Remember when I took Opie back in and he got the antibiotic for his respiratory problem? Well, the vet asked if I'd like it if they ordered a big bottle of it that we could keep on hand, for issues like this. Not life threatening, but something simple.
I guess they trust that if it's worse, we'll bring the cat in for a checkup. Sure. We'll take the big bottle.
I'm glad we did. It arrived with the shipment for Rocky's meds. (OMG, that cat....six days was all it took for him to decide these tasty "treats" weren't tasty enough; ordered some junk stuff from Chewy, sixty-eight dollars worth and those junk treats, he likes. I use the bacon flavored paste to coat the chewable fluconazole tablets and push broken pieces of Friskies Party Mix into the paste along with just broken pieces of the Party Mix, he'll eat that - and broken pieces of Party Mix with a broken up terbinafine chewable works. So far. He likes that Party Mix a lot, he's gotten a little too aggressive biting them off of the little cup I make out of my fingers. Ouch.)
Opie's breathing got bad again. So, he's back on the doxycycline. Then, last Thursday, Lorelei got sick. She looked absolutely horrific. These things hit her eyes first. They were red and drippy. Not clear drippy, but reddish drippy. And not runny drippy, but thick drippy. Her eyes actually looked like they were sunken into her skull. I gave her some boiled chicken, she ate, but in the middle of the night, she threw it all up. I gave her a quarter of a plain Pepcid, and the next day started her on the meds.
Honestly, she looked so bad, I was hoping she'd make it to this week. But one of the things my vet told me a long time ago kept rolling through my mind. "It takes at least three days before you see any progress from the meds." She wasn't getting worse, but she still looked pretty bad.
Saturday she spent a lot of her time outside laying on the cool grass. Her ears were white hot (fever, I guess). She threw up the meds once, but not again. Yesterday, she seemed more active, but she didn't want me touching her. At one point I tried to pick her up and when I touched her she started to shiver. But I held her to me, her face on my shoulder and she relaxed and started to purr. As the day went on, she was more active, more alert. She started to follow me around a little, sitting by my feet, looking at me and meowing. I'd pick her up and give her hugs, then give her food (in that shipment from Chewy were six different types of Sheba food). Each time I fed her, she ate a little more than the last time. And she kept it down.
She was peeing and pooping okay, there wasn't a problem there, but she was pretty weak.
Last night, when I fed the cats, she was right there with them. She went to the litterbox in the laundry room and when she was finished, she came into the family room, laid on the tile floor and began to clean herself. Butt. Belly. Chest. Arms and legs. I hadn't seen her do this in over a week.
She jumped on Brian, headbutting his face and arms. She purred.
Last night, I came out to get a drink of water and she wanted attention. I laid down on the sofa and she crawled up onto my arms and put her face into mine. We fell asleep.
She ate a full section of the Sheba food this morning, at one sitting.
So, another seven days of meds (the directions call for ten days) and I think she'll be over this.
I'm really glad we didn't have to go to the vet. The weekend was really stressful for me, but I think she'll be okay. If it hadn't been for the meds, I think today would be a not so good day for all of us.
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