vet

Le roi lion

~ iamthesunking ~ 21 Comments

Taking a cat to the vet: always an adventure, but never the good kind.

On the morning of our steroid shot appointment, Louis Catorze was nowhere to be found. Cat Daddy eventually found him in the guest bedroom, asleep on the autumn/winter duvet and, just as he tried to grab him, the little sod darted under the bed.

Cat Daddy shut him in the bedroom whilst we finished our tea, so that at least we wouldn’t have to search for him when it was time to go.

Then the screaming started.

When we went back upstairs to put Catorze into his transportation pod, he decided that he no longer wanted to be released from the room and dived back under the bed.

Eventually it was a two-man effort to flush him out, with one of us (Cat Daddy) scrabbling at one side of the bed to make him bolt, and the other (me) catching him on the other side. Catorze never scratches, but he did give me a hefty kicking with his back feet as I scooped him up and stuffed him into the pod.

As usual, we walked across the park to the vet practice with Catorzian screams ringing out through the air, falling silent only when an alarmed brown Labrador in the park stopped to stare at him. And, because the translucent mesh side of the pod was facing that way – we always give him a scenic route, just like Marie Antoinette on her last ride to the guillotine – he was able to stare right back.

The pod has eyes.

The biggest surprise of the morning was that Catorze has gained weight, despite his Ibrahima Konaté-style fasting during the day and only eating after dark. We were all ready to have to deal with decisions about further testing, medication and dietary changes due to his weight loss, but it seems we don’t have to since he’s now a whopping 3.14kg.

There has been some indecision as to whether or not Catorze has a heart murmur; first we were told that he did, then a different vet said that he didn’t, then another one said that maybe he did after all, etc. Apparently one of the danger signs is a cat doing forty breaths, or more, per minute. I have just conducted a little test on Catorze and he did twenty-three, so he’s not even close, nor does he have any of the other classic heart murmur signs such as breathlessness, low energy (!) and a distended belly.

Don’t feel obliged to sit through this; it’s literally a minute and two seconds of my cat breathing. You will never get that time back.

We came away from the appointment with our hearts full. Our wallets, on the other hand, were anything but.

Cat Daddy, to Catorze later: “£120, Louis. That’s how much you cost us today.”

Catorze: “Mwah!”

(It was actually £130, but never mind.)

As we approach Beltane and Le Roi’s birthday, it looks as if he will be in his finest form yet. This is wonderful and terrifying in equal measure.

When you’re goth, but you still love pretty pink blossoms.

Trop miauler fatigue les oreilles

~ iamthesunking ~ 32 Comments

Earlier this week, we took Louis Catorze to the vet for his steroid shot.

He has lost weight and is now down to 3.05kg, but this is quite normal for him at this time of year. However, rather more worrying has been his recent increased ear-scratching and head-shaking. And, when the vet stuck a cotton bud into his ear, she told us that she had “never seen gunge that colour [grey] before”.

Oh dear. Only Catorze could ooze freakish alien mank unknown to the world of science.

The vet called back a few days later to tell us that Catorze’s ears were “yeasty and waxy” with “ROS bacteria” (Reactive Oxygen Species, apparently – no idea what this means). Treatment will involve giving him ten drops (!) of ointment in each ear (!!) every day for a week (!!!!!!!).

Catorze doesn’t even like anything lightly brushing against his ears, so the thought of pulling them open and squirting liquid in doesn’t bear thinking about. Unlike the spot-on, where I’ve always got away with flinging the contents of the vial in Catorze’s direction and considering the job done if a few drops landed on him, with ear medication it’s pointless doing it half-arsèdly. There’s even a special way that you have to hold the ear when you’re doing it, otherwise the liquid just swishes around the outside and doesn’t go in.

The medicine, a product called Aurizon, sounds pretty severe. We have to monitor Catorze very closely and, if he displays any signs such as weird walking and head tilting, we’re to stop treatment and take him to the vet immediately.

Oh. Mon. Dieu.

Cat Daddy: “It might not be too bad. Wait till you try it.”

“You”?

Anyway, I have collected the ear drops from the vet, and I’m optimistically hoping that the little sod will sit for me as beautifully as this YouTube cat does for his human.

