medication

Les pilules de Catorze

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Thank you so much to everyone who wished Louis Catorze a bon anniversaire and who donated to charitable causes in his honour. He had a great day, bouncing around, screaming and full of energy, although the bad weather meant we had to postpone some of the celebrations for this weekend. That said, he doesn’t know what a weekend is and, come to think of it, he doesn’t even know what a birthday is, so tant pis.

Cat Daddy also had a ball, managing to lose his phone after far too much white wine. He later found it in the garden, where he had left it after trying (and failing) to take the perfect Official 10th Birthday Portrait of Sa Maj. Cat Daddy also said lots of rude sweary words whilst watching the government’s daily briefing, then picked up his boy and murmured, “Sorry, Louis, for being angry on your birthday.”

Catorze had the unexpected birthday treat of being double-pilled by accident, receiving his whole day’s dose in one morning. Now, I know you are thinking I would have to be pretty stupid to double-pill a cat by accident. But I was tricked, as follows:

1. I placed the Trojan Horse Pill Pocket on Catorze’s plate but he refused to eat it.

2. I tried to persuade him about 739 times, but he continued to refuse.

3. I gave up and pilled him using the Greco-Roman method, leaving the first pill in his bowl (GROSSE ERREUR).

4. Little sod changed his mind and ate it immediately after being Greco-Romaned, when I wasn’t looking.

Had I been on holiday I most likely would have thought to remove the Trojan Horse from his bowl after pilling him but, because I am working full days from home, I have other things to do and I forgot. So now all pills not for immediate consumption are locked away in the way one would lock away sharp knives or drain unblocker from small children.

We were supposed to have moved well into the tapering phase of Catorze’s medication by now but, because the silly sod scratched himself when we unCôned him, we had to increase his dose for a while. Tomorrow we will be reducing him from two pills to one pill a day but, now that I have told you that, I’m pretty sure he will do something to mess it up again.

This (below) is the kind of behaviour we have been having to deal with, both with and without the pills. At 10 years old he should be trying to slow down, right? Yeah, well, he isn’t.

Might as well JUMP!

Les petites pilules irrégulières

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I don’t know whether collecting Louis Catorze’s medication from the vet is something that most would class as an “essential journey” but, yesterday – BEFORE the announcement from our esteemed leader, I might add – it was essential to us.

The little sod’s next steroid shot is due in the first week of April and, because we have no idea what state the world will be in by then, we contacted the vet to ask about a tablet version that we could administer at home. Catorze is quite hit and miss when it comes to pills – sometimes he will happily eat them in a Pill Pocket, sometimes he won’t – but we can’t risk injection time coming around and us not being allowed to leave the house.

We walked the seven minutes or so to the vet practice just before 6pm, when we knew the streets would be quieter, having paid for the pills over the phone beforehand. When we arrived, the nurse put down the bottle on the doorstep and I picked it up after she had closed the door. It’s all quite surreal and strange, like some post-apocalyptic horror film, and the ominous sense of dread increased in triplicate when I realised that it wasn’t just one or two pills but a course of two a day, for two weeks. Oh. Mon. Dieu.

Here is Catorze, using his quarantine time to project some very artistic shadow shapes with Le Cône. Please stay safe, everyone.

And that’s why they call him the Sun King.

Un régal pour les yeux

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You’ve got to admire Louis Catorze’s positivity: even in Le Cône and with all the doors and windows shut, when he saw me coming with the Flamazine* the other day he still thought he could outrun me.

We had been granting him very limited and controlled Cône-free time behind closed (and locked) doors, to allow him to wash. Initially he would wash his sore bits too roughly, so Le Cône would be slapped back on after just a couple of minutes. But, over the last week, we had managed to progressively extend the Cône-free time and had worked our way up to a good hour or so.

However, the other night, on Cat Daddy’s watch, Le Cône was taken off and Sa Maj fell asleep on his daddy’s lap. But, after a few too many bottles glasses of Louis Latour (yes, it is an actual wine), Cat Daddy fell asleep, too. And sneaky Catorze took advantage of his daddy’s pass-out and now has a sore eye due to unsupervised over-zealous washing.

The wound is, no doubt, very itchy as it heals, so the little sod has resumed his efforts to scratch. He has also started to refuse the morning Piriton that he used to eat quite happily in a Pill Pocket.

Anyway, the new rule is: no unCôned time whilst intoxicated. And, although intoxication feels like the only way we can deal with all that’s going on in the world right now, it’s a sacrifice we are willing to make for our boy.

*Flamazine should not be ingested, so wash time cannot coincide with ointment time.

