The Dog Doesn’t Die

He’s so much better!

Doesn’t he look good? His energy is back and he’s eating on his own a bit. In fact, last night Dr. Carter and I decided to transition him back to feeding himself. Since he’s gained weight on a combination of a high-calorie prescription diet and an appetite stimulant, I’m going to give him fewer tube feedings throughout the day in hopes that this will become the secondary source of nutrition. We’ve got an appointment on Friday to see how it’s going, and if he hasn’t lost weight, we’ll just use the tube feedings as a medication delivery system with a few extra calories tossed in.

Speaking of medication, Eddie is taking mitrazapine (which I often see online as mirtazapine, too) as his appetite stimulant, which is a common veterinary use for it. However, this drug is used primarily for people as an anti-depressant, and one of the common side effects is wild dreams. I have found stories of mitrazapine-induced dreams all over the Internet, and some of these seem borderline hallucinogenic. For example, one man dreamt of airplanes on streets and another person compared the dreams to being on a recreational drug. So what does this do to Eddie’s dreams? All I know is that he is only supposed to get this drug every 72 hours, and the night after he gets it, he’ll wake me up and want to “talk” to me. I think he’s having some vivid dreams that he wants to share somehow, but I’ll never know for sure.

Finally, I sent these Dancing Deer brownies to the vets and staff, and they loved them. As Dr. Carter said last night, “we like flowers, we like fruit, and we love chocolate.” So next time you need to send a gift for a special occasion, consider the Dancing Deer brownies to have an informal endorsement from my cats’ veterinary practice.

I visit a wonderful veterinary clinic, the Sacramento Veterinary Hospital, which has three skilled and creative veterinarians, and a helpful and compassionate staff. They’re all lovely people, but I’ve had to spend way too much time with them during the past three weeks.

In a nutshell, both of my cats, Eddie and Priscilla, had loose stools for a couple of days. Priss recovered, but Eddie ended up with stools of just blood and mucous, so I took him to the clinic. Eddie is also diabetic, which means his health is somewhat fragile to begin with. And, to make a very long story short, a few days after I first took him in, I dropped him off first thing in the morning so he could go on an IV. I expected to be called to return so that he could have that last injection we never want to give our pets.

Instead, our veterinarian, Dr. Carter, called later than planned to tell me she’d stabilized him and to ask what I wanted to do. The thought was that if she and the other vets and staff could get him through the next several days, they could send him home with some chance of a full recovery. But I would have to tube-feed him for at least a couple of weeks. She asked if I would be willing to do this. I said yes. She asked how I would feel if, after tube-feeding him, he died anyway. I said I’d feel terrible, but I’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I’d fought for him.

Since then, I’ve learned that people are often reluctant to tube-feed their pets in a medical crisis. So I feel like I have to take a stand. As Dr. Pierson says on her page discussing tube-feeding, this is a very valuable method of getting a cat through a temporary medical crisis. Just as you can’t leave a pet in the veterinary ICU forever, you can’t tube-feed long-term. If your cat has incurable cancer, for example, that’s not likely to be a situation appropriate for tube-feeding. But if your cat is likely to recover, then why not do it?

So I’m going to detail my experience of tube-feeding Eddie, complete with pictures. Tube-feeding is not for wimps, but it’s not hard, either. I am easily frustrated, so if I can do it, most people can do it as well. After you give a couple of tube-feedings, you start to figure out what works and what doesn’t. It is somewhat time-consuming, and it will dictate your schedule for 2 to 3 weeks. But if you have some flexibility, it’s worth it.

The first couple of times I did it this time, I was very frustrated. Tube-feeding has potential to be messy, and I got food and water all over the place. I also had trouble getting food into the syringe without a lot of air. But I quickly got past those issues, and now it’s just routine.

Here is a picture of Eddie sleeping in the bay window, which is about 3 feet from the floor, and which he jumped onto himself. Notice that you can’t see his feeding tube, which goes into his esophagus through his neck. He’s sleeping on the tube, in fact, which is one of many indications that it doesn’t really bother him.

