cats
When it rains, it pours, or something. Our cats are not doing well. Well, 2 of 3 are not doing well. Tyger remains as healthy as a horse. However, George & Mona are not so lucky.
George has had a mild heart murmur for as long as we've had her (around 2000), and has also had a genetic digestive disorder that makes her unable to digest a specific type of amino acid. We've had her (and the other two, since its impossible to restrict the diet of just one of them) on a special cat food basically since she was diagnosed back in early 2001. Overall, she's done ok, although since Saturday, she's had gradually worsening diarrhea for no apparent reason. We likely wouldn't have even noticed had she not been leaving a 'trail' around the house due to her long fur 'catching' stuff on the way out. At first, we assumed that it would just pass, but when she was still having issues yesterday afternoon, we decided to confine her to the office without food for 24 hours, in the hope that giving her intestines a rest might allow them to recover enough. Of course since she's been confined and without solid food for hours, she's been incredibly depressed & needy. She didn't exhibit any more symptoms since late yesterday, which is good, but she's also didn't have anything to eat since around 3PM yesterday. We gave her food this afternoon, and so far, she's doing ok, but its likely way too soon to tell for sure. Hopefully by the morning, we'll know whether she's truly doing better, or if the lack of food was the only reason why her intestinal problems seemed to abate.
Mona on the other end is not going to be as fortunate. Mona has been seemingly going crazy for much of the past year or so. She's become obsessive compulsive with bathing & scratching, to the extent that she's drawn blood on several occasions. Its gotten so bad, that she's literally spent a few weeks with a cone around her head to prevent her from further injuring herself. We've taken her to a few different vets, and they've basically said that she's getting old, and starting to lose her sanity as a result. To make matters worse, when we took her to the vet for her annual checkup earlier this month, they diagnosed her with a Feline Corneal Sequestra. Its basically an ulcerated infection on the eye, which is supposed to hurt like hell, and often requires surgery to remove. What's worse, is that the surgery doesn't guarantee that it won't reoccur, and isn't even always 100% successful. Its not clear how long she's had the sequestra, since its a relatively small (perhaps an 1/8 of an inch in diameter) black spot on her eye. The theory is that the pain & discomfort from the sequestra is potentially why she's been rubbing & scratching at her eye so much lately. Denise took her to a feline eye surgeon today for a consultation, and its as bad as we feared. The surgery would cost about \$2000 to attempt to remove the sequestra. The surgeon claimed that right now the pain is moderately bad, however within a few weeks it would be severe unless she had the surgery.