Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

The lab results finally came back this morning for Isis. It looks like she does not have FIP and does/did have a raging infection that either caused or was caused by the fluid build-up. So thank bejeezus she got a shot of long-lasting antibiotics Thursday night and we’ve been giving her amoxicillin since Saturday. She has a follow-up appointment Tuesday afternoon so we can talk over the results with the vet we trust—not the one who didn’t offer to help her breathe on Friday.

So this is good. There are still unknowns, but bacteria can at least be smacked into submission for the short term. I really liked what my friend Amber said:

I know what it’s like to hope for one bad instead of another. “He could have been poisoned, which, in theory, might improve, or have chronic kidney disease…which will just keep getting worse.”

“Um….let’s hear it for the poison!?!”

Isis has been eating more and gaining her strength back. She also starts purring practically every time we look at her, which is not typical behavior for her, but will make the pending credit card statement a little easier to bear. She’s actually on my lap right now, awake but relaxed, with her head resting on my forearm and making typing an awkward task for me.

These are some photos from February 2009 since I’m really behind in uploading photos. I look forward to taking more of her in a happy and honor-my-every-whim mood after she regains her health yet again. I’m just a helpless puddle of amateur photographer when she starts posing like this in the sunlight.

It’s hard to believe that this whole Isis health crisis has only been going on for three days. It feels like much longer.

The vet said to make sure she’s eating a very high protein diet, which given her history of digestive issues means that we’ve been giving her pure meat baby food out of a jar. And to improve her hydration, we’re forcing a spring water and Pedialyte solution down her throat a few times a day. I’m just hoping that the next step in her transformation to human infant will not require diapers.

Today has been a good recovery day for Isis. She ate only about a half ounce of baby food last night and refused any of her regular food. She still wasn’t really interested in food this morning, but by this afternoon she was meowing by the fridge and showing interest in her regular food after she finished off the jar of baby food. She’s been walking around more and using the extra litter box we begrudgingly put in the hall bathroom for her since she’s still not in stair-taking condition to use the one in the basement.

(I caught Phoebe peeing in the upstairs litter box and was all, THAT’S NOT YER TOILET, which caused a slapstick scene of her kicking litter everywhere as she lunged out of the box and skidded into a wall before racing off.)

The first lab results should come back from our regular vet tomorrow morning to hopefully give us more insight as to what caused all the fluid build-up. We will not be returning to that vet for follow-up treatment—especially after having a decent night’s sleep and analyzing the course of events in Isis’ recent illness.

She was boarded at the vet while we were out of town because she needs to be fed her special homemade food twice a day, and it’s just easier that way. It’s the third time she’s boarded there while the other two cats stay home with their automatic feeder and a friend checking in on them. When Ben picked her up on Tuesday, he noticed that she was breathing heavily. We honestly didn’t worry too much until Thursday, probably because it was getting worse. That night we took her to Pet Urgent Care where they took X-rays, gave her shots of cortisone and antibiotics, drew a sample of the massive fluid build-up in her chest cavity and recommended that we visit our regular vet first thing in the morning. The regular vet looked at the X-rays, said her liver was enlarged and possibly her heart, and sent the sample from Pet Urgent Care out to the lab. He waived the exam fee since we’d just been to urgent care and sent us home.

But that’s it. How could he look at my cat struggling to breathe because of the pressure around her lungs and just send me home with her until the lab results came back—which he knew would likely not be for three days? Why didn’t he even mention draining the fluid as an option? I’d only had a couple hours’ sleep, otherwise I would have asked. Instead, I sleepily trusted that he knew what was best for my cat. Why wouldn’t I?

Add to that the fact that Isis was exhibiting abnormal breathing when she was picked up from her boarding stay at the vet—where I’d had to sign a form allowing them to treat Isis should she need care during her stay. For how long did her breathing issues go unnoticed? Even giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming it didn’t start until just before Ben picked her up, shouldn’t the tech have noticed when she put her in the carrier?

It’s frustrating to think about. Isis would likely have already died of oxygen deprivation if we had just followed the first vet’s instructions and waited for the lab results before proceeding.

But. I am very glad to have this veterinary care frustration at a time when I am not also grieving the loss of my pet. Even if the final prognosis is Not Good, I did not have to watch my longtime feline companion suffer for several days before dying from a curable (at least temporarily) condition. This way, if we know what’s coming—short term or long term—we can better prepare ourselves and not just stand by as helpless victims of the unknown.

Thank you to all of my friends and family who have extended their love and support the last couple days. In some ways it seems trivial to have such serious emotions for a pet. I’m not one to say that my cats are my children because they’re not—they’re my pets. But goddammit if I don’t love them with all my heart.

