Poor little princess….

This is going to be a long one...

First, let me introduce you to Chloe. Our Princess. She’s cute and she knows it and will use it in any way she can. She’s a nut… she’s a spaz… she’s super affectionate and gravity-defying.





Why do you care? You don’t. I get that. But we love her and this entry is all about her, so :p

Sunday, our poor little princess slipped going up the stairs. This may or may not be relevant to anything that followed, but it’s what we pegged as the start of the odd behaviour. She started being very careful going up or down stairs or jumping onto things. Sunday night she did not curl up between D’s ankles as she usually does.

Monday dawned and she seemed mostly ok, but was still being very careful on stairs and just didn’t seem quite herself. But she didn’t complain when she was picked up, didn’t complain or squirm when I did a quick check of her abdomen (she had some liver problems a couple of years ago, so that’s our first concern when she’s not herself), didn’t seem to have any physical problems or sensitivities. But she also wasn’t jumping up on things much… even when she did jump to my lap for snuggles it was very careful.

Tuesday morning I noticed a lump on her right rear that seemed to be causing her some mild discomfort. But since she wasn’t complaining loudly, I figured I’d be ok to go to work and check her again when I got home. In retrospect, I feel like a bad kitty-mom.

When I got home yesterday I immediately went hunting for the little fluff-ball. No swelling… good sign, right? But she didn’t want me anywhere near her back-end, either… not even running her tail through my fingers. Bad sign.

So I fussed with her a bit until I could get a visual on her butt. Hrm. That fur looks damp and matted. I teased the fur aside and was upset to see an open, weeping wound about a half centimeter to the right of her third eye (hey, she winks at people with it, why not?).

So, when D got home we bundled the very unimpressed princess into her carrier and headed off half-way across the city to the only 24 hr vet we know of (there’s an “after hours clinic” that’s closer, but they don’t open until 7:30 p.m…. by going half-way across the city, we were done and heading home again by 7:45). As it happens, this is the same clinic where we rushed her in February 2006 when her liver essentially shut down. Thankfully, this trip was considerably less stressful for all 3 of us, and did much less damage to the bank account ;)

So, we were put in a room and the poor little girl was weighed. And then we waited for a vet. This poor little cat, who had been trying to avoid me for days because I kept palpating her abdomen and checking her ribs and such, curled up in my lap and hid her face in my elbow. Nearly broke my heart. But, apparently, when she’s sick or scared, I’m her “safe place”. So the doc came in and we put her up on the table so she could be examined. Yup, as I suspected, she had an abscessed anal gland that she had managed to open at some point during the day. As soon as she was released, she was back in my lap… poor kitty. Off the vet went to get a sedative/pain-killer shot to calm her down so they could do what needed to be done.

What needed to be done turned out to be shaving the area, irrigating the wound, and treating with topical antibiotics. Then she was brought back to curl into my lap again until we could get her back into the box. After discussion with the vet, we decided it’d probably be a good idea to get her a ‘satellite dish’, to keep her away from the wound, and we also need to get some canned food to give her after the pills we were also getting. So while I was paying, D took her back into the exam room to learn how to put on the collar. She was not impressed. Not at all. And in the end we took the darn thing off because she was so unhappy about it… she couldn’t eat or drink easily… she couldn’t figure out how to climb the stairs because it kept banging off the next step up… and Grimm thought she looked like a fool and decided he’d take advantage of the situation to beat up on her. We were not impressed with his efforts. Crotchety old man.

She’s much better today… to the point of running away and fighting the pills. It’s going to be a long 10 days of trying to throw a pill down her throat twice a day, I think. But thanks to 2006 we’ve reached an understanding: I understand that she needs the meds, and she understands that it really doesn’t matter how much she fights, I’m not going to give up until she GETS the meds… so why bother fighting? ;)

She’s slinking around with her tail at half-staff, though, in shame at having a half-naked bum. Poor girl.