It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the cathouse. We had the hot water leak over the hallway closet, took a day to get it fixed (one of those things where when you do it yourself, you keep realizing that you don't have something you need to take care of it), then a week to dry it out. Damp Rid, dehumidifier, fan, keeping the door open a crack for air circulation...
All of the stuff in there was put on the clothesline the night we noticed it (that sure came in handy) and I washed all of the hanging jackets after they'd dried out. Mom's minks didn't fare so well, hopefully, they'll still be useable for wildlife rehab.
I washed my wash towels and the front loader's filter was plugged and that had to be taken care of because the machine wouldn't run. Something that's supposed to be done every two months, well, it's probably been two years, and the plug didn't want to come out, and then, when it was taken out and the filter cleaned, it didn't go back tight enough and it leaked. Under the machine. Boo. That one load of laundry took over five hours to finish. And since I do laundry on the weekend because of cheap electricity until two in the afternoon, I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped to.
Then my laptop was getting slower and slower, I was spending more time getting it running than actually getting any work done on it, so there's another week gone (new laptop is arriving today).
And then there's Charlie. Last May he was diagnosed with kidney failure and problem teeth. The vet didn't seem really concerned at the time about the teeth.Brian feeds the cats in the morning. Since Charlie has taken up residence in the laundry room on top of the washer or dryer, Brian feeds him at night, as well. In the past month or so, I've heard Brian's frustration with Charlie's reluctance to eat, no matter what it was.
Well, a week ago last Sunday, I watched Charlie eat. Mouth problem, a definite mouth problem. To try to get him to eat something (he was avoiding all food), I started putting baby food on his front legs and paws and he would lick it off. That worked.
And we started giving him 100cc of lactated ringers every night because he was dehydrated. That helped a lot.
All of last week I tried to get him to eat this or that (well over two hundred bucks worth of food and smooshy treats). And what he would eat was Hill's A/D and turkey or chicken Gerber's baby food.
The other food won't go to waste, there's always some cat who's willing to eat it.Anyway, we started to smell a horrible, nasty smell in the laundry room. Brian thought it was the baby food on Charlie's paws that he hadn't cleaned off. I thought maybe it was residual from the water from the filter. It only took a couple of days to realize it was coming from Charlie. Charlie's mouth to be precise.
And Sunday, I noticed his right cheek was puffy and he was drooling. My first thought was a tooth abscess. My second thought was cancer. We've dealt with both. Katie (cancer) and Richie (bad teeth). I didn't remember Katie stinking, but I did remember the vet calling Richie's breath "blood breath".
Anyway, we're home with Clavamox, twice a day for two weeks. If we're lucky, that should take care of the problem. If it doesn't, we're most likely looking at cancer. But the vet believes it's an abscess and the antibiotics should help.
And now, I wait for my new laptop to arrive.
Charlie found a new spot, the boxes from yesterday's Costco trip, still on the kitchen floor. Taken a few minutes ago.
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