What a mess.

L’ennemi externe

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Louis Catorze’s biopsy results are in. And it seems that, whilst he appears to have ninety-nine problems, an autoimmune disease ain’t one.

Although the test can’t pinpoint the exact cause, it’s looking likely that he is triggered by one or more external allergens rather than by having something intrinsically wrong with his body. So, after many years of Cat Daddy muttering “Knowing him, he’s probably just allergic to himself”, this has now officially been declared unlikely.

This is further forward than we have ever been before with the little sod.

Here is a summary of the treatments that he had on Tuesday night:

1. Removal of biopsy stitches.

2. Antibacterial ointment (Flamazine) applied to his now-healing self-harm wounds.

3. A dose of Advocate alongside his Broadline to rule out a flea allergy, because the vet found traces of flea poo* in his fur. (Yes, I do flea-treat him every month. No, I have never missed a dose.)

4. A souped-up version of the month-long steroid shot, because now we know for sure that Catorze doesn’t have some freakish, as-yet-undiscovered-by-science-but-soon-to-be-named-after-him medical condition which could be worsened by steroids.

* FLEA POO. THE POO OF FLEAS. MY LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN NOW THAT I KNOW THIS IS A THING.

We have discussed with the vet the possibility of a hypoallergenic diet, but Catorze has been on Lily’s Kitchen Fabulous Fish since May 2018, long before his symptoms reappeared, plus Lily’s Kitchen have written to me to confirm that all their recipes are hypoallergenic anyway. So Cat Daddy and I have agreed that we won’t implement a change of diet until later on, and only if all else fails. We have been guilty in the past of throwing too many solutions at Catorze and not really having any idea of which ones – if any – have worked, so I don’t think it’s a bad idea to be a little more measured this time around and to try one thing at a time.

The relatively newly-introduced Delicious Chicken, however, is off the menu, and my friend’s cat Boots will be the happy recipient of the brand new, unopened pack currently sitting in our cupboard. Even though he is a meaty monster and the last thing he needs is more food (see photo below for proof).

Anyway, the thought of flea poo has disgusted us so profoundly that we are now busily washing cushions and blankets on an extra-hot wash, and Cat Daddy is giving serious thought to replacing our fabric sofa with a leather one (and claiming the money back from Sa Maj’s sick fund).

We are hoping beyond hope that this will mark a turnaround in the little sod’s health.

This Boots is made for eating.

Entre le chat et son maître, il n’y a que le saut d’une puce

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662F11CD-B9E0-4B4F-BF02-343413195030Cat Daddy: “Why don’t you give Louis his flea treatment now?”

Me: “He’s moving around too much. It’ll be easier if I pounce when he’s asleep and unsuspecting.”

Cat Daddy: “Just hold him down.”

Me: “Trust me, he’ll holler and kick and the treatment will go all over me instead of on him.”

Cat Daddy, sighing and doing that “Oh, for crying out loud” face: “Give it to me. I’ll do it.”

Me: “Fine. But you’ll be sorry.”

He was. But at least he will be free of fleas for a month. 

Pity the same can’t be said of Louis Catorze. 

Les caresses de chat donnent des puces

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C584A943-212A-47E7-9B98-81566F8D670CMy plan to make Louis Catorze a zero-waste kitty has reached an obstacle: spot-on flea treatment. Not only is the market fairly limited in terms of products – with some well known to be utterly useless – but not a single one is plastic-free. So it won’t be quite as simple as swapping brands, as we did with the little sod’s food. 

Louis Catorze uses Broadline, which has the added benefit of also treating worms and therefore absolving us of the Greco-Roman death-wrestle when we try to get a worming pill into him. Each little vial comes individually wrapped in a plastic tray with a peel-off film cover. Whilst I can see why vets and pet shops would want such packaging for sterility, I wrote to the manufacturer to ask if there may be another option for at-home users.

The response – which, unbelievably, came from a lovely customer services lady named Cat – was that the packaging was needed to keep the product stable and to comply with some fancy-sounding European safety law. 

(When I told others about Cat, very worryingly a couple of friends told me that the name must just be a coincidence, as if I genuinely thought the company might only recruit people with animal names or, worse, that I thought they had an actual cat managing their customer service enquiries.)

I wrote back to Broadline Cat and asked if they were doing anything to find an alternative to plastic. I understood about the product stability – after all, we wouldn’t want rancid chemicals to cause Catorze to mutate and turn into the scary Monsieur Hyde version of himself – but, given the ticking time bomb that is single-use plastic, I hoped that there might be another way. (Cat Daddy remarked that Catorze already IS the scary, mutant Monsieur Hyde version, and that a cocktail of putrid chemicals couldn’t possibly make things worse in that respect.)