SPOILER: Isis is still alive!

I was up late again last night watching Isis, anxious and angry because I couldn’t do anything to relieve her labored breathing. My tiny kitty had lost interest in food and was increasingly lethargic.

I again called the county’s pet urgent care (which I’m thankful for—they’re open all evenings, weekends, and holidays) and spoke to the same assistant who had been there 24 hours earlier when I took Isis in. She said a different doctor was there that night, so I’d have to pay the full exam fee again just to bring her in. Which is double the cost of an exam fee at a regular vet, of course. And to drain the fluid in her lungs? Starting around $500-$1000 due to costs for oxygen, tube set-up, hospitalization, etc.

You’ve GOT to be kidding me, I said. Can’t you just stick a needle in and pull out a little but so she doesn’t suffocate before we can get her to the regular vet in the morning?!?

Ben and I had a rough and emotional discussion about what we should do. Of course we want her to live, but we still didn’t know what was wrong with her or even if draining the fluid would really help. We’d already dropped a few hundred bucks on the two vet visits for X-rays, lab tests, and medicine, but she’s going on 11 years old and what if it’s just her time? At what point do we draw the line when it comes to finances? It’s a really ugly question. How much are we willing to spend to save her?

Meanwhile, Isis shifted uncomfortably, her nostrils flaring as she failed to take in as much oxygen as she needed. I pictured the X-ray of her lungs compressed by fluid in her chest cavity.

Less than seven hours until the regular vet opened. We knew our vet had gone out of town Friday afternoon, but he would leave someone on call.

We decided to make her as comfortable as possible—on her blanket with water just a step away—and hope that she would hang on until morning. We prepared ourselves for the possibility that she would not make it and finally went to bed. Read more…

I have lots of photos and notes to share from WonderCon, but it’s going to have to wait another day or two.

One of my cats, Isis, has been breathing somewhat heavily since we picked her up from the vet where she was being boarded while we were out of town. No other symptoms, but it got increasingly worrisome. I decided to google it, which of course you should never do because you will always fear the worst, and sure enough, that’s what I found. I took her to pet urgent care after midnight last night, fearing the worst but hoping that I would just pay the exam fee and come home with some ridicule for being a worrywart. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

She has fluid in her pleural space, which is more or less the cavity between her organs and her skin. (I was a biology major once, but have since filled that useful knowledge with less useful information.) The fluid is compressing her lungs so that they will not fully inflate, causing her to breathe more rapidly to get the oxygen she needs. The vet gave her a cortisone shot and a shot of anitbiotics, just in case they would help, but also took a fluid sample to send off to a pathologist.

The prognosis is not good. There’s no fluid in her lungs, so it’s not a simple respiratory infection. She’s been up to date on her vaccinations and is an indoor cat, so I doubt it’s feline leukemia. It might be FIP, cancer, or a heart problem. None of which mean she has a lot of time left.

I got home after 3am and took her to the regular vet as instructed at 9am. They sent the fluid sample off to the lab and we should have results Monday or possibly tomorrow morning. After all the digestive issues she’s suffered over the last couple of years (which may or may not have anything to do with what’s causing the fluid build-up now), it’s horrible to see her suffering more. Well, “suffering” is subjective. She’s taking shallow, rapid breaths and still eating some. I don’t know if she’s in pain. I don’t know how much longer she has. I don’t know. It’s been a long day. I’m probably going back to the vet tomorrow morning if there’s still no change to talk about options for relieving the pressure from the fluid.

Maybe it was sleep deprivation, maybe it’s just a hilarious article that is undeniably based in fact. Whether or not you like cats, I highly recommend 6 adorable cat behaviors with shockingly evil explanations.

True. So true. I have the same 3.5 inch Darth Vader guarding my freezer, but he’s not nearly as intimidating as one of my cats eyeing me shortly before their food is dispensed.

Isis is doing wonderfully.

It’s been 5 weeks now since I took her to another vet for a second opinion of her inexplicably failing health. He put the “food allergy” idea into my head, and that’s exactly what it was—though the “hypoallergenic” Hill’s Prescription Diet z/d cat food he recommended didn’t help. (You can find the full and lengthy story on my previous Obligate Carnivore post.)

I started researching feline food allergies on January 29 after coming home from the vet. She refused to eat the z/d food at first, but the vet sent me home with four of those $2.29 cans and I was not going to give in that easily.  I mixed them into the only food she would eat, and though she made it clear that she wasn’t thrilled with the new food, she transitioned in a couple of days. There was a slight improvement in her, um, deposits, but definitely not enough to convince us that it was the best treatment for her (especially considering the food’s price tag).

