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Cats, Vets, and Other Sucky Things
Apr. 12th, 2011 11:47 amOur neighborhood cat hospital has unfortunately been turning increasingly sucky this year. We used to be able to order Cobweb's formulated chew medicines and expect them to arrive as regular as anything 4-5 days later. Now, for the second time this year, we've discovered that the vet's office sat on the order for a few days before sending it on to Texas. So, we're once more giving Cobweb pills. This is not a good thing.
Last night we first had first had to figure out how we were going to interrelate our two-ways-to-torture-Cobweb: the pills and the subcutaneous fluid. We decided fluid, then pill. I don't know if this was necessarily the wrong choice, but it turned out poorly.
Like the OJ Simpson Case, giving Cobweb a pill has always been a bit of a trial ... but nothing like last night. She yowled, she gnashed her teeth, and she spit out the pill again and again. She'd hold it in her mouth and refuse to swallow. Finally we got her pill down (the first of two for the day) only because most of it dissolved, I think.
After that Kimberly and I went to get some ice cream to make us feel better, as we were probably more traumatized than the cat. Well, she got ice cream, and I got a cookie. We also picked up a "pill shooter" at the vet, which is supposed to help get the pill to the back of the cat's mouth. It seemed to mostly work for the second pill of the day. She only spat it out once or twice.
Still no medicated treats today, so we'll be giving her another pill at lunch.
Our vet also failed to get us the results for Cobweb's newest kidney test yesterday. They finally got them back today and I learned that she still has a kidney infection and they want to send out a test to a lab to find the precise type of bacteria she's picked up, so that they can apply a more precise antibiotic.
It's a bit of money, but we're probably still willing to pay for it. Hopefully her cat insurance will end up picking up some of the recent costs, in any case. But she needs to go back to the vet for her 4th or 5th visit in a couple of weeks. (She fortunately hasn't been very traumatized by recent visits and Munchkin's hissing has likewise been minimized.)
On the worse side, she's largely stopped eating (again) lately, which is pretty bad given her weight. I assume that's the infection returning too (though until the vet phone call this morning, I was thinking she was once more bored with her food choice). And it's going to be a couple of days before they get results back from the labs, added on to the day that they just sat on the tests, it's all time that our increasingly scrawny cat can't really afford. Hopefully she'll be able to get a new antiobiotic by the end of the week, but I have little faith given the recent performance of the vet's office*.
* I carefully say vet's office, because this all appears to be administrative issues. Our actual vet is great.
I was annoyed by some other company yesterday where we were also having to work around their crappy procedures, but I can't even remember who at this point. Not Directv, who we're abandoning when Doctor Who season 6 is over because their DVR sucks. Not Berkeley's recycling, who missed our recycling last week and took days to pick it up. Not East Bay Parks, who removed the bench we always sit on at the dog park. Someone else. But it pales before kitty unhealth that looks like it's going south.
Fortunately I could mostly zone out yesterday evening, following my day of programming & administration. That's much my preference when things aren't going tops, but it wasn't possible during the long period of book writing ...
Last night we first had first had to figure out how we were going to interrelate our two-ways-to-torture-Cobweb: the pills and the subcutaneous fluid. We decided fluid, then pill. I don't know if this was necessarily the wrong choice, but it turned out poorly.
Like the OJ Simpson Case, giving Cobweb a pill has always been a bit of a trial ... but nothing like last night. She yowled, she gnashed her teeth, and she spit out the pill again and again. She'd hold it in her mouth and refuse to swallow. Finally we got her pill down (the first of two for the day) only because most of it dissolved, I think.
After that Kimberly and I went to get some ice cream to make us feel better, as we were probably more traumatized than the cat. Well, she got ice cream, and I got a cookie. We also picked up a "pill shooter" at the vet, which is supposed to help get the pill to the back of the cat's mouth. It seemed to mostly work for the second pill of the day. She only spat it out once or twice.
Still no medicated treats today, so we'll be giving her another pill at lunch.
Our vet also failed to get us the results for Cobweb's newest kidney test yesterday. They finally got them back today and I learned that she still has a kidney infection and they want to send out a test to a lab to find the precise type of bacteria she's picked up, so that they can apply a more precise antibiotic.
It's a bit of money, but we're probably still willing to pay for it. Hopefully her cat insurance will end up picking up some of the recent costs, in any case. But she needs to go back to the vet for her 4th or 5th visit in a couple of weeks. (She fortunately hasn't been very traumatized by recent visits and Munchkin's hissing has likewise been minimized.)
On the worse side, she's largely stopped eating (again) lately, which is pretty bad given her weight. I assume that's the infection returning too (though until the vet phone call this morning, I was thinking she was once more bored with her food choice). And it's going to be a couple of days before they get results back from the labs, added on to the day that they just sat on the tests, it's all time that our increasingly scrawny cat can't really afford. Hopefully she'll be able to get a new antiobiotic by the end of the week, but I have little faith given the recent performance of the vet's office*.
* I carefully say vet's office, because this all appears to be administrative issues. Our actual vet is great.
I was annoyed by some other company yesterday where we were also having to work around their crappy procedures, but I can't even remember who at this point. Not Directv, who we're abandoning when Doctor Who season 6 is over because their DVR sucks. Not Berkeley's recycling, who missed our recycling last week and took days to pick it up. Not East Bay Parks, who removed the bench we always sit on at the dog park. Someone else. But it pales before kitty unhealth that looks like it's going south.
Fortunately I could mostly zone out yesterday evening, following my day of programming & administration. That's much my preference when things aren't going tops, but it wasn't possible during the long period of book writing ...