Cat Hospital

Our plans to travel up North to visit Ry's family this weekend were thwarted on Friday when our kitty became so ill we had to take him to the animal hospital. Call me naive, but I didn't even know such a thing existed. It does exist and it is very expensive!

Late Wednesday night after we had Courtney over for dinner, Silvio became lethargic and started vomiting uncontrollably. Poor little guy stayed up all night puking and trying to go number two until he had nothing left in him. I checked on him several times during the night and he was just downstairs trying to take care of business in his litter box. The next day he sat around in a sick lump all day and refused to eat.

We took him to our normal vet who examined him, ran blood tests and gave him fluids. Since there are no take-home kitty IVs, cats get subcutaneous fluids which is a fancy way of saying a big ball of fluid was shot into his abdomen. That night Silvio still refused to eat and spent his time in a lump either on a piece of egg crate in the basement or the plastic bag rug in the kitchen. He barely had his eyes open and wouldn't, probably couldn't, do anything due to his fever.

Friday morning the vet called me with the results of the blood tests and said Silvio's liver numbers were very high. He told me we had to take him to the animal hospital for an ultra sound ASAP.

We took him to the hospital in the early afternoon. He had his belly shaved for the ultrasound and was diagnosed with pancreatitis (aka super swollen pancreas) and anorexia. Seriously, cat anorexia. I guess in the technical sense in relation to cats it just means, "cat that's not eating", but cat anorexia just sounds like a funny concept to me.

They recommended he stay overnight but the price tag was so high ($1200!!!!) Since there was an intermediate step before cat hospitalization, we tried it. He got an anti-nausea shot, fluids and we had to force feed him liquid "recovery" food through a syringe for three days.

Needless to say, force feeding a cat is not an easy task. It borders on ridiculous, especially when he normally only nibbles at food. He's not a mow-down kind of feline. First we tried wrapping him up in a blanket as they suggested, but that proved more struggle than useful. It's definitely a two person operation and we got it down after the first day. He didn't like it at all but he complied and is slowly getting better.

Today we didn't force feed him at all and he choose to eat the liquid food and some of his normal food on his own. He's doing some of his normal things and has come up out of his "cat infirmary" (aka the basement) to spend time with us. He's not 100% by any means, but just today he meowed to be let into the linen closet where he chilled, drank water from the bathroom sink and made an unsuccessful attempt to jump to the top of our stacking washer and dryer.

I never thought I'd spend so much money on a cat or go to such lengths to ensure he eats, even when he doesn't want to. What can I say, I love the little bugger! I'm so thankful that he's on the road to recovery.