He won’t, will he?

Witchcraft and/or rum are the only things that will make this work.

Le traitement anti-puces

~ iamthesunking ~ 23 Comments

Louis Catorze’s new spot-on treatment, which covers fleas, ticks and two types of arse-worm, is a life-changer. However, as is the Catorzian way, this doesn’t stop the little sod from making it as difficult as is felinely possible when it happens.

There is a rather handy gap in our coffee table, between the flat wooden bit and the metal frame bit. The tube fits upright in this gap, so I was able to take off the lid, stand it up within reach and wait for the little sod to appear.

What a piece of luck.

Except … he didn’t appear. I have no idea what he was doing – clearly not Rodent Duty, because his friend came back to do that on his behalf (see below) – but Catorze was absent for ages. When he did finally show his silly face, he sat upright on my lap, sniffing suspiciously around him and refusing to sleep.

“It’s all under control here. As you were.”

After a few minutes of feigning sleep, Catorze started washing. Then he went for a drink and pitter-pattered over to a corner of the room to look at nothing in particular. Then he went outside again. He did everything but the one thing I wanted him to do: fall asleep on my lap. And, all the while, the liquid in the teeny-tiny tube was probably evaporating fast.

I got him in the end. Incredibly, I was even able to burrow right down to the skin, which is what you’re supposed to do with spot-on but I’ve probably only managed it twice in my life. There was much less liquid than in the previous Broadline tube, so there was less neck ick afterwards and Catorze didn’t seem inclined to roll off the residue onto every absorbent surface in the house. And, astonishingly, I was forgiven immediately afterwards. He ran at first, but then came back and settled on my lap again.

A bit less gross than usual.

It wasn’t the most fun that Catorze or I have ever had in an afternoon. But the fact that I don’t have to do it every month certainly dulls some of the pain, even if it does come at the price of £44 per treatment.

If you fancy going through the torment of spot-on four times a year instead of twelve, this is the magic elixir.

Parler sans rien dire

~ iamthesunking ~ 39 Comments

Cold, dry and bright days are my favourite kind: no sweat, no rain, and everything outside looks glorious. We were lucky enough to have had such a day last week so, naturellement, we had to ruin it by carrying a screaming cat through the park and paying £124 to be told that there’s nothing wrong with him.

(Well, that sum of money was for a combination of the consultation, the steroid shot and the ruinously-expensive-but-joyously-infrequent flea, tick and double-arse-worm treatment. We didn’t pay the whole thing just for the advice, but you get what I mean, non?)

On the way there, we saw a pretty tabby cat sitting on the roof of a neighbouring house. And, when we returned, we saw that she was still there:

My stupid brain thought that the sun was casting a shadow next to her but, in actual fact, she was deep in telepathic communication with a tuxedo comrade:

Putting the world to rights. THEIR world. Not ours.
“Don’t forget, as soon as the clock hits 3am … PARKOUR!”

When I shared the photo on my family’s WhatsApp group chat, my sister said, “Is that house in [name of street]?”

Me: “Yes, that’s right. How did you know?”

Her: “When we visited for Christmas, we walked past that same house and there were FOUR cats on that roof.”

Oh. Mon. Dieu.

Have we found the epicentre of The Mothership’s mysterious workings? Or are there many similar places around the world where her feline minions gather to telepathise? Please let me know if there has been any similarly suspicious feline activity in your neighbourhood.

Les neuf vies du chat

~ iamthesunking ~ 40 Comments

Nothing says “The joys of the Yuletide season” quite like a trip to the vet.

On Friday I had to take Louis Catorze for his steroid shot and, astonishingly, there was bone-chilling silence on the walk there. It was quite the departure from his usual gut-wrenching screaming, especially that one time when he screamed so badly that some random passer-by didn’t believe I was taking my cat to the vet, and thought I’d just grabbed Catorze off the street. The man actually stood and watched me as I walked off, to see if I even knew which way the vet was.

As soon as we arrived and Catorze realised that we were in his least favourite place in the world, he broke his silence. Luckily nobody else was in the waiting room at the time, so at least we were spared whining, upset dogs and other cats being goaded into joining in the screaming.

