A month gone wrong
This is a story of a month gone all wrong.
It started with noticing that my beloved cat, Other Guy, was losing a lot of weight. We went to our excellent vet, who said that he had a blocked saliva gland that was causing swelling in his mouth so that he couldn’t swallow. She started him on antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory.
Then wild pigs, or cinghiale, came into my garden one night and uprooted one–third of it.
Then the rain we expect in April came in May, so I couldn’t tackle the destruction and weeds started to grow in the plowed up areas.
Still Other Guy couldn’t eat or drink much, so back we went to the vet. He needed to have a saliva gland removed, but he needed to gain some weight first for the surgery to be safe. I hand fed him and cooked for him and managed to get almost a pound of weight back on in a week. So he had surgery, and while he was under anesthetic, she felt it was a good time to take a benign tumor he’s had for ten years off his back as well.
From the first moment of being really awake he started pulling the stitches out of his back incision. Because he had another incision on his neck, he couldn’t wear the Elizabethan collar that would be a normal response to that. Instead, every single night he would worry at those stitches and then stand up in total satisfaction and shake blood everywhere. Drops hitting my face were my wakeup call. Four times he did that and four times he removed enough stitches for the wound to be potentially deadly and he had to be re-sewn. He found metal staples were the easiest to remove, done with a single whip of the neck.
So we finally used an Elizabethan collar, because his neck was healed. And at breakfast one day, the collar had to be removed for eating, instead of attacking breakfast he whipped out 3 inches worth of stitches. Then I tugged on to him a really ugly leg warmer to protect the incision area. He looks like a badly trained monkey.
Yesterday he could no longer eat or drink anything. I was reduced this morning to making tiny bits of smoked salmon and offering them on my finger tips. He greedily took them and then they fell out of his mouth. So back to the vet we went. The swelling in his mouth had increased to fill his mouth, because in chewing his food, he was biting the swelling.
More shots to reduce the swelling, and once more I have to get water and special recovery foods into him, using a syringe. Every hour or two, around the clock, I wrap him tightly into a towel, and using the syringe, insert liquid food and water into the 1/8 inch space that remains on the left side of his mouth. One tablespoon at a time, I have to save his life by forcing it into him.
Small wonder, then, that the normal parts of life are slipping and that sometimes food for a day is French toast at midnight.
I can hear the cinghiale across the river grunting their plans to wreak more havoc in my garden. If I had the energy I’d wait with a knife. If there weren’t cat food bits glued to the floors, I’d vacuum them. If there were anywhere but my knee or draped over my sleeping head that comforted Other Guy, I might get the bathroom sparkling. Or the ironing pressed. Or the guest beds made up. Or, or, or… but in the end, the life of my loyal friend of eleven years, as careless as he is of it, means more to me.
I’m hungry right now, but for what? Even the bacon, tomato and cheese solution seems too much. It’s easier to ignore it. These are only the highlights of this month-long slog. There is more, as is there not always?
One day I expect to laugh about this month, but not today.
23 comments June 4th, 2007
