emergency road trip (everyone is okay)

[kellan_the_tabby]

I want to repeat that EVERYONE IS OKAY & I’m not gonna go into detail but note: if your cat is not eating & your vet in more interested in doing lots of tests instead of GETTING FOOD INTO YOUR CAT, get a new vet. AND GET SOME FOOD INTO YOUR CAT.

ANYWAY what with one thing & another I picked Loiosh up from the vet in Milan, used the squirty-syringe to get some A/D into his face, & then set out for Edgewood while dialing my old vet. Driving an hour anna half to make sure my boy is getting the RIGHT care? oh HELL yeah

& of course I brought all three boys. When I’m anxious about any of my cats, I’m anxious about all of em, & when it’s bad, I need to be able to SEE that they’re okay. So it was a three-cat road trip.

Hades wanted to know why HE didn’t get any A/D. He’s just guarding it up there. Honest.

(It’s basically the cat version of chicken soup & pedialyte, with the consistency of baby food, & it is NOT cheap but if anything is gonna get your cat eating again, it’ll do it. Also I’m never running out of it again.)

look at the PAWS tho

(A couple days later, when I was sure Loiosh was gonna be okay, I split the last of the A/D between their bowls & mixed it in with their lunchtime gooshyfud. Tom carefully licked around the regular stuff to make sure he got ALL the A/D. Hades wandered off after about half a bowl, burped, & slept for six hours.)

My vet wasn’t letting humans in, just asking you to leave the carrier on the bench outside so they could bring in your pet with minimal contact. I don’t have cat carriers so I hitched Loiosh’s leash to the bench & sat about eight feet away. The tech was very impressed, & I told her the story as we both sat in the sun, Loiosh wandering back & forth between us to get pets. I could get used to that sort of thing.

As I reassured the vet a bit later on, when he came outside to confer, I came prepared to stay a couple days if I needed to.

(He looked alarmed & asked if I planned to stay in a hotel. I gave the van a meaningful look. He said “OH good.”)

After they delivered him back to me (another tech came out with him draped over her arm, explained to me that he was “losing his patience” with them, gave him an affectionate noogie, & poured him through the window onto the passenger seat) I drove us all up into the Sandias & found a quiet place to park for a while. (I kept singing “I wanna go where the people aren’t” on the way up the hill.) Loiosh, who’d started feeling better as soon as I got food into him that morning & continued improving as I kept feeding him, was pleased with this decision.

(I note with amusement that the vet techs managed to get his harness back on him upside down. Theory is he was threatening to kill them at the time. I told them he never means it but he SOUNDS like he does. Also he stole my chair in the two minutes I was closing the van window after they poured him back inside.)

It was windy as hell so we wandered the woods only briefly before getting back in the van. I didn’t want to nap — you can’t camp in the Sandias, so I was gonna hafta move before sunset — but Loiosh & I had a nice long snuggle, purring & breathing breaths & just. Being close.

The vet said he’d thought about keeping Loiosh overnight, but since it was clear he was perfectly comfortable in the van (he admired Hades & Tom’s calm, too, while we were chatting) & didn’t need to be on an IV, letting him stay with me for the night made more sense. The vet did ask if I’d be willing to stay in the area overnight in case Loiosh needed more looking over the next day, which of course I was perfectly happy to do.

So I found a nice parking lot, continued squidging food into Loiosh’s face every couple hours, & slept like crap until I heard someone eating kibble round about dawn & saw that it was Loiosh, eating with no prompting for the first time since all this had started. At which point I passed the hell out & woke up around 1:30.

With him clearly on the mend it was time to go home. I left a message for the vet (“Who’s this again?” asked the receptionist. “Oh, Loiosh. Good!”), drove us all home, & was, without the tiniest bit of shame, in bed before sunset.

---

originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!

Comments

[morgynleri]

*sends hugs and nose boops all around*

I'm so glad Loiosh is feeling better. :)

[kellan_the_tabby]

*distributes noseboops as appropriate*

This was about a week and a half ago (I had to stare at the calendar for a while to determine that, time is fake) & he is entirely recovered now! Which means he's bored out of his SKULL & being an asshole, but I'll take it.

[morgynleri]

*nods enthusiastically* Definitely take bored asshole cat over cat not feeling well. (On my part - Jess has not vomited today! And she was sorta interested in the kibble dispensing toy! Which. Has not been the case since, like, Saturday. She's not stopped eating, and this isn't the first time she's done this. The last time with this sort of major ick was... about this time last year, so now I'm wondering if there's a seasonal something that she's having issues with.)