Broadline Cat replied as follows: 

“Please rest assured that Boehringer Ingelheim continuously look to make improvements where possible to improve our environmental impact. Whilst there is nothing more we can share currently on this particular area, we will ensure to raise this with global manufacturing and supply chain colleagues working on our environmental programmes.”

I don’t know what the solution is for packaging spot-on flea treatment. But I hope Broadline Cat will be true to her word and that they will continue to look for one. 

Un médicament amer peut sauver la vie

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Cat Daddy has been feeling a little sheepish and guilty for the last couple of days. This is not just because he didn’t believe me when I told him that Louis Catorze was bleeding, but also because he is now paranoid that he caused the injury through too-rough rough play.

Although this is highly unlikely, we have started to be a little more gentle with our poor boy. Unfortunately this is not mutual, as Catorze has been fighting like a rabid hell-hound every time I attempt to give him his eye ointment and, quite frankly, it’s a miracle that I haven’t accidentally stabbed him in the eye with the tube and made the injury worse. Being a cream rather than a watery liquid, it’s quite tricky to apply, even when one is not also holding down a writhing, screaming animal with the strength of 10 grizzly bears. If I don’t take off the lid in advance of the application it means I’m fumbling around trying to do it whilst also doing the Greco-Roman death-wrestle, but if I DO take off the lid in advance of the application, the little sod smells the ointment and does a runner. 

Day 1 was not very successful as I was on target with the eye ointment but it splurged all over Catorze’s face as well. There was also the added stress of it being a Broadline day, so I had a total of THREE Greco-Roman death-wrestles to deal with that day. Day 2 was, sadly, much like Day 1. And on Day 3 I tried to reduce the pressure on the tube by 90% but this appeared to reduce the splurge by only about 0.3%. When the little sod came to offer forgiveness cuddles later on, he took me by surprise by approaching with completely noiseless pitter-pattering, and, as he jumped onto my stomach with no warning, my scream of, “JEEESUS, Louis!” sent him scuttling off again, making me feel like an absolute monster.

Tomorrow is Day 5. This really, really cannot end soon enough. 

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Les mûres de la colère

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Yesterday evening Cat Daddy and I marked the end of Psychological Summer with some celebratory fizz in the garden, and all was going well until I wiped Louis Catorze’s weepy eyes with some tissue and discovered that one was oozing blood. 

I am generally of the view that, if Catorze is well enough to eat, drink and scream, then he’s fine. But blood is never, ever good. Despite Cat Daddy’s protests that it was “probably just blackberry juice”, I rang the vet in a panic and booked a 6:30 appointment, then rang again and made a 6:50 appointment when the little sod did a runner and I realised that we wouldn’t be able to catch him in time for 6:30.

After barricading the cat flap so that he couldn’t escape back out again, cornering him and stuffing him into his pod, we took him, screaming, to the vet. Whilst Cat Daddy rolled his eyes and continued to mutter things about blackberry juice, the vet first tested for eye ulcers by dropping a scary fluorescent green liquid into Catorze’s eyes – to the sound of Cat Daddy’s giggles and daft questions about whether it would make Catorze glow in the dark – and then peered under his upper eyelids where she discovered that he had cut himself. I prayed that we wouldn’t have to do the Greco-Roman death-wrestle to shove medication down his throat, only to be told the horrifying news that we would have to shove it into his EYE instead. Twice a day, for 5 days. Oh. Seigneur. Dieu. 

“Do you know how he might have cut his eye?” I asked. 

“It could have been any number of things,” the vet replied. “Scratching himself, or catching it on something. Possibly a plant.”

Cat Daddy: “Could it have been a blackberry plant?”

[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets.]

Anyway, a few minutes and £44 later, we were back at Le Château finishing our fizz and Catorze was happily pitter-pattering around us. The only indication that we had been to the vet was Cat Daddy complaining about the almighty cost for such a tiny injury and still insisting that it was blackberry juice and not blood. 

And, to make matters worse, I had a stressful evening and a fitful night’s sleep because Catorze later disappeared, which is unlike him; he now tends to forgive us quite quickly for vet visits and his days of Le Grand Mega-Sulk are long gone. I was terrified that he had reacted to the fluorescent green stuff and gone somewhere quiet to die, but I discovered this morning that we had forgotten to unbarricade the cat flap and so the poor little sod had been stuck outside all night. As I write this, I am giving him guilt-cuddles on the sofa whilst I drink my morning teapigs tea, feeling like the second-worst human being ever (with Cat Daddy being the worst, for his refusal to believe me when I said I’d seen blood) and wondering how the flip I am going to hold him still and get this medication into his eye. 

