Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Xanadu & Marci

Xanadu started feeling poorly as the rainstorm moved through Friday night. The poor guy just didn't seem to rally even with extra TLC. He also ran a fever and had an elevated white blood cell count when he went to see our internist on Monday. Prior to getting the labwork finished, we also did a couple of xrays and ultrasounded his abdomen. With his life-long history of bowel troubles, we wanted to make sure that trouble wasn't beginning to brew again. His gut looked okay, but boy his poor spine!

At some point in his life, he did have a traumatic injury (possibly a kick) that damaged 3 ribs and 4 thoracic vertebrae - and they do cause him discomfort. He has two vertebrae over his hips that are fused as one - a birth defect. And, when he had his tail amputated, a piece of vertebrae was left behind - another source of pain. Poor guy! Once he's feeling better, we will work on long-term pain management for him. In the meantime, he's on Amoxicillin and Metronidazole, subcutaneous fluids, and Pepcid to deal with the infection he has going on. He's starting to feel better today, his fever's down and he's eating again.

Marci had some difficulty breathing again, also late last week. Since our cats are doing their springtime shedding, I guessed there was a hairball issue. This pretty girl keeps her long hair stunning all the time! Into the house she came for some close monitoring in a quiet atmosphere. I also gave her a fan, turned on "low" so the air movement would make it easier to breathe. Large doses of laxatone and lactulose to lubricate things through, plus some added fiber in her diet all made a difference. By late Friday night, Marci was feeling better; she was back to normal by Saturday morning.

It's been a busy weekend with these kitties, but slowly we are returning to quiet and normal!

Saturday, March 01, 2008

King of the Loft!

Ballou's House of Blues has a loft on one end of it, and most of the kitties find their way up there at bedtime. Today, Ballou claimed the entire loft for himself, perched in such a way as to keep others away and his view of the room at its best! He often prefers one of the crates in the loft, like the one behind him, for bedtime. He picked the perfect place to hang out today, as our sunshine disappeared and we spent the day in heavy drizzly fog.