Motley Moose – Archive

Many of my fellow Moose have found themselves surrounded by the wet fluffy while stuff. Some are surround by massive amounts of the fluffies. This diary is simply intended as a resting area in between shoveling sessions. Feel free to chat, leave music or LOL’s, thaw your hands and feet, or unload on the snow as it unloads on you.

(Discliamer: No snowmen were created in the making of this diary.)

Spoke to the vet this morning, this is what we know:

Fudge’s thyroid levels were normal, and there’s no anemia.  However, the kidney enzymes were high – 56 for the B1 enzyme and 5.1 for the T-something (didn’t quite catch the name) enzyme.  Also, there was bacteria in the urine sample so it looks like she has a urinary tract infection.  They’re going to do a culture & sensitivity analysis on the urine sample they took; results from that should come back in  2-3 days.  

She is happily eating the wet food, although she ignored the dry food again last night; drinking appears to be normal, at least what I’ve been able to observe.

Treatment for now is:

1. Start Fudge on an antibiotic for the UTI; dosage/specific drug to potentially be modified by the results of the culture analysis.

2. Start the Lysine tonight mixed in with the wet food.  

3. Keep an eye on her weight (I’m thinking I’ll weigh her each night when I get home to be consistent).

4. If her weight doesn’t start to increase or continues to decrease, follow up with an ultrasound & x-rays.

So that’s where we’re at; I’ll be picking up the antibiotic on my way home tonight, as well as more wet food. Once her nose has cleared up, if she’s still not going for the dry food I’ll start to transition them to a different brand.  Thanks everyone for your advice the other day; it really did help & was comforting.  

Cross Posted from Street Prophets

Welcome to Thursday Coffee Hour. This is an open topic thread so help yourself to the goodies and sit a spell and let us know what is new in your life. My younger cat, Pixie, has brought mischief up to an art form. I’m surprised she doesn’t teach classes in it.

I have to toss her off the bed a half a dozen times as she insists on helping me make the bed. Walking where I’m trying to pull up covers and scrunching the blanket I just straightened out is her way of “helping.”

I scoop out the litter box every morning. Pixie waits until I’ve cleaned the box and then uses it even if she has to squeeze to get out a couple of drops. I guess it is her way of saying thanks for cleaning the box.

Pixie’s toys keep getting put in Merlin’s water dish and food bowl. It is so strange how they never end up in her dishes. 😉

Pixie loves to help me wrap presents. My presents look good when done but if you look carefully at the ribbons you will see kitty teeth marks.

Pixie is also a little mooch and if that doesn’t get my attention she has been known to try and climb down my arm to get at what I am eating.

Pixie is a mine. In that everything is mine. That lovely quilt you had made for me? Pixie thinks it is hers. The lovely unicorn I bought well Valentine is hers. According to Pixie what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine, and what’s Merlin’s is definitely mine.

I’m glad Mom got voted down in calling the cat Snickerdoodles. Mike said she was more of a Pixie and boy does she live up to her name!

My name is Racer and I sit on my hoomin Mom’s lap every morning, unless Atticus beats me to it, while Mom reads the herd check in.

This morning some folks said Mom should post my picture but she didn’t know how on her iPad.  So I talked her into using her regular ‘puter and here I am reading the sports page of the paper…

Update:Had the appointment this morning; in and out relatively quickly.  They took blood/urine samples and are testing for many of the things listed by Jk2003 & Nurse Kelley.  Should have results tomorrow AM.  The vet agreed with daily wet food & adding in the lysine supplement (that should arrive sometime tomorrow, along with the scale).  So that’s where we’re at for now; waiting.  Thanks everyone for your advice & encouragement; I’ll keep you updated.  

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Hoping for some pootie advice from the wonderful Meese here.  I have two cats, now almost 11 years old, who I rescued when they were two months old.  This is the female, Fudge:

And this is her brother, Dark Chocolate:

DarkChocolate has always been bigger and heavier (and quieter, he usually doesn’t vocalize unless he thinks we’re sleeping in too late on the weekend).  Fudge has always been an attention hog – she seems to have a sixth sense to let her know when her brother is getting attention, and she comes running from wherever she was in the house to demand her share of the pettings.  They usually get along, aside from occasional squabbles about a toy or sleeping spot; usual sibling stuff (they’re not actually from the same litter, but since we got them from the same shelter at the same time, we call them brother/sister).  

Fudge had feline herpes as a kitten; as a result she does tend to be permanently sniffly/stuffy (she sneezes a lot) and has one eye that’s cloudy (although she seems to see fine out of it for now).  Over the years, DarkChocolate become heftier, but lately Fudge is feeling thinner and smaller than before (she looks puffy but most of it is fluffy fur, she’s actually fairly light), which has me worried.

Here’s where the needed advice comes in – they’ve always been raised with dry food only (wet food maybe 3x a year as a treat), in one of those auto-feeder things where as the bowl empties, it refills from the reservoir, so they can eat on their own schedule, etc.  I’m planning on switching their food to a different brand, to see if that encourages Fudge to eat more, but I was also thinking maybe I should get rid of the auto-feeder and just put them on a regular feeding schedule, possibly including wet food.  My theory is that part of the issue may be that Fudge, with her respiratory issues, just doesn’t smell the food as much and so she’s not interested, so wet food might spark her interest (she is definitely interested in food in general; she eats up the treats pretty quickly, but either she doesn’t like or can’t really smell the regular dry food they’re on).  She isn’t acting abnormally otherwise, just seems to not be eating as much.  

The two main concerns I have are a) how to transition them from having food available all the time to being fed on a regular basis, and b) whether switching to a combo of wet/dry food will end up increasing DarkChocolate’s weight too (if anything, I’d like him to lose some, but Fudge I think needs to gain more).  Also, when you do feeding on a schedule, what sort of gap is OK?  I’m usually up around 8am, but I don’t get home until around 8pm or later; is that alright?

Most folks have relatives who make them cringe. A cousin who is a rabid teabagger, or an uncle who bases his opinions of you on how much you make per year. The pooties have an aunt who they prefer to avoid. She is loud and proud and larger then life. She has become a legend throughout pootie and woozle communities for her cooking and her antics. I would like to introduce you to Aunt Bertha.