Anyway, we have two pieces of news:

Firstly, Catorze doesn’t have a heart murmur; the little shit was faking it. Thank God I didn’t find this out via the £500 scan.

Secondly, he has snapped the end off one of his fangs. It’s a minuscule chip, on the same side where one of his jowls hangs lower than the other, hence why we didn’t notice it despite knowing every millimetre of his silly little face. And there’s no exposed dental pulp (ugh – I wish I had never learned that this is a thing) so he isn’t experiencing any pain or sensitivity. But if it gets worse – and let’s face it, it’s hardly going to get better, is it? – the fang will have to come out.

We then talked about alternatives to steroids, such as hypoallergenic food (nope) and daily medication (nope), and a blood test (HELL to the NOPE) to determine the exact state of Catorze’s drug-ravaged innards. The vet also suggested that we monitor his drinking, but I have no idea how to do that; Catorze not only drinks from his glass but also from the surface of the outdoor table, the manky old watering can by the barbecue and probably a whole host of other vile places that don’t bear thinking about.

Oh, and the pleasure of all of the above cost me £80.

Within minutes of getting home and being released from his transportation pod, Catorze was on my lap. I don’t know whether he forgave me or whether he just forgot what had just happened, but I suspect the latter.

I’m glad, at least, that one of us is over it.

Bastard cat.

Il n’y a pas de plus beau poème que de vivre pleinement

~ iamthesunking ~ 63 Comments

What is good about having a pet?

It might not be the best time for me to answer this prompt, since we have just returned home from taking Louis Catorze for his booster vaccination. If you have ever had to take an animal to a vet, you will know just how dire it can be: a fight to the death to shove a screaming hell-beast into a transportation vessel, more gladiatorial combat during the appointment itself, receiving news ranging from a bit shit to utterly heartbreaking, and having to hand over a ruinous sum of money at the end. It’s pretty grim.

Fortunately for us, our news today was only at the “a bit shit” end of the spectrum. After cooing and squeeing at how small Catorze is, and talking to him in her cat lady voice, the vet (who hadn’t met him before) checked his heart and told us that he had a heart murmur. “A very obvious one”, apparently.

The symptoms of a heart murmur could be any of the following*:

• Chronic weight loss or muscle wasting 

• Decreased appetite 

• Hiding behaviour

• Weakness 

• Coughing or wheezing 

• Exercise intolerance: panting with mild exertion 

• Increased respiratory rate at rest 

• Increased effort to breathe, open mouth breathing, abdominal push to exhale, dyssynchronous breathing (I had to Google “dyssynchronous” because that spelling didn’t, and still doesn’t, look right), or outstretched neck

• Fluid from mouth or nostrils 

• Change in the colour of the gums to blue, grey or white

• Lethargy 

• Collapse 

• Paralysis of the hind limbs 

• Painful vocalisation 

Catorze has never shown any of these. (Well, his vocalisation is often painful for those who are forced to listen to it, but I don’t suppose that’s what they mean here.)

The appointment cost us £72, which comes hot on the heels of the £63.92 that we paid a few days ago for his 8-weekly subscription of the most expensive cat food on the planet. At the end of the month, his £80 steroid shot is due. And, if we want to find out exactly how bad the heart murmur is, we have the option of a £500 scan.

People have been asking us how Catorze is, and our answer is the same as ever: full of beans and loving life. He doesn’t know that he has a heart murmur and, even if he did, he wouldn’t give even the faintest hint of a shite.

“Not very well” yet well enough to stare at me with utter contempt.

*I am not a medical practitioner. If you think your cat might have a heart murmur, or even if you’re not sure and think they may just be milking it for attention, don’t be guided by what I’ve said here. Please consult an actual vet.

La faculté de médicine

~ iamthesunking ~ 40 Comments

You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?

Ok, so a vet appointment isn’t, by most people’s reasonable interpretation, a cross-country trip. However, if you have ever had to transport a screaming animal to somewhere it doesn’t want to be transported, you will know that it really feels like one.