To prove a point to Cat Daddy: one of the pictures below is of what I wiped from Catorze’s eye, and the other is blackberry juice. Spot la différence?

Croisons les doigts …

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5EF3EADF-1D92-4DCF-9CFF-6045FAB00153At the weekend, whilst we were lying in bed giving him cuddles, Louis Catorze chased his tail again.

We let him do it, just to see how long it would go on (happily it was no more than a few seconds) and to see if we could ascertain whether it was playful or something more sinister, but we couldn’t tell. In fact, we didn’t even really know what we were looking out for; I had this idea that sharp pounces were playful and that smoother, more seamless chasing were sinister but there’s no science in that.

Catorze has been Gabapentin-free and doing well for 2 months now, so it would be devastating beyond belief for him to start displaying symptoms again. Please send the little sod your good wishes: not so much “get well” but “don’t you DARE get sick again.”

A genoux

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We are so grateful to our eagle-eyed French friend who, during our absence, reported cramp-like symptoms in Louis Catorze’s back left foot, causing him to limp and whine a little.

Because this only happened a total of 3 times during our 2-week holiday, and never for more than a minute each time, we didn’t ask her to bundle Louis Catorze into his pod and take him to the vet. But, when I witnessed it twice the day after our return, I decided to take him myself. And, fortunately, I also took the precaution of filming the limping, because I knew that the little sod would refuse to demonstrate it to the vet when it really mattered.

I had been quite upset the night before the appointment, wondering whether he was on some sort of painful, nerve-related, post-Gabapentin comedown, so it was actually a relief to be told that he had dislocated his knee. Apparently there are 4 levels of severity when it comes to dislocated joints, and Catorze’s is the lowest level due to the fact that it pops easily back into place each time, enabling him to walk normally again immediately afterwards. But there’s nothing we can do about it other than give him Metacam for pain relief and monitor him to make sure that it doesn’t deteriorate.

The vet also told us not to allow Louis Catorze to become overweight, as excess chub would put stress on the knee joint. I assured him that, because Catorze doesn’t like food of any kind, this would be no problem whatsoever.

Cat Daddy, later: “Another defect to add to his list of defects. I guess it’s all part of being the runt of the litter.”

Actually, given that Cat Daddy himself has knee problems, and that my neck pain sometimes requires me to have steroid injections, it would appear that Louis Catorze is … turning into his parents.

Here he is, treating his dislocated knee with the sensible caution that it deserves:

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Le Roi est content: vive Le Roi!

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This week we seem to have been disproportionately busy with pointless things. Firstly, I excitedly took delivery of a mystery parcel, only to discover that it was the beeswax candles that I had ordered to combat the hay fever that Louis Catorze doesn’t have.

And, secondly, after a whole day spent trying to capture the sneezing and wheezing on video so that the vet could see it, I have had the embarrassment of telling them to ignore said video on account of the fact that Catorze wasn’t unwell: he had just snorted a blade of grass.

The good news, however, is that the little sod’s Gabapentin taper is going brilliantly, and he has managed to defy the odds and get down to 1 x 25mg every other day. The vet is surprised and delighted that we have managed to keep it under control with such a low dose, which isn’t typical of the other cats on his feline hyperesthesia forum. And he is continuing to eat Pill Pockets, so the Greco-Roman combat is well and truly a thing of the past. So, if this positive snap continues, hopefully the meds will be completely gone by August and he will be able to have a nice, substance-free summer (apart from the steroid jabs).

Here is a very rare shot of Catorze snuggling ME, rather than his daddy, on our outdoor sofa, the day after l’extraction de l’herbe. I like to think of this as his way of saying, “Merci, Maman.”

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Le tricheur royal

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Remember when Louis Catorze liked pâté de Bruxelles? Yeah, well, now he doesn’t. So we’re back to Greco-Romaning him again, and you all know what a cirque de merde that is. One of our friends witnessed it the other day and said, “Oh my God, that was absolutely HORRIBLE!” Erm, no blood was drawn and nobody died, which actually makes that a decent session. Wait till you see one of the bad ones, mon coco!

And I never thought I would use the words “Louis Catorze” and “clever” in the same sentence, but the little sod is finding more and more ingenious ways of avoiding his pill. His latest trick is to pretend he’s swallowed it, press his body against me for a fake cuddle and then silently spit the pill over my shoulder and into my hair.