Meanwhile, I purchased a whole chicken from the grocery store and dusted off the meat grinder attachment for my (favorite!) KitchenAid stand mixer.

The idea of putting raw chicken into the pitifully unhealthy digestive tract of my little kitty made me tremble Read more…

One of our cats has been having some frustrating health problems in the last year or so. DISCLAIMER: this is a story with an insanely icky middle but a happy ending. By “insanely icky,” I mean that you should not read this while eating or if you have a weak stomach.

Isis is now about 9 years old and has been with us since she was between 6 and 12 months old. She was a gaunt and dirty stray when we took her off the mean apartment complex streets. We soon discovered that she had worms… and was pregnant. But we took good care of her, eventually found good homes for her 5 kittens, and she became our little darling.

Our lives were content as a two-cat family. Isis is a tiny cat who at her fattest weighed 7.5 pounds—a contrast to Loki’s bumbling 20-pound average. Except for an occasional can of cat food or licking leftover milk out of a cereal bowl, both cats have eaten standard dry cat food their whole lives. We tried some “light” food for Loki at one point, but that didn’t seem to do much good for his weight (or mood) and we always ended up back at budget-friendly Purina Cat Chow in the blue bag.

When Phoebe joined the family in the summer 2007, Isis made it known that she was not happy with our little addition. She started shedding more and eating less. We figured she needed more time to adjust. In November that year, we discovered a lump on her belly. I flipped my shit a little worrying that it was cancer, but it turned out to just be a hernia. We opted for surgery, which went fine, and the scar healed nicely.

But she basically stopped eating.

She started hanging around the kitchen—crying every time we opened the fridge and gladly eating a scrap of chicken or licking out a bowl of human food—so we knew she was hungry. She went back to the vet in January 2008 for her annual shots, and he told us that older cats will sometimes start to become picky eaters for no apparent reason.

We tried some different dry food brands and types—sensitive stomach, senior cat, indoor formula, etc.—and she turned her nose up at it all. Though we were reluctant to give her canned food, mostly because of its much higher price point, we eventually gave in because she was just so skinny. Even worse than the gaunt state she had been in as a pregnant stray with worms.

She wolfed down any canned food we gave her. “Great!” we thought, until she started puking it up. This is where the story gets gross. I’ve never smelled anything more disgusting than Read more…

I’m adding to my most recent Update Vomit post with some photo evidence. First, a self-portrait taken late in the evening on Christmas Eve. The bow on my jester-like Santa hat had been hastily placed by Ben onto the FedEx box that contained Rock Band 2, which arrived at 5:30pm on Christmas Eve. Poor FedEx guy wasn’t even at the door long enough for me to offer him a cookie.

Cute as we look there, the rest of the night was spent fighting for control of our band’s tour schedule.

Phoebe had a hard time with our new arrival since it took attention away from her. We would have let her participate, if only she’d had opposable thumbs or a less whiny singing voice.

Loki would rather watch us play Rock Band than participate. Also, can you get him another beer while you’re up?

While in Colorado last week, my Aunt Jeanette lovingly donated her hair stylin’ services to me after hours. She liked the way the color was turning out.

Did I mention that the color was purple? The demi-permanent color streaks have sadly washed out quite a bit already. Next time, I going for more purple and more permanent!

And finally, here’s my sister as she watches the transformation. Not only is she smarter than me, but she’s also a much better dresser. (Geekiness, though? I win, hands down.)

When one has a digital camera, and certain felines are more than happy to pose in adorable and personality-infused poses, this is what happens.

I first give you Phoebe, who can usually be found wherever Loki is.

“urrrr…?”

“THAT CAMERA IS SHINY WERE YOU AWARE OF THIS.”

She’s trying really hard to eat a lot so that she can balloon out like Loki (who didn’t wake up during the entire photo session).

And she strikes a pose for the camera. How does that not hurt her legs?

Later… Isis watches. She’s not interested in playing your reindeer games.

Later still… Isis turned around and “lazr kitteh” Loki tries to fit his dog-sized butt onto one stair.

Phoebe decides to practice for the Feline Olympics. She starts up the stairs, hugging the wall before jumping over her first hurdle.

She clears it, but then comes the hard part: Isis is not a hurdle, but she is a dangerous foe and may jump out at Phoebe if she gets too close, much like a chain chomp.

Phoebe clears the course and strikes another pose at the top of the stairs. She would like more cowbell in the next photo shoot.