It's been like ER around our house....

I haven't posted because I've been too busy with a sick cat this week. It all started last Saturday afternoon. I noticed my cat Patch was walking funny. When I took a closer look at her, I noticed her rectum had protracted. This started happening with her about 2 years ago. The first time it happened, I literally freaked out. After a call to my vet, I found out that this sometimes happens in cats and that it typically goes back in all on its own. He told me if it didn't, I should rub some Preparation H on it and that should do the trick. Right.... my cat has claws, don't think so, doc! Anyway, I thought it would take care of itself in due time and let her hide like she always does when this occurs.

Unfortunately, it didn't go back in. By Monday morning, I was starting to panic. I called the vet and immediately got her an appointment. When we got there, Dr. Stoltz looked at her and said, "Uh-oh." Those are words I didn't want to hear. Instead of just a protracted rectum, we had now moved into the prolapsed rectum and that meant surgery. He then looked at Kenny and me and said, "I hope I can do the conservative surgery. I'll put her rectum back in her body, attach it inside with stitches, and then stitch up her anus like a drawstring to prevent it from coming back out. If that's not feasible, I'll have to amputate and that's the more extensive, drastic surgery." I'm sure the look on our faces was priceless. Hence I left Patch in Dr. Stoltz's capable hands and went home to wait by the phone.

The surgery went fine and he was able to take the conservative route, no amputation required. He told me I could come pick her up late Tuesday afternoon because she was a little lethargic and he wanted her to be more alert before she went home. I went to pick her up that afternoon and she was really out of it. He told me to continue her Duralactin medication that she takes for chronic cystitis, put her on soft food, and sprinkle said food with Epsom salts to make her poo soft where she could go without undoing his handiwork. Instead of Duralactin pills, they gave me liquid Duralactin to mix in with her food. She refused to eat her food. I tried tuna, but she wouldn't eat much of it with the Duralactin and the Epsom salts on it. In a fit of desperation, I tried to give her the Durlactin with a dropper. This made her foam at the mouth. Eventually, she started to nibble at the tuna, but we went from Saturday to Friday with her barely eating anything at all.

Yesterday morning, we took her in to have her stitches removed. When we got there, the news wasn't good. She had managed to chew out the stitches. While this wasn't the problem, Dr. Stoltz informed me that she was CONSTIPATED! His solution was that we needed to get her to go poo, but she was going to need some help. My first thought was, "OH GREAT! What's this going to involve?" While it wasn't as drastic as I was imagining, it still didn't sound fun. Dr. Stoltz put her on a product called Cat Lax (I'm not making this up). He told us that hopefully she'd lick it off our fingers or her paws if we smeared it on them. He assured us that this stuff, which comes in a tube like toothpaste, was stickier than peanut butter so the only option she would have for getting it off her paws would be to groom herself. If that didn't work, we were supposed to pry open her mouth and rub it on the roof of her mouth. Have I mentioned that she has all her claws and teeth? Envisioning being shredded and maimed by my pet, I reluctantly agreed and told him that we needed to switch back to powdered Duralactin. I was to increase the amount of Epsom salt I put on her food and even give her some mineral oil to "lube things up"( his words, not mine). He also proceeded to tell us that if she didn't go poo by Monday, we would have to try another option, such as a suppository or an enema! While I love my cat, this is something he would definitely be the one doing, not me or Kenny! We draw the line at administering some treatments.

We got her home and I braced myself for being soundly bitten while trying to administer the Cat Lax. I read the label and it has carmel and molasses in it and Patch loved it. I guess it's better than fish flavored cat treats because everytime we go to give her the daily dose, all we have to do is put it on our finger and she licks it off with no problem. I ended up giving her the mineral oil in a syringe that you use to give babies medicine. I expected she wouldn't take that well either, but she calmly lets me give her this and walks off like it's no big deal. While I was afraid that she wasn't eating soft food or tuna because of the Epsom salts, I discovered it must have been the liquid Duralactin that she didn't like because now that we're back to powdered Duralactin sprinkled on her food, she's been eating like she's starving (which she probably is after not eating for the better part of a week).

Dr. Stoltz told us that we were obviously going to have to check the litter box everytime she went in there to see if she did the deed. So, yesterday and today, Kenny and I have been checking the box on a regular basis and as much as I hate to admit it, it was like we'd hit the jackpot when she "worked things out". When I called home to wish my Dad Happy Father's Day and he asked me what we'd done today, I told him, "Oh, we just stayed around here waiting for Patches to poop." At this point, he got completely cracked up and then went on to ask me how things were going. Before I knew it, I was describing, to my father, what happened when Kenny discovered the results of her effort in the box! That's when it occured to me that my life has sunk to a new low and that we need to get out more often! Hopefully things will calm down and get back to normal around here, or at least as normal as things ever are in our house!