A Feline Funny for Valentine's Day

 

A surprise email this morning from our vet for Sir Leo:

We wanted to reach out and wish Leo a very happy birthday!! 

It is such a pleasure to be your veterinarian. 

We hope today can be sweetened with a treat for this big day and that all birthday wishes come true. Thank you for letting us be a part of your healthcare team and we look forward to seeing you for your next wellness exam. 

Happy Birthday!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A few years back, my husband and I had noticed a lot of little "uncooked rice-like" non-moving "things" left on the blankets and comforters of every place our cat Leo had laid. I called up our vet at the time and they told us to bring them a fecal sample from him to have analyzed at their out-sourced lab. In the meantime, I researched the issue via the pet vet sites (and people I know who also have cats) and everything pointed to tapeworms! How? I honestly do not know since all of our cats are completely and strictly indoor cats only!

A day later, the vet called us and said that he had isospora which is supposedly an intestinal parasite similar to giardia. Now, when I dropped off Leo's fecal, I also bagged up the samples of the "rice-like" dead tapeworms for them to look at as well. I asked them about it and they said he doesn't have tapeworm, just isospora and that they did not "know" what the rice-like things were. Seriously? Well, turns out they may have been right about the isospora, but they were completely wrong about the tapeworms!

Because these parasites are so contagious, we had to treat all five cats for both issues. So, the next morning I called up the vet to let them know that hubby was going to pick up the cats meds and they said they would have them dosed and ready for us. Then when my husband showed up at the vets office to pick them up, he was told some BS about our one cat Midnight had not been seen in the last six months so they couldn't give us his portion. WHAT? How useless is that? Why would we treat only four of our cats and not all of them as seriously contagious as the problem is? They told us that since we already had an appointment set for the following Monday night anyhow to have Midnight seen for three wart-like things on his tail, we should be able to pick up all the meds then ...

(What the tapeworms actually look like. They break off in segments via the cats anus. Although they come out live, they do not live very long outside the host cat's body ~ that is when they dry up and die looking like uncooked rice) ...

   

The very next night, we left Leo out by himself in the cat's room to stretch his legs a bit as we had to keep him in a cage and separated from the other cats until the problem was resolved. Two hours later, I went in the room to put him to bed and back in his cage and what did I see? EEKK!! A live, moving, disgusting tapeworm which had apparently just slithered out of his butt! That was it! I had had enough of the vet's BS and first thing the very next morning hubby and I drove over to the vet and demanded help! That is when they told us that he also had tapeworms as well as the isopora! Gimme a break, will ya? I was so upset and livid at that point that Dr. Heather had decided to take a break from a surgery she was working on to come out and straighten out their mess!

She maintained that she could lose her license if she dispensed meds to Midnight without the "six month check up." She also said that the tapeworms were more than likely from fleas ~ either ingested by one of the cats or caused by feces in the litter boxes. Now, our cats do not have fleas, but after further thought, hubby told me that he remembered seeing one on "Fancy Pants" (our neighbor lady's Siamese cat) the last time we watched her for her owner. AH HA!!! Made perfect sense at that point and, lesson learned! We will never take another stray cat in for any reason, temporarily or otherwise, that way ever again. I absolutely refuse to go through this nightmare again! Everything, including the water and food bowls, cats boxes, blankets, rugs, etc.) had to be completely washed and decontaminated as best we could. On top of that, we had to treat all of the cats for fleas!

Dr. Heather must have felt sorry for us and had decided to dispense the isospora meds after all so long as we still agreed to bring Midnight to his scheduled appointment on Monday night. For some ridiculous reason unknown to us; however, she did not give us tapeworm meds, only the meds the cats were supposed to get before their office screwed up.

And so we had to stop off at our local PetSmart and pick up tapeworm meds to give to all of the cats as well as giving them their isospora dosage. All of this because we tried to do the right thing thinking that we were helping to save a nice, sweet cat. As the saying goes, "No good deed goes unpunished" ... how true!

