Monday night, he felt worse. He had a sneezing fit every hour or so and, since he clearly wasn't feeling well, he hopped up on my bed to lie down near me. He was sneezing through the night and there is nothing that says 'wake up" quite like a cat having a sneezing fit 18 inches from your head at 3AM. Which meant on Tuesday, I operated at work with all of the mental agility of a caffeinated zombie.The vet sent me home with a liquid antibiotic, to be given once a day, and an ointment for his runny eyes, which was supposed to be given three times a day.
Yeah, sure.
You can get a mental picture of what it is like to try and put an eye ointment in George's eyes by imagining that you took a garden-variety F1 tornado, ran it through a barbed-wire works a few times, and then shrunk it down to the size of a cat. George went into 4-armed windmill mode with his claws out when I tried to squirt that ointment in his eyes.
Some people recommend wrapping a towel around the cat. That works as well as trying to wrap a tornado with burlap. George squirms and squirms, grabbing onto the towel with his claws and twisting like a snake on speed. In order for this to work, I have to hold George with one hand, hold his head still with the other hand and then apply the ointment with another hand. Do the math.
I tried a couple times last night. Not only did I not have any success, George rewarded me for my efforts around midnight by taking a dump right next to my bed. He can't resist the urge to try and cover it up; the sound of him scratching away woke me up and I disposed of the turds before I found them at 3AM by means of the Hellen Keller Method.
I had better luck this morning with squirting the antibiotic into his mouth, but only because I worked quickly and I held him down on the linoleum floor in the kitchen, which took away his ability to gain traction. I also wore leather gloves. George clearly is holding a grudge, because other than coming out for food, he is keeping his distance tonight.
I have to take another cat in for an annual exam on Saturday morning. I might suggest to the vet that if he really thought I'd be able to put ointment in George's eyes, I want some of whatever he is using.
4 comments:
We are so incredibly lucky with our cats. Only one of four is fussy like that. I can pop pills into the other three's mouths just fine.
Heck, one of them got outside, came back days later with a hurt leg and we cleaned the wound with peroxide nightly for a week and he stayed pretty calm through the whole thing. He's whine, but wouldn't scratch at us and when I took my hands off him he'd just lay there and look at you. Very surprised he didn't run away.
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One of the things my vet told me to do when the cat has a cold is to lock it in the bathroom with you when you shower. The steam helps them clear out anything stuck in their nose. Works prety good.
Justin, I will give that a try. Thanks!
First thing I always do when I gotta do crap to my cats is corner the cat in question in the bathroom. Once that's accomplished, my bathtub has sliding glass doors. So here I am, with leather welding gloves and my best thick leather welding shirt and jeans and heavy work boots on, at which point I carefully pick up cat with the same care I would pick up a hot freshly-welded workpiece, and step into the bathtub and slide the door shut.
The rest, well, you know the rest of that story... four-pawed barbed wire windmill indeed. Did you know that cats can climb people just like they can climb trees? I had the scratches on the side of my head to prove it too!
There was a great "Oddball" once on Olbermann that showed a cat climbing up some guy's leg, who was shrieking in pain.
The bad thing is that if George ever requires a lot of medication for something, I may have to either put him in the vet's place for the course of treatment or just have him put down.
My other two are far more compliant. I can medicate them and have.
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