Apricot and the Kitty Doctor

August 8, 2014 Friday

Apricot had to go to the kitty doctor this morning. I took the whole day off to be with him and hopefully alleviate some of the fear.

On the way to the kitty doctor
Yes, I'm stopped at a stop light, not currently driving!

The actual visit went much better than I expected. I put his harness on him (his "Big Boy Clothes") and popped him into the carry sling (which he welcomed, oddly enough) and attached the hook from the sling into his harness's hook. (I wonder if I try putting him in the sling say, a week from now, what he'll do.)

When I went out the door, he tried so hard to go back inside the house that he twisted himself completely out of the carry sling. Of course the attachment point didn't give, so he couldn't get away from me entirely. But he sure did try.

I sat down in the car, closed the door, and rearranged him back into the sling for a more comfortable ride. Pippin would have hid his head inside the sling, choosing to ignore the outside world. I rather expected the same response from Apricot, given how he behaved in the shelter, and hiding under the bed when I brought him home, but instead he insisted on having his head out.

A lot of the time during the car ride he also had one paw out, over my arm, looking out the window as I drove. He seemed alarmed when we got on a highway and went faster than my neighborhood driving, but I talked almost constantly to him and that seemed to reassure him.

He didn't like the dogs barking at the vet's, but neither do I, and he didn't do anything about it, just kind of flinched when he heard them. He kept looking around, making sure he could see everything. I tried to make sure I wasn't blocking his view of anything he wanted to look at.

So Dr. Brown, our kitty doctor, says he has a mild yeast infection in his ears. (If this is what a mild infection looks like, I would hate to see a severe one!) She gave me ear drops for him. We'll see how that goes.

She says he's probably a year and a half old, which agrees with my thinking on the matter. His teeth look really good, she says, no tartar at all.

And he got two vaccines, the rabies one and the respiratory illnesses one. She said since he doesn't go outside or meet with other cats who do, he didn't need the others. This is good.

He was very happy to be home, but he went under the bed and hid. So I took a nap on top of the bed for about three hours, as I've been very tired the last week anyway. I felt almost drugged, the sleep was so deep, even though I hadn't taken anything to help me sleep. But when I got up, I said, "Apricot, I'm awake," just in case it would draw him out.

Much to my surprise, in a few seconds I felt him brush by my leg! He came out and hung out in the living room while I had lunch, but after I put ear drops in his ears, he stayed a little longer (as if to prove the ear drops didn't have anything to do with it) and then retreated back to the headboard hideaway.

The vaccines make him feel bad, and kitties who feel bad usually hide. They can't let predators see that they aren't up to defending themselves. Thus he's hiding in the safest place he knows.

So this is where we are now. He's under the headboard. He'll come out occasionally when encouraged to, but he retreats back underneath given half a chance.

This isn't fun and it isn't amusing. I'm worried about him. I want my happy Apricot back. He was so thrilled this morning that I was staying home. He lay down on the bookshelf beside the chair while I was reading and purred like thunder. I swear he was almost shaking the chair.

And now he's not feeling well and curled all up and not wanting to interact. It's encouraging that he comes out to be petted. It means he's hiding because he doesn't feel good, not because he's afraid. But I don't want him to not feel good, either.

I'm getting echoes from Pippin not feeling well. He didn't hide, of course, having long experience with me, but it hurts me when they aren't their normal chipper selves. I want to make things better and only time will do that. I wish I didn't have to get him vaccines at all, but his ear infection wasn't going to go away by itself (since it had stuck around for two months now) and I don't think the doctor would have seen him without giving him his law-required rabies shot. Perhaps she would have.

If I had known how badly he'd react, I probably would have tried harder to sneak him through the system without getting vaccinated.

<Later the same day><and you have no idea how lucky you are to be able to skip all the misery of waiting those hours to find this out>

Around 3:30 I went in to check on him and he yawned and stretched and came out from under the headboard. So far he has stayed out this time.

