Miss Lucy is doing pretty well. Her health update is three-pronged…..
1) She is 6 1/2 weeks out from her dental surgery. She went to the vet on Friday and he had to clip another loose suture. The dissolving sutures could take 2 months to dissolve (or possibly longer.) The final verdict on her mouth will have to wait until then. We still find a rope of drool hanging from her mouth once or twice a week and it often feels a bit dewy when she rubs her face against you. But, overall, her mouth is much improved.
2) She got another kitty cold a couple of weeks ago. The good news is that it didn’t require vet treatment this time. Her symptoms were much milder. L-lysine and good nutrition are helping, I think. The other cats did get her cold…but so far (fingers crossed) their symptoms are very mild. The vet listened to her breathing on Friday and said she was fine….no antibiotics needed.
3) This is what took us to the vet on Friday….
On Wednesday night I saw Lucy obviously trying to poop in the litter box but nothing came out. Now, since I had no way of knowing, in a muti-cat home, whether later poops I found in the boxes were hers, I was pretty concerned. (My cats all seem to do most of their pooping in the dead of night so I don’t get many chances to observe.) PLUS, she has had a bit of a dirty anus since she got here. (Not the fur around it, just the skin.) I assumed it was poor grooming with her sore mouth. But, slowly I realized it may be something else….something possibly related to her “no poop” incident.
It turns out her anal glands were EXTREMELY full (but her colon was empty so she did poop successfully after the no poop incident.) The vet expressed the anal glands in the back room, but I could hear both him and Lucy exclaim during the process….LOL. Poor thing was sore on both ends when we met her. She never did any of the scooting or licking back there that are classic signs of anal gland problems. But it could have made pooping pretty uncomfortable. Hopefully it won’t be a recurring problem. I’ll keep an eye on it. When I get a chance to see her poops they are not too hard or too soft and that is a good sign. And so far she doesn’t have any of the mysterious dirty bits on her anus that were probably bits of secretions.
She is happy and playful. Since she has felt at home enough to start jumping on the counter we have discovered that she is CRAZY about bread. She grabbed a piece I was trying to use to make a sandwich and tried to drag it off like prey. Making a sandwich is quite a challenge with our little bread hound around. Cats are so funny.
Here are my two pumpkins (Leo and Lucy) decorating my window sill….
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The cats love playing hide and seek behind the curtains. Where’s Lucy?
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Lucy and Emily birdwatching….
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