At present, it’s a ten-minute walk across the park, and Catorze is so gossamer-light that even I, with my back problems, can manage to carry him in his swish transportation pod (apart from that one time when I couldn’t). The ease of the walk is such that the convenience outweighs the massive embarrassment of his screaming, which rings out through the park like an air raid siren and causes people to stop in their tracks and look over. However, the vet practice will be closing sometime soon, because the building complex in which it’s situated is due to be renovated. Nobody knows when, or if, it will return to the same place once the renovation is complete.

Luckily they have other branches in W4, W5 and TW3, all of which close by. However, they are further away than our current short walk to the TW8 branch. And the W5 one doesn’t have parking, which means that I would have to either carry screaming Catorze on the bus (no) or drive him to work, somehow keep him contained there all morning and then walk him to his appointment during my lunch hour (HELL, no – his path and those of my students should absolutely never cross).

So my means of transport really depends on where will be going the next time the little sod needs a vet; will it be Happening Hounslow (car), Charming Chiswick (car) or Exciting Ealing (still no idea how)?

A black basket case in a black basket case (pictured during a vet appointment a couple of years ago).

Le Roi poilu

~ iamthesunking ~ 17 Comments

Louis Catorze is now on a combination of Cool Cat Club wet food and dry Orijen. I wasn’t sure when he would be ready for dry food again after his surgery but, since he is well enough to hunt rodents and rip their heads off, he ought to be well enough to crunch a few biscuits.

The little sod is happy. But this is certainly more work as we now have to change his bowl every meal, as opposed to a few times a week (as was possible with dry food). It’s a good thing we have a never-ending supply of bowls, and we have managed to make some of his old ones more user-friendly by kind of piling them in a stack, then putting food in the uppermost one.

Despite eating well, Catorze doesn’t seem to be regaining the weight that he lost when his teeth were giving him trouble. So, earlier this week, Cat Daddy carted him off to his least favourite place in the world. He is back to his December weight of 3.17kg, so he’s gained a tiny amount (40g) since his dental surgery. However, I gave him a mammoth brushing when he returned home, and the extraneous fur (pictured below, with a 50p coin for scale) will amount to at least 40g, so he is probably back down to 3.13kg again.

My first attempt was sabotaged.
Second attempt after hasty rearrangement: success! And this was just Round 1. More fur came off after this.
I discovered by accident that the wonders of technology allow me to copy and share the fur alone, if I want to. Luckily I don’t want to.

The vet told us that, if he didn’t continue to gain weight, a blood test could be conducted, but I would really rather not go down that route because Catorze doesn’t behave for blood tests and would have to be sedated. Cat Daddy also asked about the bald patch, which is continuing to mutate and evolve and will probably be a fully-functioning ecosystem soon. Once again, the vet had no idea what it was and seemed unconcerned since it’s not bothering Catorze. So we will continue to monitor it although, at this rate, it will need its own Twitter account by the end of the week.

Catorze was back outside on Rodent Duty as soon as he returned, showing no indication of stress or trauma. It seems that Cat Daddy and I bear the brunt of all the worry so that Sa Maj won’t have to, although isn’t that what we all do? The little sods have brainwashed us well.

Louis, avez-vous oublié de prendre vos médicaments?

~ iamthesunking ~ 24 Comments

Louis Catorze was prescribed liquid Gabapentin for pain relief after his dental surgery. The vet told us that we could either put it in his food (nope) or syringe it directly into his mouth (hahahahahaha … NOPE) whenever he looked as if he might be in pain.

Since we haven’t the slightest idea how to know when he is in pain, we decided to blob the liquid onto his body at a random moment that suited us, then wait for him to groom it off. We are still waiting.

Ugh.

Catorze sniffed the area, then sniffed the air around him, then looked at me and at Cat Daddy. And he just sat there. Cat Daddy rubbed the liquid into a long streak down the silly sod’s body, in the hope that this would alert him to the presence of a foreign substance, but to no avail. And why would he care? This is the same individual who comes in from the Zone Libre covered in creatures and matter not even recognised by science, and he doesn’t appear to even NOTICE, let alone give a merde.

