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Doctor visit, but not for me this time.
Oct. 16th, 2009 10:16 pmPixel, my 11 yr old Munchkin, has been a very flat kitty since we relocated to Temporary!Domicile. I figured it was depression, but since it lasted more than a week, I started checking him daily for symptoms of Something Wrong. It was quite clear there was Something Wrong, but .. there were no symptoms. No fever, no tenderness anywhere, no excessively dry/wet nose, gums a healthy colour, eyes bright, no sniffling/sneezing/draining nose, ears and head weren't hot, belly wasn't abnormally hard or bloated, he was eating, he was drinking water but not excessively, and he had normal bowel movements.
His brother, on the other hand, has been trying to asphyxiate me with stench. I figured he had developed intolerance to the food and had planned to switch anyway - which turned out to be a good plan.
Last night, Pixel was being excessively flat. He crept up to my pillow and timidly curled up on it with his head pressed to either the frost-covered window behind me or the equally cold wall off to my side. I picked him up and checked him out, and besides being a bit lethargic, there didn't seem to be anything wrong.. until he yawned. The stench of infection was so thick I gagged and it hadn't been there the day before. I know this because Pixel frequently expresses the fact that he thinks I am the most boring Mom on earth by yawning in my face and blasting me with catfood-scented breath. I pried his jaws open and started poking around, but besides being annoyed that I had my fingers in his mouth, he wasn't expressing pain or anything while I was pushing on his teeth, gums, or the roof of his mouth. I was pretty much chanting to myself at that point, "Please, gods, let it be a bad tooth. Don't let it be something in his throat or stomach. Don't let it be something terminal. A bad tooth, I can deal with. Bad teeth, even. Not terminal. Not surgery. Not a mass of any kind." He's never been sick. In 11 years, my cat has never had more than a minor respiratory infection and that didn't require a vet visit.
Couldn't find a source for the smell, and that scared me. The smell, period, scared me. When Oberon, Pixel's younger brother, was a baby, he had a stomach infection - I found out by hearing him scream and walking into the livingroom to find my six month old kitten twisted like a wrung-out dishrag, laying in a puddle of infection-smelling puked up puss and bile. It was just as disgusting as you can imagine. Moreso, probably. So I'm familiar with the smell and it hits me deep in the gut with panic. Obie's infection cost $6k to fix, and it was only by the grace of gods that I had pet insurance or I wouldn't have been able to afford to save my kitten. Last night, I called the emergency vet and they said that it didn't sound critical and that I should save myself some money and bring him to my regular vet in the morning. So I called Dr. Sue's office.
7am, Pixel puked all over the floor. 7:45, the vet's office called and said they could get him in. I threw him in a crate and broke several speed limits and stopsign laws to get across the city in time. We got there early and lucked out - Dr. Sue was out of her morning surgery early. She checked him out and concurred there were no symptoms. I mentioned his teeth and she looked and said it was possible it was one of his teeth. She thought one looked kind of bad. Did I want her to do a cleaning and find out? Shit, yes. Do whatever mojo you have to, just make him feel better.
The plaque, and swollen, abscessed skin turned out to be all that was holding the tooth in place. The root was rotted through and partially re-absorbed, the rest was infected up into his jaw. It required surgery to remove the tooth and remainder of the root and to clean out the infection. The actual surgery took about 30 minutes. Then I had to wait for him to recover enough from the Ketamine that I could bring him home. We got home at 11:30 and I got to work just after noon.
On the way home, I stopped to pick up new food - Pix needed wet food for a few days due to his sad, sore mouth and the vet said Obie needed food with no grains in it unless I wanted to die from methane poisoning in my sleep. She gave me a list of foods that don't have grains. Holy shit, is that stuff expensive. The most expensive if $50 for a 15lb bag, and the others range in price from $21-38. I could buy meat and supplements and make several months' worth of catfood for that price. I may wind up doing that, but for now, I went with Green Pea and Chicken. It amuses me to think of my cats eating peas. I am easily amused.
I came home to a much better Pixel - he's still a bit groggy from the Ketamine, but it's obvious that he's feeling better. I gave him a couple tablespoons of wet food with some Arnica and a probiotic on it and he ate that stuff like he'd never seen food before. He didn't yack it back up, so he is definitely recovering from the anesthesia ok.
Apparently, my cat has failed to get the memo that he's not allowed to get sick or hurt, and that he must live forever. Obie must, as well, but Obie is Pixel's cat and therefore his responsibility to instruct.
I feel like a bad parent. I noticed and I brought him in as soon as he had a symptom, but it isn't really helping because I feel like I should have brought him in earlier in the week, or even last week, when he was being flat kitty. The vet assures me that since he had no symptoms and wasn't responding as if in pain when having his mouth poked, there was no way to know. Still. Abscess. Giant wad of infection in his mouth and jaw. I'm trying to console myself with knowledge that my vet is my vet because she DOESN'T randomly prescribe antibiotics for things that aren't obviously bacterial infections, so she would have just sent me home with probiotics - which wouldn't have helped an infection - anyway. It isn't really helping. I'm just glad he's ok. It was something simple and easy to fix. It was not chronic, terminal, or anything else likely to result in death. It wasn't even all that expensive, considering surgery was involved, and I had the means to afford it even if it made me wince. (Pet insurance doesn't cover dental. Go fig.)
