will bark at you if you get too close or even look at him. LOL
My dinner parties are usually full of people trying to touch him, or pet him or anything, and him backing away barking at them only to go hide upstairs under the bed.
The curse of being really really good looking.
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With artillery like that, who can blame him?
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I have three cats, of which two manage to be photogenic.
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The tux balances the two skinny ones the two calicoes!
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Actually, it is the same calico. She’s the queen bee. I have an all black tom as well.
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Funny, I thought the second picture was of a dilute calico, while the first wasn’t. But I guess it’s just the lighting.
I did wonder just who was not being photogenic (the cats pictured are go’geous) but I guess that would be the non-pictured black cat.
We’ve got a tux too.
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Ol’ mister Blue Eyes over here stole an empty bag of treats off my desk. Being empty, Manny was NOT PLEASED. He got treats of a different flavor, but that didn’t stop the recriminations.
His nose keeps getting bigger, and he keeps getting prettier and prettier, all the time. I don’t respond to guilt-trips from people, but this guy can pull all my strings. Sigh.
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