Catorze happily sat and let the liquid air-dry on his fur. And, when we blobbed on another few drops, this time onto his paws, he did the same thing. So he’s going about the place sporting unsightly, crusty patches of dried Gabapentin on his fur, having ingested absolutely none of it, yet eating, drinking, purring and screaming perfectly happily.

Maybe he doesn’t need the drugs. But I’m starting to feel that maybe I do.

He looks rough as guts but, trust me, there’s nothing wrong with him.

Le beau voyou

~ iamthesunking ~ 29 Comments

Louis Catorze had his dental surgery on Tuesday. He came home that evening sporting some impressive bald patches on his arms, like a prison gang leader with not one but two tattoo sleeves. And, according to Cat Daddy, Catorze lived up to that in the waiting room at check-out time, by making a dog, who had been impeccably behaved up to that point, go absolutely ballistic. Catorze didn’t even make a sound; just being there was enough. The dog’s human was absolutely mortified, but Cat Daddy reassured her that we’d been there many times with many dogs, and that it really wasn’t their fault.

“Soit à table, soit au menu.”

In the end, just one – ONE – small incisor was removed. This is great news because it means that Catorze has been able to keep his famous fangs. But what a drama over one tooth. I spent vast swathes of time, which I will never be able to get back, cutting up his soft food into pieces so minuscule that a baby ant could have swallowed them, and I probably didn’t need to. In fact, now that I think of it, since he was able to hunt, he should have been perfectly capable of chewing a couple of pieces of fish.

The little sod is subdued, and eerily silent; he didn’t utter a sound on the way back from the veterinary practice, and he only managed one feeble wheeze when he arrived. And, despite the fact that Cat Daddy was the one who bundled him into a bag and left him at his least favourite place in the world, he has sat on his papa’s lap but refused to sit on mine. Still, he’s eating and drinking. In fact, now that we have identified his favourite of the Cool Cat Club foods*, we have brought forward our next shipment with a few extra packs of them.

*Catorze especially loves the cod and salmon trays, which have the texture of pâté and which can be guzzled down easily even with hurty and/or no teeth.

Cat Daddy and I had plans to visit my sister and her family this weekend, but we don’t want to leave Sa Maj with a chat-sitteur right after his surgery. So he is in for a double treat: I shall be going away on my own, whilst the gentlemen of the household remain here for a well-deserved, weekend-long Boys’ Club. I have even persuaded Cat Daddy to let Catorze join him in bed, something he usually hates “because it’s like being in bed with a rat” (?).

Thank you again for your good wishes. And, yes, I will be asking Cat Daddy how he knows what it feels like to be in bed with a rat.

Les crocs du Roi

~ iamthesunking ~ 33 Comments

Louis Catorze is going to the vet today so, to cheer him up a little, we watched a vampire film called Day Shift at the weekend. As ever, he showed no reaction to the hisses of his bloodsucking counterparts, nor to the pounding rock music accompanying the fight scenes, but he did up and take notice when the vampires were rounding up cats to keep as familiars:

Me: “Was it the cats or the men that caught your attention?” Le Roi: “Oui.”

Catorze has a condition called Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions (FORL). There is more information about it here but, in essence, it’s the teeth eating themselves. It’s pretty grim. Once it takes hold, it keeps coming back, and sometimes it’s easier to remove lots of teeth at once, rather than subject poor kitty to multiple surgeries removing a few teeth at a time. In the event of the vet recommending a full extraction, I am ready for it. But I really, really hope he will get to keep the famous fangs. (Catorze, I mean. Not the vet.)

Please keep the little sod in your thoughts today. And thank you to everyone who has already sent good wishes.

Maybe he should just sleep through this bit.

Manger, c’est la vie

~ iamthesunking ~ 34 Comments

It has been a week of food-related drama here at Le Château, caused by the males in the household.

Cat Daddy came home drunk the other night after going to the rugby, and he refused the pasta I was making on the basis that he was “not sober enough to appreciate it”. I stopped preparing it and put everything away, only to have him then say, “Where’s the pasta you promised me?” So I dragged the pasta paraphernalia out again, continued where I had left off and, three minutes before it was ready, Cat Daddy announced that he would rather have cheese on toast instead. At that point I lost patience with him and said, “I AM MAKING PASTA. YOU WILL EAT IT. AND YOU WILL SAY THANK YOU FOR IT.”

