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July 02, 2005 - 8:15 a.m.

A Diaryland Resolution, and the Saga of our Cat

I hereby promise to write at least once a week. Ideally, I will write every other day.

I just read through some old entries, and I'm not terribly thorough about cataloging my life. I'm changing a ton of habits at once right now, so I sort of expect this one to fail, but I'm going to give it a fair shot.


In recent news chez Libraryland our cat Buster has been quite sick. He was diagnosed last fall with feline lick granuloma (technical name is something I can't spell), where certain white blood cells collect and attack his skin. He would get sores on his belly, hind legs, and the potential was to get sores in and around his mouth, making him stop eating. The way to control it was through steroids, both injected and oral.

For a stretch there, we were giving him 4 pills a day. He was not a cooperative patient. Every trick we tried he learned to avoid. Finally, our vet sold us the "Pet Piller", a torture device in blue rubber that allowed us to shove a pill way down his throat before releasing it, keeping our fingers safe from his jaws of death.

We didn't like this treatment because we weren't really controlling the problem, nor did we like our vet. So we switched to a marvelous all-cat clinic. Rob realized that we had only seen dogs at our old vet, never any cats. So the new vet started a series of steroid injections.

And then Buster's pancreas decided it didn't like injected steroids.

It was hard to tell for a while that he had stopped eating. Two cats make it more difficult to gauge what's going on. He looked sickly, though, and I thought he had stopped drinking water. Back to the vet for us.

Turns out the steroids caused a diabetic crisis. Buster then spent 24 days with the vet, getting his sugar levels down and getting back into good health. For a long time, he still wasn't eating. The vet randomly tried giving him rotisserie chicken, which he devoured. So, in an effort to get his weight back up, I now must cook for my cat. He has turned his nose up at dark meat, so I have 4 chicken breasts in the fridge, waiting to be roasted for His Highness.

Oh, I almost forgot! In an effort to determine if something else was causing the lack of appetite, Rob and I took Buster down to Jacksonville for an ultrasound. The clinic was really great, very informative and very expensive. $500 later, we determined that he had a touch of pancreatitis but no tumors! Yay!

24 days of boarding and diabetic care with our Savannah vet came to just under $1000. So we've spent more on our cat's health than Rob spent on his own health last year. Some people think we're nuts, but I challenge them to do otherwise. After he got over the initial illness, in about a week, Buster's personality returned to his old, pushy, affectionate self. Were we supposed to bring him home and not worry about the fact that he wasn't eating? He was a happy cat, not like he was suffering. He just wasn't eating. By stopping treatment, we would have made him sicker, unhappy, and eventually killed him. His health and happiness is more important than $1500.

Actually, I must go tend to His Highness's morning chicken meal if I want to maintain my sanity in the face of demanding meows. Happy US Independence Day, all you Americans out there. Hooray for 3 day weekends!

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