Damn cat, scaring me like that. Bad kitty!
His brother, on the other hand, has been trying to asphyxiate me with stench. I figured he had developed intolerance to the food and had planned to switch anyway - which turned out to be a good plan.
Last night, Pixel was being excessively flat. He crept up to my pillow and timidly curled up on it with his head pressed to either the frost-covered window behind me or the equally cold wall off to my side. I picked him up and checked him out, and besides being a bit lethargic, there didn't seem to be anything wrong.. until he yawned. The stench of infection was so thick I gagged and it hadn't been there the day before. I know this because Pixel frequently expresses the fact that he thinks I am the most boring Mom on earth by yawning in my face and blasting me with catfood-scented breath. I pried his jaws open and started poking around, but besides being annoyed that I had my fingers in his mouth, he wasn't expressing pain or anything while I was pushing on his teeth, gums, or the roof of his mouth. I was pretty much chanting to myself at that point, "Please, gods, let it be a bad tooth. Don't let it be something in his throat or stomach. Don't let it be something terminal. A bad tooth, I can deal with. Bad teeth, even. Not terminal. Not surgery. Not a mass of any kind." He's never been sick. In 11 years, my cat has never had more than a minor respiratory infection and that didn't require a vet visit.
Couldn't find a source for the smell, and that scared me. The smell, period, scared me. When Oberon, Pixel's younger brother, was a baby, he had a stomach infection - I found out by hearing him scream and walking into the livingroom to find my six month old kitten twisted like a wrung-out dishrag, laying in a puddle of infection-smelling puked up puss and bile. It was just as disgusting as you can imagine. Moreso, probably. So I'm familiar with the smell and it hits me deep in the gut with panic. Obie's infection cost $6k to fix, and it was only by the grace of gods that I had pet insurance or I wouldn't have been able to afford to save my kitten. Last night, I called the emergency vet and they said that it didn't sound critical and that I should save myself some money and bring him to my regular vet in the morning. So I called Dr. Sue's office.
7am, Pixel puked all over the floor. 7:45, the vet's office called and said they could get him in. I threw him in a crate and broke several speed limits and stopsign laws to get across the city in time. We got there early and lucked out - Dr. Sue was out of her morning surgery early. She checked him out and concurred there were no symptoms. I mentioned his teeth and she looked and said it was possible it was one of his teeth. She thought one looked kind of bad. Did I want her to do a cleaning and find out? Shit, yes. Do whatever mojo you have to, just make him feel better.
The plaque, and swollen, abscessed skin turned out to be all that was holding the tooth in place. The root was rotted through and partially re-absorbed, the rest was infected up into his jaw. It required surgery to remove the tooth and remainder of the root and to clean out the infection. The actual surgery took about 30 minutes. Then I had to wait for him to recover enough from the Ketamine that I could bring him home. We got home at 11:30 and I got to work just after noon.
On the way home, I stopped to pick up new food - Pix needed wet food for a few days due to his sad, sore mouth and the vet said Obie needed food with no grains in it unless I wanted to die from methane poisoning in my sleep. She gave me a list of foods that don't have grains. Holy shit, is that stuff expensive. The most expensive if $50 for a 15lb bag, and the others range in price from $21-38. I could buy meat and supplements and make several months' worth of catfood for that price. I may wind up doing that, but for now, I went with Green Pea and Chicken. It amuses me to think of my cats eating peas. I am easily amused.
I came home to a much better Pixel - he's still a bit groggy from the Ketamine, but it's obvious that he's feeling better. I gave him a couple tablespoons of wet food with some Arnica and a probiotic on it and he ate that stuff like he'd never seen food before. He didn't yack it back up, so he is definitely recovering from the anesthesia ok.
Apparently, my cat has failed to get the memo that he's not allowed to get sick or hurt, and that he must live forever. Obie must, as well, but Obie is Pixel's cat and therefore his responsibility to instruct.
I feel like a bad parent. I noticed and I brought him in as soon as he had a symptom, but it isn't really helping because I feel like I should have brought him in earlier in the week, or even last week, when he was being flat kitty. The vet assures me that since he had no symptoms and wasn't responding as if in pain when having his mouth poked, there was no way to know. Still. Abscess. Giant wad of infection in his mouth and jaw. I'm trying to console myself with knowledge that my vet is my vet because she DOESN'T randomly prescribe antibiotics for things that aren't obviously bacterial infections, so she would have just sent me home with probiotics - which wouldn't have helped an infection - anyway. It isn't really helping. I'm just glad he's ok. It was something simple and easy to fix. It was not chronic, terminal, or anything else likely to result in death. It wasn't even all that expensive, considering surgery was involved, and I had the means to afford it even if it made me wince. (Pet insurance doesn't cover dental. Go fig.)
Damn cat, scaring me like that. Bad kitty!