In this picture, there’s the basic “stuff” that I need for the tube-feeding. On the left is a red t-shirt, machine washable and baggy enough to throw over whatever I’m already wearing. The potential for mess is always there, and instead of changing clothes, it’s easier to keep using the same large shirt as a sort of smock. There are also syringes, one for food and one for water, plus a mortar and pestle for grinding up pills that go into Eddie’s food. This time the food is already liquified, but you may end up having to use a blender.

Dave took a few pictures of me tube-feeding Eddie. It has to go slowly, because you can’t dump a lot of food into a cat’s stomach all at once. I’m giving him about five 25-30 cc feedings a day, since the usable food from his can comes to about 140-155 cc’s of high-calorie, high-quality, prescription cat food. A 25-30 cc feeding takes me about 12-15 minutes, plus 3-5 minutes of preparation time. So we’re talking about just over an hour and a half a day. Eddie is worth it.

I am looking forward to Eddie’s full recovery. He’s begun licking but not eating the regular cat food, which is Wellness canned food. He’s behaving normally and seems to be regaining his energy, although his weight is still down from the trauma of his medical ordeal. The veterinarians are optimistic, so I’m optimistic, though it will be a huge relief to have him eating on his own again. And if for some reason that doesn’t happen and I lose him, at least I will have made the effort.

We are overdue for some silly stuff!

First, do your pets get enough exercise? Sure, you take your dogs out for walks, but what about your cats? Have you ever thought about getting them a treadmill? Yeah, me neither.

Maybe the reason cats don’t exercise so much is because cats are existentialists. Do existentialists exercise? I doubt it. They do mope, however, and existentialist cats are particularly good mopers.

Finally, are you female? Of a certain age? At that very special “time of life”? And awake at night? Then you have insomniac sisters. Extra points if your name is Judy.

Last week, I came across three things I wanted to post on this blog. And now I find that two of them are sweeping across the Internet. So there’s no point in waiting, I guess. I also have a brief message of encouragement for those of you who land on this site looking for info about diabetic pets, but that’s at the end.

Have you seen the extremely popular YouTube video, “An Engineer’s Guide to Cats” yet? If you haven’t, you eventually will because it is all over the place. You can watch it now by clicking on this link. You’ll be glad you did, because it’s quite funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHXBL6bzAR4

Have you seen the creepy video of the guy stuck in the elevator for 41 hours? No, the video is not 41 hours long, it’s about 2 minutes. It’s worth watching. Here it is: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/2008/04/21/080421_elevators/?yrail

Accompanying the video was a well-written article, which is not being passed around the Internet quite so much. I read the article in a hard copy of The New Yorker, a magazine I dearly love. It explains all about poor, trapped Nicholas, as well as discussing elevators in detail. They’re safe, they’re more complicated than you might imagine, and they generate much of their own power, kind of like a hybrid. Here’s the link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten?/yrail

And now we’re all caught up. I had planned on putting up a book review tomorrow and some diabetic cat success stories later on in the week, but I’ll have to revisit that schedule now. In the mean time, if you’re one of the people drifting in to check out my periodic references to diabetic pets, here’s the bumper sticker version: Yes, it can be treated, and no, it’s not hard. You can do this and you’ll be glad you did. Giving 2 shots a day to my diabetic cat, Eddie, takes about 5 minutes total, and for my trouble I have kept him alive and in very good health since Sept. 2004. More on this at the end of the week or beginning of next week.

It’s gloomy out, I’ve had better days, most of my friends have had better days, maybe we’ve all had better days. So it’s time for some silly stuff!

This short video shows why we love Stanford University for its many contributions to technology, society … and cat toys!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNUHeMM_GpQ

My 87-year-old father has this Disney-esque view of the animal kingdom, where all wild animals want is to be our friends. What can I say? He’s 87. It’s a little late in the game to change his mind, and at this point, why try after failing for decades? Anyway, this Weezer video was produced by Spike Jonze, but it could have been written by Dad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hyoszso38E

Finally, my friend Marsha had a disagreement with her otherwise delightful husband, Elliott, who accused her of making up her memory of The Banana Man. Trust me, no one could think they remembered something this absurd without having seen it. Thanks, Marsha, for digging this up and passing it along. Captain Kangaroo presents The Banana Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et6Jt2YX44o

I normally don’t celebrate cat birthdays beyond putting out an extra treat, but Priss turned 19 today, and that’s very old for a cat. It’s the equivalent of 92 in people years. And under the circumstances, she’s doing pretty well. Notice I didn’t say “great,” which would not be true. She has a thyroid condition, she’s had a couple of grand mal seizures, her kidneys are borderline, and she’s underweight despite being on two appetite stimulants. But she hangs out on the sofa or on the porch, sits on my lap and purrs, enjoys her food and treats, and generally seems to have a good life for an old lady.