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A Leo update:

On Monday morning, I received a phone call from a nurse acting on behalf of the State of PA. She was just following up on the State required report I had to fill out paperwork for when I had to go to Patient First regarding my cat bites on my left hand. Later on that day, the PA Dept. of Health sent me a letter in the mail:

No kidding! Trust me, even if the State would have demanded I surrender Leo (or ANY of my cats for that matter), it will be a cold day in Hell before I let ANYONE take away my cat - it will never happen!

At any rate, my hand is slowly healing and I am still taking my prescribed antibiotics.

A case of mistaken identity?

Yesterday morning I fed the cats as usual. Merlin, who resides mainly in the catio, must eat with Ginger in the cat's room as they get fed the same food. And, Leo must eat his special CD food in the catio. When they are finished eating, I must bring Leo back in with us and Merlin returns to the catio. WELL, Leo decided that he was not ready to come back in with us yet and I had a schedule to keep. So, I opened the door and Merlin b-lined it directly over to the tall three story cat condo which Leo was sitting on. He jumped up at Leo in order to bully him off the condo and I ran over to intervene. Leo's back was toward me when I tried to pick him up off of the condo and he reacted by biting me on my left hand so hard that his large teeth dug pretty deep into my skin!

I quickly cleaned up my fresh wounds with hydrogen peroxide and bacitracin, then bandaged up my hand. This morning when I woke up it was all red and swollen and although it looked clean, it hurt like HELL! I proceeded to go into work and my Line Lead took a look at it and strongly suggested I leave and go to our local Patient First facility to get it checked out - so I did.

Long story short, they made me fill out an animal bite report required by the State of PA, gave me a tetanus shot, dispensed two weeks worth of 875mg of Amoxicillin and Clavulanate Potassium tablets, and re-bandaged my hand. 

I couldn't blame Leo because it was my own stupidity for not thinking before reacting. I truly believe that because Leo's back was toward me that he thought it was Merlin who touched him and WHAM, BITE, OUCH!! 

Ah yes, the perils of being a cat guardian. 

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Leo's Diabetes

 

Back in 2019, I was feeding our cat Leo in the catio when I noticed that he had suddenly gotten weak and slowly fell to the floor. At first, I thought that perhaps he had jumped down from the tall cat condo and landed the wrong way - possibly injuring his leg. I tried to help him up and he still appeared too weak to stand. This concerned me greatly and so we took him to our vet for an examination in order to help us figure out what was going on with him. He exhibited what I could only describe as some type of "seizure". The blood tests originally showed him with a very high glucose level and therefore he was diagnosed with diabetes. Our vet, Dr. Mike, immediately called in a prescription for him for insulin, syringes, and lancets at our local pharmacy. He had been on a strict diet and we had to keep running him to the vet during the week to get his blood sugar checked. After a week, the vet told us that his blood sugar was back to normal and to stop the insulin injections for the time being. We were to keep the insulin in the refrigerator for six months in the event that Leo should ever need it again, but Dr. Mike said that Leo seemed to have gone into remission and was currently no longer considered "diabetic" at that point.  

That was the good news. However, we were still not sure exactly what had been causing his "seizures", but we had been keeping an eye on him and for the past couple of days afterward. he had not appeared to have had the episodes that we had witnessed. We were instructed to continue his prescription diet for the rest of his life, but that is not a problem at all as he seemed to be eating fairly well. And, per our vet's instructions, we also bought an Alpha Trak for cats and dogs so that we could check Leo's blood sugar at home from then on. The problem with that; however, was that my husband and I struggled horribly with the lancets. Yes, the vet technician gave us a quick "How To" on where and how to prick Leo for a blood sample and use the Alpha Trak, BUT it was an absolute nightmare as far as we were concerned! First of all I hate, allow me to repeat, HATE needles and I was so scared of hurting Leo. Then, one night after I had gotten home from work, my husband said to me, "You are going to have to try getting Leo's blood because I tried and accidently poked the syringe completely through his ear and he cried!" 

Now, we were told by the vet to use the small vein around the outside of Leo's ear to get the blood sample hence you had better get it spot on! This experience was so awful that we both refuse to ever do it again, Thankfully, Leo was also placed on a special CD diet food for weight control as well as his Urinary Care food and he had begun to gradually lose weight. Knock on wood, he has not had anymore glucose issues for about a year now.