[kellan_the_tabby]

Ooch. I hope you can figure out what's going on with her!

[morgynleri]

Cats can get allergies, so it might be that? I mean, at this point, she's recovering, and in about the same amount of time it would have taken if we'd gone to the vet, but with less expense.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Less exposure, too. I'm glad she's getting better!

[roselightfairy]

It seems like it's really bad cat time for everyone right now, for some reason. :( I'm so glad he's okay!

[kellan_the_tabby]

I guess the plague wasn't enough??

[roselightfairy]

Gotta have ALL the bad things at the same time!

[kellan_the_tabby]

... something to be said for getting it all over with at once.

[jtthomas]

...out of /sheer fucking curiosity/, and also because something just occurred to me re: sister's cats, what brand of wet do they eat?

[kellan_the_tabby]

Friskies. I would LOVE to switch them to something better but at three cans a day, I can't afford to.

[morgynleri]

*goes to do some research* 5.5oz cans? (Which. I'd recommend Petco's store brand if going for a replacement, though it's an extra $0.39/can, approximately, for that size, if getting it as individual cans from the store. And it's good quality food. And if we weren't feeding someone else's cats as well as ours, I'd say fuck it and get it for you myself.)

[kellan_the_tabby]

It's about double what I'm paying for Friskies here, alas. Not something I can manage right now although if I can get the Patreon high enough, & if Hades will actually EAT the new kibble once the old kibble is gone ... if I can get them all down to two cans a day, it might be doable.

Thank you!

[morgynleri]

*crosses fingers that you'll be able to get the Patreon high enough and them all to eat the new kibble so you can reduce the gooshy*

[kellan_the_tabby]

THANK

[holyschist]

Awww, phew, I'm glad he's better! And I can just imagine him being poured from place to place. Did they have any idea what was going on?

[kellan_the_tabby]

Yeah, it was the raw chicken he'd snitched earlier in the week, not the kidney failure or pancreatitis or FUCKING CANCER the first vet wanted me to spend a zillion bucks on tests for.

[holyschist]

Oh buddy. :-( Well, I'm glad it wasn't anything more serious and that you didn't have to spend a zillion dollars on tests!

Kaylie almost died a few years ago and her vet was like "Well, she's old, nothing we can do." My mom ended up taking her to a different vet, they rehydrated her, gave her antibiotics and suggested ways to convince her to eat, and got us to switch over to an inhaler (!) for her asthma and she's doing really well now for a little old lady with asthma, kidney insufficiency, and high blood pressure.

Every now and then she gets some respiratory infection and goes off her food, but now we know what to do - keeping them fed and hydrated is so crucial! Same vet also caught her high blood pressure this spring, and medicating it has made her act 3 years younger! They are a more expensive vet than the one we take Maia to (she's mostly toothless now but otherwise the healthy one), but in our case, it's been completely worth it for little Miss Collects Senior Kitty Health Problems. A good vet is worth their weight in diamonds. <3

[kellan_the_tabby]

AUGH WHY

like I don't think it's any BETTER that your vet wasn't trying to get money out of you but

yeah, the good ones are worth the extra moneys, as long as you have the moneys to spare

[holyschist]

Yeah, the fancy vet is reeeeally into the blood tests (which so far have mostly ruled things out) - but their other fees are reasonable, and they really know their shit. I mean, the people at the other office are also generally great and do their best, but I feel like they rely a bit more on volume and don't always take the time to get to know the animals and think about the weird possibilities, you know?

I am just really glad we've still got Kaylie with us and didn't give up on her (cats go downhill SO fast when they are dehydrated and not eating, but they turn around just as fast), but yeah, I wouldn't be able to afford the fancy vet right now if I weren't sharing the cost with my mom.

[thewayne]

Very glad L is doing well! Charlie, our black poodle, had a SQUIRREL! accident and ran in front of the bike. Skinned the top of his right paw, requiring a sock to be wrapped around it (velcro cable ties FTW!). He's otherwise fine, didn't require a vet trip.

[kellan_the_tabby]

oh no dogs

(I have occasionally found myself chasing a squirrel, I'm entirely with him on this)

[cellio]

I'm glad he's doing better now!

I was briefly confused by you talking about Loiosh right after that picture of *distinctly not Loiosh*. :-)

[kellan_the_tabby]

When I took that picture I was still firmly at the stage of 'not gonna take any pictures of Loiosh in case it's The Last'.

I am SO glad that wasn't the case.