I have coarse, curly hair so the pill remains stuck there for some time and, because I don’t notice it, I assume it has been swallowed. Obviously it dislodges itself eventually and falls onto the floor, but we didn’t think anything of it because we are quite used to seeing pills strewn about Le Château from failed Greco-Roman attempts. So Catorze has been able to get away with this treachery until now.

Le Roi’s little plan was finally foiled when Cat Daddy came home right after I’d just Greco-Romaned and cuddled notre cher ami, and he said, “There’s something in your hair.”

Quel. Fichu. Salaud.

So now I have to give my hair a good old shake after pilling time, just to be sure.

If I’m honest, the lies and deceit offend me far more than the non-pill-taking. “It’s a bit of a tragic day,” I said to Cat Daddy, “when the only cuddles you get from your cat are fake ones.”

Cat Daddy, not even glancing up from his laptop: “I wouldn’t know.”

Aïe.

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Les mots sont la plus puissante drogue

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img_8679Louis Catorze has been sans Cône for a few weeks now, and I’m elated to report that he hasn’t gone for his tail once in that time.

We have even been able to leave him unsupervised (for a few minutes at first, then for progressively longer periods) and he has behaved himself in our absence. When we come home from work we still systematically check his tail for telltale signs of attack – dampness, thinning fur, gushing rivers of blood, that kind of thing – but there have been none whatsoever.

Keeping him Côned and under house arrest for almost 24 hours a day wasn’t much fun. It was obvious why he hated it – after all, none of us would want to live with something like that around our neck – but the fact that his vision, hearing, balance and feeding were all compromised by Le Cône went beyond mere inconvenience: it made him insecure, vulnerable and clingy. And, whilst the twisted, selfish part of me rather enjoyed having my boy constantly at my side, requesting to be picked up and sleeping squashed between us, the fact that he didn’t feel 100% safe without us made us sad.

Now all that is behind him and he’s going in and out freely, chasing bugs, antagonising magpies and sending Oscar the dog completely ballistic. It has been very tempting to relax on the pilling now that he’s doing so well, but the instructions were very clear: we are to bombard him with Gabapentin and then wean him off very gradually. And we’re due to see the vet at the end of the month, so that they can confirm when we may start cutting down and advise us on how to do it safely.

Sadly I know the horror of coming off heavy-duty medication, even when tapering down very gradually: when I came off Tramadol after my spinal surgery, I was hysterical and homicidal for weeks. Given that Louis Catorze was already both of those things even before the pills, I dread to think what weaning off will do to him … but we’re ready for it.

 

Un voyage de mille kilomètres commence par un seul pas

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img_8495We still feel very positive and optimistic after the feedback from the Royal Veterinary College. However, the words “We need to treat this quite aggressively” – which is what we were told on Friday – are still ringing in my ears, as are the words of one of the other vets at the practice, who told Cat Daddy on the phone that treating this condition would be “a hard slog”.

Feline hyperesthesia is a very rare and complex thing indeed. Our good friend Google will give you plenty of information about it but, to save you some tapping and scrolling, here it is in a nutshell:

– Prevention: not known
– Causes: not known
– Main symptoms*: irritated skin; eyeing tail warily as if it were an alien being; over-grooming or scratching of tail & lower body; hissing or yowling at tail; attacking tail; appearing glassy-eyed and in a trance; touch-sensitive flesh that quivers on contact, which gives it its nickname of “rolling skin syndrome” (although, interestingly, Louis Catorze has never displayed this symptom, which was why we initially didn’t think he had the condition)
– Testing: none
– Cure: none
– Treatment: usually bombardment by anti-anxiety and/or neurological drugs and/or, in extreme cases, amputation of the tail

(*Obviously, if your cat is displaying these, or other, symptoms, please don’t make any assumptions based on my word: SEE SOMEONE WHO IS QUALIFIED. I am neither a vet nor an animal behaviourist, and I can only give anecdotal advice.)

The next step for Louis Catorze is to continue on the Gabapentin, varying the dose until we hit upon the magical level that completely stops him from attacking his tail. Then, after a few months on that level, we will gradually try to wean him off.

This means that, for the foreseeable future, at least, extended holidays away won’t be possible, as we will need to be home to monitor him and make sure his routine isn’t too disrupted. But, given that my favourite place to be is Le Château, and my favourite people with whom to spend time are Cat Daddy and Le Roi, this shouldn’t be too much of a hardship.

We knew from the start that we had a special boy, and knowing that he’s one in several thousand makes me love the little sod even more.

Statement from Cat Daddy: “I think he’s milking it a bit.”