Vet Visit 2018

The last Friday of the year arrived, and time for our annual 3 cat vet visit. I loaded everyone up in the crate same as last year (using the dining room table), opened both doors now that the cats were secure, and carried the crate with all three cats out the house door and put them in the car.

All three of them on the dining room table. Look close!

Usually they don't talk in the car. But someone was complaining. It sounded like Apricot. I figured someone was stepping on him. (I mean, just look at the original arrangement up above.) But no; it turns out Apricot wouldn't have been complaining for a such a menial item. His problem was that he'd needed the litter box and I'd sidetracked him by putting him in the crate, and he'd peed on himself. Poor baby. 

The vet tech helped me clean him up with some waterless shampoo where I held him and she cleaned. Apricot didn't seem to mind the help at all and was actually fairly grateful. Considering his fear of other humans, that speaks volumes to his discomfort. I felt like a terrible cat mom but then again, what could I have done in the car? And he'd managed to mop it all up with his fur so we didn't have to clean the crate at all. 

Of course, when I originally got there it was dark inside and there was a sign on the door. I got out of the car to read it, in the light rain that persisted during the entire car drive, and saw "We've moved, come visit us at such and such a location" and it gave directions. Luckily for me we were (a) early for once, and (b) they'd only moved down the street several office buildings. I did mention several times to several people that it would have been nice if someone had mentioned they'd moved.

What do my wondering eyes does appear but the orange cat too!

After cleaning up Apricot I'd let him go back in the crate. Colby, being Colby, had already emerged to explore this new place and find himself a corner. You see he found it quite quickly. To my surprise, however, Apricot emerged from the crate too after the vet tech left, and explored as well. Perhaps he thought the worst had already happened inside the crate so he might as well find a place outside. Thimble, being Thimble, never moved from the far back of the crate.

Apricot breaks their chair.

Apricot made himself a place by ripping off the bottom of the chair. I apologized when the tech came back in, saying, "I think my cat broke your chair." She said it was all right and was completely un-flustered. This led me to examine things closer the next time we were alone and I realized the bottom of the chair was velcro-ed to it, and Apricot had merely pulled it down. 

The vet tech and I (you know, I should really find out their names so I can stop calling them "the vet tech", especially since there were actually two different people this time) discussed concerns and what I wanted done. The MC boys turned 4 this year, and while they don't usually do senior bloodwork till 6, since MC lifespan is average 10 years, I asked to have it done this year, only to have her tell me that was actually something she was going to ask me if I wanted done. I love it when I think along the same lines as my vet. Makes me feel like I'm doing this right. 

They asked who should go first. I said "Thimble." Here's the reasoning. If you don't take Thimble first, he'll find out what he's in for from whoever does go first. Don't ask me how they communicate stuff so quickly, but they do. And then he'll be even harder to extract from the back of the crate. He is a long, strong cat, and he makes himself even longer when he doesn't want to be pulled out. (I have harnesses on all of them so they can be grabbed/pulled by that instead of a leg or tail, which could cause injuries depending on the amount of battle from the cat in question.) 

So she pulled Thimble out and went off with him. They gave me the option of not taking him and doing it there in the room, but I'm a bit queasy about other people's blood, and someone I'm responsible for is even worse, and in Thimble's case it wouldn't help to have me there. (He looks to me for rescue and when none is forthcoming, attempts to rescue himself. Whereas if I'm not there, he stays confused about the situation long enough to get things done before he starts trying to leave.)

They did vitals while they were back there, so it was a while before they brought Thimble back. I took the opportunity to explain to the other two what was going to happen. I didn't lie. I told them it would hurt. I told them why we were taking blood and that it wouldn't hurt for long. And I told them I have it done, too. 

Now when Thimble left, Apricot decided his hiding spot was not safe and climbed up onto my lap and then back around into my raincoat. 

Hiding behind me.

This is where Pippin hid when he was younger. Yes, I was having some emotional difficulties with that. As well as being amazed that Apricot now trusts me enough to use me as a hiding place. That was not previously the case. 

But since Colby is the most calm of the three and takes being at the vet better than the other two, I sent Apricot next, feeling terrible as I extracted him from behind me. I kept saying, "you need to close the door or we'll never get Thimble out" but it wasn't until I realized that I needed to say "crate door" for the vet tech to know what I meant that she did it. I couldn't as I was pinned down by Apricot. We managed to get the crate door closed before Thimble could retreat into it. 

Thimble is seriously displeased by the closed crate door.

Colby had noticed where Apricot hid and thought that was a most splendid idea so the minute Apricot left, he came over and climbed into my lap and went behind me. It didn't work quite the way he wanted it to. His head stuck out beyond my hip on the one side and his tail wrapped around my waist almost to the middle of my body on the other side. He's quite a bit longer than Apricot.