Meanwhile, Louis Catorze has been making a dreadful mess with his food again, and licking his lips excessively after eating. When I gave him a fresh serving of food last week, he ate about two pellets and creepy-stared at me. I then sprinkled some hot water onto his food, and he wolfed down the lot.

Merde.

If you weren’t around the last time this happened, it means that something is very likely to be wrong with his teeth.

And if you WERE around the last time this happened, you will know that Catorze only eats the watered food if it’s daisy-fresh. If it’s too cold, too dry, too damp, too stale or [insert other bizarre and/or unfathomable reason for rejecting top-notch, expensive food], he won’t eat it and, instead, creepy-stares for a new portion. I daren’t even think about how much we have thrown away because it hasn’t met his stratospherically high expectations. It’s been maddening for us but, as always, this hasn’t dented his spirit in the slightest; Catorze has still been well enough to annoy the absolute merde out of a (male, of course) visitor to Le Château who happens to be allergic to cats. Apparently the screaming and bullying were so bad that Cat Daddy was forced to apologise.

Le Roi is booked in for X-rays and (possibly) dental surgery the week after next. I know. I can’t believe we are back here again, either.

Please get better, little sod.

Traité du zen et de l’entretien des chats

~ iamthesunking ~ 19 Comments

Louis Catorze went for his booster injections yesterday, and what a drama it was.

Obviously he screamed and screamed in the waiting room as usual although, luckily, the only other presence was Poppet the Airedale terrier, who didn’t care and even appeared to wag her tail in time to the screaming. And her Dog Daddy’s glasses were all steamed up after coming in, so I am hoping that he won’t recognise me if he sees me again.

However, it was a new vet administering the shot and, somehow, she wasn’t able to handle a demonically-possessed Catorze in quite the same way that our usual vet does. Every time he thrashed, hissed or screamed, she would hesitate and back off, and there was a dog going ballistic in the next room, which didn’t help. Catorze made an absolute spectacle of himself although, for once, I couldn’t fully blame him. Like a rogue ouija board, he is absolutely lethal in the wrong hands.

I was about to suggest that we abandon the whole thing and try again next week, but that would have meant going through this pain for a second time. Eventually I told the poor vet to commit to the action and see it through, and to ignore any thrashing, hissing and screaming.

She did as I asked. Job done.

Catorze is now safely home and over his trauma, and is cheering himself up by watching some football with me. However, I don’t suppose he has ruled out exacting some excruciating revenge.

“Haunted bones, I command vous to curse the humans forever.”

Chauve derrière et, devant, chevelu

~ iamthesunking ~ 19 Comments

Louis Catorze went to see the vet yesterday, both for a steroid shot and because his mysterious bald patch has suddenly returned.

It’s been six weeks since his last steroid shot, which is very pleasing indeed given that, usually, around autumn, he starts to need them more and more frequently. But the bald patch is utterly puzzling. It hasn’t quite developed the narrowed pupil as yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before it’s staring creepily at me.

No soreness, no scabbing, no broken skin, just a hole with his ghostly, paper-white skin peeking through.

The vet was as flummoxed as we are and, once again, told us that we shouldn’t be concerned unless the skin started to look sore (it doesn’t) or we noticed Catorze excessively grooming the area (he doesn’t). Obviously this is good. But what makes it appear? And what makes it go away again? It’s yet another Roi mystery to which we will never find answers.

We have been instructed to keep an eye on the bald spot and contact the vet again if it deteriorates. But I already know that it won’t. It’ll just disappear to the otherworldly realm whence it came, only to reappear at some inopportune moment, looking more evil than ever before.

The little sod was able to relieve some of his stress by screaming at a couple of massive Red Setter dogs* in the vet’s waiting room, and is now fully recovered from the misery of his épreuve. As far as he’s concerned it’s business as usual, and he’s now screaming at me to go into the front room. However, with the festive season approaching, I daren’t relax too much, and I have booked him a late December appointment, just in case.

*One dog had curly hair. YES, CURLY HAIR. I wouldn’t have even thought she were a Red Setter had her more traditional twin sister not been with her.