Saturday, December 1, 2007

My poor cats

This has been a long week for my cats. On Sunday, one of my cats, Friskie, started having trouble breathing. We rushed him to the emergency vet. He was in severe respiratory distress. They put him in an oxygen tank and let him calm down. They did a chest x-ray and he had a pneumothorax. A pneumothorax is a small hole in the lung that allows air to enter the plueral space . The air in the pleural space pushes the lung and the heart up. The air had also leaked into his abdominal cavity. The vet said they could put him on a ventilator and put a chest tube in, but he only had a grim chance of survival. We decided to let him go. He was only 2 1/2 years old. It was really hard on our family to lose him. We had a funeral for him in the back yard.

Yesterday, Lucky came in limping with a big laceration to the inside of his right ankle. We cleaned the wound and dressed it but he wouldn't bear any weight on his leg. We took him to the vet. They didn't think it was broken. They numbed the area and cleaned it out really good. They sent him home with pain killers and antibiotics. I have to take his temperature twice a day and give him his medication. Today, his temperature was right at the limit the vet set, 103. He wouldn't eat anything at all. We took him back into the vet and they said his wound looked better. By that time, his temperature was 103.8. They gave him a cortisone shot and a shot of vitamin B12 to stimulate his appetite. Our new temperature limit is 104. They sent me home with a few syringes with the skinny top cut off. I have to fill the syringe with canned cat food and force feed him until he starts eating on his own. He is NOT happy with me right now. Our goal is to give him 20 syringe fulls per day until he is eating on his own. I hope he starts eating really soon. Lucky is my baby. He sits in my lap all the time and snuggles up to me. It is hard to see him like this.

We have lost 3 cats this year. Kiki died in April of old age. She was 17 years old. Prissy, our mamma cat, went missing in June. We have looked for her, put up signs and checked the animal shelter almost daily. Now we lost Friskie on Sunday. I am praying we don't add Lucky to that list. I'm sure he will be fine but he sure has me worried.

I am going to try to blog about more cheerful stuff tomorrow or Monday. I have some CT layouts I want to put up here, but I am blogging at my MIL so I don't have access to my pictures. I will have a new kit out within the next few days. It is called Pretty Poinsettia. I will have some freebies of papers that didn't make it into the kit when I release the kit. I will have 2 other Christmas kits coming also. I am not sure if they will be full kits, or just element kits. They may even be mini kits. I guess it will be a surprise.

I want to congratulate Clara, one of my CT members on her new grandson, Matthew Connor. I will be making a kit for little Matthew that will match his nursery. I will get that done once my Pretty Poinsettia kit is in the store.

I hope everyone has a good weekend.

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