Ronnie was doing poorly over the weekend. It's been a roller coaster, for sure. One minute it's horrible, the next he's doing something he hadn't done in a while.
He's been having a hard time controlling his bladder. He pees where he lays. I've been doing a lot of laundry the past week or so. The majority of the cat beds where he lays have the bedding covered with pee pads. But at least I'm able to find him. The previous month he'd find another place to lay and I couldn't rest until I laid eyes on him.
The size of his poop has gotten smaller and there's more fecal matter than fur. The licking has, for the most part, stopped. That's a good thing.
There were a couple of times last week I was checking under him for pee, to make sure he wasn't laying in wet, and my fingers hit something else. Yeah, he was pooping where he was laying. So, all of this had me pretty worried. He was seeming more steady on his back legs as the days went on, he wasn't kicking out his right leg like he had been (think of a dog lifting a leg to pee, but it was because he couldn't control it), not quite as wobbly.
I was giving him fluids every other day, but he still was dehydrated. I would see him drinking from the fountain on the patio and from the water bowl in the bedroom, but it wasn't enough. Especially with the weather we've been having. Hot and humid.
And that's another thing. He wants to be outside. In the sun. He's a mostly white cat with mostly white ears and a white face. He's lost a lot of fur. I worry about sunburn. Just like people, cats can get sunburned. So, another thing I've been watching for. Yesterday morning, he went into one of the cathouses in the yard and his body was inside and his head was hanging outside of it, in the sun (he was on the second level of a two level house). Remembering what the old vet said about Richie, when I'd told him about Richie laying with his head hanging over the edge of something, that it indicated a heart problem.
I called the vet and made an appointment to get him checked out. We took him in at 3:30.
During the four hours we had until the appointment, he jumped up into the bedroom window and fell asleep. A few hours later I heard noise in the bedroom, went in to check, he'd jumped onto the bed, off of the bed using the chair or the stool onto the floor and was on the opposite side of the bed, where he pooped. I went to get something to clean it up with, he left the bedroom, went into the office and climbed into one of the litterboxes and pooped some more. This gave me hope.
Anyway, when it was time to leave for the vet's office, I put a pee pad down on the blanket in the carrier, just like I did last week when we took him in. They got us into the examining room right away and he was taken out of the carrier to be weighed. He'd lost almost two pounds in two weeks. After the tech left, we let him roam around (I made sure there was nothing he could get behind). And I pulled out the pee pad.
Whoa! He had peed. Dark orange and red stained the pad. This little boy has a pretty bad bladder infection. The vet said his back legs seemed better than two weeks previous, so that's good, but he's still in pain. His eyes and nose are still runny.
She said she wanted to go with a different antibiotic and pain med (the stuff before just knocked him out). He got a Covenia shot and he's on gabapentin for the pain. To help keep his bladder flushed, especially during this heat, he gets 120cc of fluids daily. I was giving him 60cc every other day, but it wasn't enough to keep him hydrated, even though he was drinking some water during the day.
Last night, he was doing some of the normal things he hadn't been doing. I'd given him 60cc of fluids to get him through the night. He went down to the pool area and found his way over the barrier (the barrier that keeps Mario from the pool). Brian followed, then I went down as well. We sat with our feet in the water and Ronnie came over to both of us. When we left, I carried him with me back up to the house.
During the rest of the evening, Ronnie was jumping on the chairs under the patio table. He eventually came into the house, and chose one of the baskets to sleep in. But you knew he was in pain because when he wasn't asleep, he was saying "yow.....yow....yow....yow...." for hours. When his vocalization came from, a different area, I'd get up and check on him. At one point, he had peed, but he had moved. The past week, he'd just lay there.
This morning, after some searching, I found him under the corner of the bed. I got two syringes with lactated ringers ready and took him from under the bed and into the bathroom. He freaked out. So much that he emptied his bladder when I put him on the floor. I cleaned it up, calmed him down and gave him the fluids. Then I finger fed him some Fancy Feast (at one point it looked like he was going to eat without help, but no), then gave him his first dose of gabapentin. I opened the bathroom door and he finally walked down the hallway, I could hear him hitting the wall. He made it to the door and sat there for a few minutes, then went outside and got a drink. Then, he made a small poop in the bark by the fountain.
At this time, he's outside in the "television" bed that we've had for years. You know how sometimes toddlers sleep with their heads down and their butts in the air? That's him right now.
I wouldn't doubt all of the activity yesterday has given him some pain today. I know that it's going to take at least three days to see any improvement and I kind of expect it's going to be a long three days....
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