But he is still feeling lethargic and not his usual self. He spent a few moments curled up in his tunnel, which surprised me, since I can hardly even get him to go through it to chase the Bird.

Curled up in the tunnel

He didn't find this suited his concept of defensible shelter enough, though, so he moved to under the desk. The cat who seeks out the hard, cool spots of the house (which are few enough) sought out the foot rest with the heating pad on it to sleep on. This is under my desk; the heating pad wasn't on. But it was still kind of strange to see him search out a location to sleep that is soft and poofy.

Sleeping in the safety of his cave

I stayed on the floor where he could see me and just amused myself with blog reading on my phone. We rested like this for over half an hour.

It was such a relief to have him out again because it meant he wasn't feeling quite so bad. And I felt very touched that he trusted me enough to be out when he still wasn't feeling good. 

When he roused from his nap under the desk he seemed to be feeling a little better. Incremental improvements. This time I felt okay enough with his situation that I sat down in my soft chair, as sitting on the floor had been taking its toll on certain body parts. It may be carpeted but after a while, it feels like solid rock.

Sleeping on my lap

I was quite astonished when Apricot chose my lap for his next nap. He spent a short nap sleeping by my side on the chair, like he'd done when the fireworks on July 4th were upsetting him. Then after a leg-stretching walk around the living room, he came back and climbed into my lap. I do mean climbed. He's really not much of a jumper.

And there he stayed for about an hour while I finished my book and then played with the phone again (that thing's a lifesaver for not wanting to disturb sick kitties. I'd always get so bored before). It was lovely to have him there ... sad that it was because he didn't feel well ... and confusing because that fur looks so much like Pippin. 

(A digression about the lookalike factor: The receptionist tech at the kitty doctor is named Shiloh, and she knew Pippin well. In fact, she was one of the few people who saw past his "stranger danger" behavior. That day I brought Pippin to the kitty doctor, the day before he passed away, she said that "he didn't seem like his normal social self" and since social is the last thing I'd expect anyone but myself to use to describe him, I was astonished at how perceptive she was. This means I remember Shiloh despite the prosopagnosia making it difficult for me to remember anyone I see so infrequently. 

(As I was paying to leave today, I said to Shiloh, who was admiring Apricot, "kinda spooky, huh," and she knew exactly what I was talking about, and said that yes, it was, just a bit, with the kind of tone in her voice that meant yes, it was, quite a lot. And then she had to explain what we were talking about to the other receptionist tech. Then I pointed out the white thin vertical stripe on his nose which is all Apricot and none of Pippin, and that his eyes (which she said were beautiful) were green instead of Pippin's amber. And that he acts totally different than Pippin. Which I've got to admit here is a great help to me with the whole confusing grief thing.)

Apricot fell asleep on my lap and stayed there for ages, and despite my hunger, I didn't move. He woke up then later, and after he left of his own accord I went to get supper, and he hung out in the kitchen during that. 

He disappeared from the kitchen at some point during supper preparations, so I went to go find him, hoping he hadn't gone under the headboard again. 

He hadn't. Even better, he'd gone back to the bedroom not to hide, but to get himself a bite of food. He hadn't even been interested in his favorite treats all day.

This day has been just as difficult as I imagined it would be ... in completely different ways than I imagined. I'd been worried about the anxiety and fear he would feel taking over and driving him back under the headboard. There was very little if any of that. What drove him under the headboard was feeling sick, which after Pippin (who bore his vaccinations stoically and never seemed bothered by them) I had completely forgotten some cats get to feeling poorly after their shots. And I hadn't really thought about it, because I hadn't wanted to think about it, but the similarities between Apricot feeling sick and Pippin's illnesses of the last year of his life were just a bit overwhelming for me, which might account for my sleeping the sleep of the ... well, sleeping very soundly this morning.

We don't have to go back for a year. And hopefully the ear drops will be effective at some point in the next seven days!