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No matter where you go, there you are
May. 4th, 2009 11:47 amHidey-ho, neighbor.
May. 4th, 2009
My cowardly lion, Dexter, is ill. He's the former feral who spends most of his life under the bed. A few weeks ago, I noticed he had a bit of an upper respiitory thing going - some eye and nose discharge. But he still seemed to be bopping around just fine, so I figured I'd keep an eye on him and take him to the vet if he looked like he wasn't healing up. A week passes and I notice his symptoms seem to have cleared up nicely, so I don't worry about it - and then, yesterday, I realized I hadn't seen him to even the very limited extent I usually do. So I chased him out from under the bed.
He had lost a shocking amount of weight, and was like a little limp rag. So I got him into the vet as soon as I could, which was earlier this evening. Diagnosis: his liver is on TILT. Apparently, he lost his appetite when he had the cold, and stopped eating, which caused his fat reserves to get dumped into his liver, which promptly went bonkers. I'm administering sub-q fluids to him at home (it's easy, and I learned how when I worked at the vet office) and also force-feeding him some of the wonderful squishy gooshy stinky high-calorie food (A/D). It's not going to be fun - his body won't be happy with the new food at first, so he's likely to be...enthusiastic at both ends. But I am armed with baby wipes, spare towels, and a determined attitude. Getting him to eat on his own again is the trick - the doctor said that the fastest time she'd seen it happen was one week, and the longest time was siz months. So it'll take some determination on our part, and I expect the whole household will be plenty sick of this soon (except the other two cats, who are scheming to get their paws on the high-calorie food - Grace was putting her paw into the kennel I have Dexter in, scooping up the food, and then licking her paw in satisfaction.)
And, of course, my credit card took another hit. The bloodwork was not cheap. *sigh*
In other, completely unrelated news, I went ahead and got a Dreamwidth account, solely for the purpose of grabbing my name over there (and getting myself a backup for this journal). I don't intend to use it unless all of you guys desert me. So I'll probably reconstruct my flist over there as best as I can (haven't had much time to realy check it out) but for now it'll mostly gather dust.
He had lost a shocking amount of weight, and was like a little limp rag. So I got him into the vet as soon as I could, which was earlier this evening. Diagnosis: his liver is on TILT. Apparently, he lost his appetite when he had the cold, and stopped eating, which caused his fat reserves to get dumped into his liver, which promptly went bonkers. I'm administering sub-q fluids to him at home (it's easy, and I learned how when I worked at the vet office) and also force-feeding him some of the wonderful squishy gooshy stinky high-calorie food (A/D). It's not going to be fun - his body won't be happy with the new food at first, so he's likely to be...enthusiastic at both ends. But I am armed with baby wipes, spare towels, and a determined attitude. Getting him to eat on his own again is the trick - the doctor said that the fastest time she'd seen it happen was one week, and the longest time was siz months. So it'll take some determination on our part, and I expect the whole household will be plenty sick of this soon (except the other two cats, who are scheming to get their paws on the high-calorie food - Grace was putting her paw into the kennel I have Dexter in, scooping up the food, and then licking her paw in satisfaction.)
And, of course, my credit card took another hit. The bloodwork was not cheap. *sigh*
In other, completely unrelated news, I went ahead and got a Dreamwidth account, solely for the purpose of grabbing my name over there (and getting myself a backup for this journal). I don't intend to use it unless all of you guys desert me. So I'll probably reconstruct my flist over there as best as I can (haven't had much time to realy check it out) but for now it'll mostly gather dust.
