The new new kid

The menagerie expands yet again.

Meet Gregor:



Your basic yellow dog. He is named after Gregor Mendel, since his genetics are ... complicated. His mom is part Golden Retriever. After that, it's a mystery. He's a water-loving dog (at least he'll play the hell out of the water in his water dish). Several people have claimed they see Lab or Chow in there. My sister-in-law the vet simply says, "he's a very mixed breed," and that we really won't know what all he has in him until he's six months old or so.

We picked him up Friday afternoon from a person in our raw food coop. She had adopted a dog from the local animal shelter who somehow missed getting spayed. Several weeks later she found she'd gotten a 7 for 1 deal. Gregor's litter is a mixed bag, with at least two separate fathers.

His first night was fairly uneventful (two accidents, but only because the sleepy apes were slow to recognize the signs of Full Puppy Syndrome). He's still fairly timid, which suits the cats just fine. Their reactions have ranged from total indifference, to cautious surveillance, to, well, this:



Lewis spent the entire night staring at Gregor. Thankfully he was less interested today. Gregor's been swiped at a couple of times and shook it off fairly well.

Both my wife and I grew up with dogs, but this is our first time raising a puppy. It's...different.

The new kids

About a month before we lost Pernicious, we adopted a kitten from the Town Lake Animal Center in Austin, TX. He was about 5 months old, and a classic orange tabby (the first non-tuxedo cat that my wife or I had ever owned). We named him Milo, and he has a sweet, friendly disposition; he immediately assumed that all the other cats would head-bonk and play with him.

Unfortunately, all the other cats are crotchety old grown-ups who don't appreciate being head-bonked by a kitten. Mishka adopted Milo and would groom and play with him, but it was clear that Milo was going to need a real playmate, and soon. So, about a month ago, we adopted a second kitten from TLAC, Lewis. He's a brown mackerel tabby, and fortunately he's not as assertive with the adults, so they don't hiss at him as much. He and Milo have bonded very tightly, however, and play constantly.

Here's Milo:


And Lewis:


The only problems have been a wave of URIs running through the house (fact of life: shelter cats will have respiratory infections, and every other cat in the house will catch it). Everyone seems like they're on the downhill side of it, though, so hopefully we'll all be back to normal in another week or two.

We're convinced Milo helped Mishka deal with the loss of Pernicious. They were close, and we could tell that Mishka was having as hard a time as we were. He responded by adopting Milo, grooming him (whether Milo wanted to be groomed or not) and chasing him.

Pernicious the cat: 1989 - 2006

There are few better ways to celebrate Thanksgiving than to watch your cat finally succumb to old age and disease. Pernicious always had a sense of timing.

Some of you may remember I posted about him back in August, when we thought he was suffering from a stroke. It turned out that his blood sugar was extremely high, over 2000. However, after a weekend of IV fluids, insulin, and constant monitoring, he was able to come home, and after putting him on a new form of insulin (Lantus), he recovered almost completely. Most promisingly, he started gaining weight again. He was bouncing around like his old self, imperiously ordering us apes around. We began to think that we finally had his diabetes under control to the point where we could worry about the thyroid problems and the on-and-off-again bladder issues. But then a couple of weeks ago he started acting sick again; he wouldn't eat, but he was acting like his blood sugar was getting insanely high. He was also showing blood in his urine periodically. The last time that happened the urine culture came back negative, but the vet thought that may have been a lab-related issue. He had to spend another weekend at the emergency clinic hooked up to an IV. The urine cultures came back negative, suggesting that the bloody urine was not due to a bladder infection. However, he started vomiting after being fed, and started having diarrhea as well. Last Tuesday, he had an ultrasound examination to find out what was happening.

The news was not good. The immediate problems were an inflamed bowel and an inflamed pancreas; that explained the blood sugar issues and the lack of interest in eating. In addition, he was showing signs of heart and kidney disease. The vet suggested a steroid treatment for the inflamed bowel; the immediate problem was his lack of interest in food, and everything else came in second to that. They gave him a steroid injection Tuesday afternoon and kept him overnight to monitor him. He would not eat on his own, but the first couple of syringe feedings were staying down. Since the vet would be closed on Thanksgiving, we picked him up Wednesday evening and brought him home, with the understanding that we would take him back in on Friday to follow up and see how the steroid was working.

It was pretty clear on Thursday that he had hit the end of the line, and there was really nothing more we could do for him. He spent most of the day asleep, refused to eat, and had trouble drinking. He acted confused, seemed not to recognize us or the other cats, and didn't make a sound. We weren't even sure he would last the night. We started discussing how we would do it. We were hoping that our housecall vet could do it at home, where he was comfortable, but she was out of town until Monday.

Friday morning he seemed a little bouncier, making us somewhat hopeful. We decided to take him in, telling ourselves that this was just going to be the followup to see where he was, but as we took him to the exam room we knew it was time. The vet agreed that there was really nothing left to try. She understood our desire to have it done at our home, but she couldn't come out that far, and we knew we couldn't make him wait for the other vet.