I adopted her from the animal shelter when she was 5 1/2, so I haven’t had her the entire time. She’s a long-haired dilute calico and absolutely gorgeous. When I first saw her, I thought she was almost as beautiful as Rabbit, my Turkish Angora cat who had just died a few weeks before. Later, I came to think she was as beautiful, or moreso, and then I quit comparing. She’s also very affectionate.

I think if you click on her picture it will come up larger. That particular shot is from a few years ago, when she was in her prime.

Sometimes a book doesn’t warrant the time it takes to read it. And this is an individual decision we make for ourselves alone. So just because I chose not to finish these books doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try them. I would just let them sit quietly in my book recycling/resale corner and not mention them, but I do think I need to discuss their treatment of animals because I try to get as many books as possible into this blog.

The books I didn’t like enough to finish are Lisa See’s Flower Net, and Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg. Flower Net Might Not Be Safe for animal lovers, because of a plot twist I’ll reveal in the first comment, below. And Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven is Almost Certainly Safe for animal lovers. More on that book below, too.

I haven’t read much more than the newspaper lately, so I thought I’d post this, which has been circulating on the Internet for years (and years and years).

To be posted VERY LOW on the refrigerator door - nose height.

Dear Dogs and Cats,
The dishes with the paw print are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a paw print in the middle of my plate of food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.
 
The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn’t help because I fall faster than you can run.
 
I cannot buy anything bigger than a king sized bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort. Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.
 
For the last time, there is not a secret exit from the bathroom. If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob, or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open. I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years — canine or feline attendance is not required.
 
 To pacify you, my dear pets, I have posted the following message on our front door:
 To All Non-Pet Owners Who Visit & Like to Complain About Our Pets:
 1. They live here. You don’t.
 2. If you don’t want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. (That’s why they call it “fur”niture.)
 3. I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
 4. To you, it’s an animal. To me, he/she is an adopted son/daughter who is short, hairy, walks on all fours, and doesn’t speak clearly.
 
 Remember: In many ways, dogs and cats are better than kids because they:
 1. Eat less.
 2. Don’t ask for money all the time.
 3. Are easier to train.
 4. Normally come when called.
 5. Never ask to drive the car.
 6. Don’t hang out with drug-using friends.
 7. Don’t smoke or drink.
 8. Don’t have to buy the latest fashions.
 9. Don’t want to wear your clothes.
 10. Don’t need a “gazillion” dollars for college.
 And finally,
 11. If they get pregnant, you can sell their children.

One of my Internet friends, Mary Cole, posted this beautiful eulogy on Sugarcats.com shortly after Bushey passed away. I am copying it with permission, and Mary notes that it was originally written for the Cats Protection, Dorking newsletter. She says that if it persuades one person to take on a diabetic cat, it’s worth it. From my own experience, I’ll add that if you are inspired to take on a rescue cat, giving a shot is easier than pilling. It adds about 5 minutes to my day, maximum.

See the first comment for Mary’s post.

First, we have a warning from Rusty (whom I believe is a dog and whose site I will link to shortly), who said that his mother couldn’t finish “A Dog Called Kitty” by Bill Wallace because it was too sad. So that book is probably Not Safe.

Also, I finally finished Planet Cat, by Sandra Choron, Harry Choron, and Arden Moore. This is a nonfiction compendium that I first mentioned in another post: http://esheley.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/does-the-dog-die-a-short-review-of-planet-cat-by-sandra-choron-harry-choron-and-arden-moore/ . I have changed my opinion somewhat, which I’ll explain in the first comment.