They started with some ketamine to sedate him so he wouldn't have to be restrained. We let him enjoy the pretty colors for a few minutes, and then it was over.

People have wondered about the name "Pernicious", but it was well-earned. My wife and her first husband had gotten him shortly after they married. He was about 18 months old, and quite a little terror. Whoever had him previously had him completely declawed, front and back, which probably contributed to his temperament. When he bit you, he threw his head into it, understanding the principle of momentum. This was aptly demonstrated the night that he punched through a screen door to attack a stray cat that had made its way into the yard. When he ran back in, his face and chest were covered in blood, but after cleaning it off, it turned out that none of it was his. Amusingly, Michael (my wife's first husband) had named him Pernicious before they really knew his personality; Michael just thought it would be cool to have a cat named Pernicious.

The classic Pernicious story took place one night when my wife and her first husband were getting ready to go out, and the cat complained to Michael that his litterbox was dirty. Michael ignored him, so Pernicious went out into the living room, pulled Michael's leather jacket off of the chair, and stood over it, waiting. When Michael came out of the bathroom, Pernicious waited until Michael was looking at him, and then peed all over the jacket.

In fact, peeing on things was Snick's preferred mode of showing displeasure about something. He was a neat freak of a cat, and had the misfortune of living with slobs, so if clothes got left on the floor, he would pee on them to remind us that they needed picking up. He once peed on a workman's toolbelt that had been left on the floor when they were repairing termite damage in the house.

This has been especially hard for my wife, because she and Pernicious went through some pretty rough times together. Michael was schizo-affective (combination paranoid schizophrenic and bipolar), and a few years into the marriage he started getting sick. It turns out that most people with that affliction tend not to make it past their thirties, and Michael wasn't an exception. Pernicious was extremely attached to Michael, and after he died Snick dropped all his fur; stress + obsessive-compulsive grooming = bald cat. My wife says that Pernicious was Michael's one bright spot in his last few months. We're having him cremated, and will spread his ashes in the same area that Michael's ashes were.

On the joys of pets

Meet Pernicious:



He is 17 years old, diabetic, has a hyperactive thyroid, is missing a little over half of his teeth, and is an evil little cuss.

He's also in the cat equivalent of intensive care right now.

Friday night, he gave out this panicky sounding meow and jumped up on the bed with us; after that, he was very disoriented, unsteady, and unresponsive. Our first thought was that his blood sugar had crashed (it's happened before), so we mixed a solution of Karo sryup and water, and we thought that it might be helping, but he didn't respond like he had in the past. The next morning, however, he wasn't any better, and we began to suspect he'd had a stroke. In addition to the disorientation and unsteadiness, it turned out he was blind as well. His pupils were fixed and dilated, and he didn't respond to us waving our hands in front of his eyes. Strokes in cats are rare, but not unheard of, and he's had enough problems that it was a likely candidate. We took him to the clinic (not our normal one, as that one is closed on the last Saturday of each month), prepared for the worst. It has been about 20 years since I've had to put a cat down, and it's one of the worst feelings I've ever experienced.

After running some tests, however, it turned out that his blood sugar was insanely high; they had to calculate it manually because it exceeded the scale on the machine. The tentative diagnosis is non-ketotic hyperosmolar diabetes; basically, the concentration of the sugar in his cells is so high that it's interfering with normal brain function, as well as causing a host of other problems, including dehydration so bad that his blood is almost too viscous for his heart to handle. The good news is that this is treatable; basically the plan is to slowly build up fluids via IV over the next few days. The prognosis is still very poor, but there's a chance that he can return to his previous quality of life, which wasn't too bad all things considered.

What's scary is that he had a checkup about 3 weeks ago, and his blood sugar was a little on the high side, but not enough to warrant concern. Something has changed radically in the last few weeks; either his insulin has gone off, or his dosage has become woefully inadequate, or something.

This is going to wind up being expensive. I know some people out there wonder about those of us who spend more than a couple of hundred dollars on a sick animal, but we don't have any children; our cats are our family. We've already prepared ourselves for the worst, so we're not going to any more extreme measures than what's being done now, and it's more than likely that once this problem is resolved, something else just as dire will come up and it will all be for naught. But this evil little bastard is special to us, and if he can return to his previous state, it will be worth it to us.

UPDATE

A weekend of IV fluids has worked wonders. We transferred him from the emergency clinic to the regular vet clinic this morning (Monday), and he's in far, far better shape than he was Saturday. He's still pretty lethargic, but his sight appears to be back, and he's holding himself a lot steadier. He's looking more and more like his old self. We're trying not to be too optimistic; no doubt this episode has put his liver and kidneys through the wringer, and they aren't that healthy to begin with.

But, it looks like we may get the old Snick back. He's even started growling at the staff, although one gets the sense it's more out of protocol than actual pique.