Colby's head on one side ....

... and his tail on the other side.

Apricot didn't go back into my raincoat even when Colby was evicted for his trip to the vampire; he just went under the chair again into his first hiding place. 

Apricot "hiding" under the chair.

There were two chairs. Apricot was under the one I wasn't sitting in. I was sitting in the one in the corner. Thimble decided that if he couldn't have the crate, he'd have the back corner under my chair. He wedged himself in that corner with much determination. 

After Colby came back, we waited a little until the vet herself arrived. She talked a bit about the concerns I had raised and then did the physical exams. We did Colby first. I usually hold Colby during these exams. He feels safer when he's got his arms over my shoulder and she can get at head, chest, ears, and the back end of him quite well like that, as long as he's still standing on the exam counter, anyway. They q-tipped his ears for a cytology scan. The vet agreed with me that it was weird there was no outer evidence of the distress his ears are in. Just looking at them, they look fine. No discharge or anything. But deep in, where only a q-tip can reach, they are nasty. The q-tips come back covered in black gunk. 

I know this because he actually asks me to do it when his ears start bothering him too much. Considering how much he hates the process, that tells you something that he asks me to do it anyway. The normal treatment ear drops have been tried multiple times but don't work, and I suspect it's because they don't get deep enough. So now I have medicine (ketoconazole, would you believe, just like human dandruff shampoo!) that I dip the q-tip in before I clean out the deep part of his ears. I expressed that I was scared I was going to make him deaf (this is a distinct danger in doing what I'm doing with the q-tips and means usually a vet will not recommend that you, the individual, do it) but apparently they think I know what I'm doing. I'm not sure to be flattered or worried. 

Colby's chosen position. The exam table is right next to his tail.

After his vaccines (he was due for all of them this year) I let him go. He went back into his chosen spot to wait for the others to be done. 

Then we did Apricot. Apricot is too little and fat to be comfortable over my shoulder, but he finds my presence reassuring and I hold him for his exams too. Again, there's very little we can do for his weight. He wants to be as big as the boys since he feels unsettled being smaller, and trying to feed him separately from two others is just ... maybe if I didn't work full-time outside the house I could manage it, but not when I'm so tired all the time and away for so much of the time. 

This year he got a 3 year rabies vaccine. His teeth have mild tartar and he needs to have his teeth cleaned, although after thinking about it I believe I'm going to have it done next year. He had a very bad reaction to having all three vaccines at once the first time I took him to a vet and we'd not given him any since then (as I didn't know which vaccine caused the problem). Well, it wasn't the rabies one. He had some mild diarrhea yesterday, just enough to irritate his butt and make him do the scoot thing. I figured that's what was going on and picked him up and used a cold water-dampened paper towel to clean off the target area (so to speak). It wasn't that dirty, actually. I think it was mostly just irritated and the cool water helped calm down the irritation because he seemed to feel much better after that and didn't go back to scooting.

Once Apricot was put down and Thimble picked up, I opened the crate door because I know Apricot wanted to go inside. Which he did, rapidly. 

Thimble I don't hold, not by myself. It's not that he's aggressive or anything. He's just strong and he's too strong for me to guarantee the vet won't get hurt because I slipped up. So the tech held him and I just was where he could see me and I could reassure him. He's had plenty of physical exams and vaccines so he knows the routine. 

The vet actually told me, before the exams, that my cats are well behaved. I said I bet you say that to all the people. She said, well, no. They had a cat last week they couldn't even touch and she said that "I certainly did not say that to his owner." I shrugged and said, "I guess that's what comes of not lying to them." She had a puzzled look on her face. So I explained further my theory of being honest with your cat(s). If you don't lie to them, they can trust you, so when you say it's going to hurt but only for a short time, they know not to fight it and it'll be over soon, and so on. The vet said that it helps that my cats understand more than most. I felt that I was soon going to be monologue-ing and I shouldn't do that so I didn't go into how to teach your cats to understand English.

By the way, recognition of the fact that I was about to start monologue-ing and restraining myself is a big thing for me. I don't usually notice until I'm fifteen minutes into a one-woman show.

Anyway, Thimble is a nice, healthy cat with only one concern from me. He injured his shoulders making a massive leap onto the bookshelves (I showed her the instagram clip of the leap he normally makes to get onto the bookshelves and said that the one where he injured himself was even farther and higher and she looked like 'wow, okay, I hadn't quite realized what she meant by massive leap'. And then he reinjured himself the minute he felt better. 

We discussed using Onseor (sp?) to make him feel better but I said with a sigh, he'd just do it again and hurt himself again. (That's the only cat-specific anti-inflammatory and oddly, it came out in 2013, the year Pippin had his surgeries. I know quite a lot about it because they gave me some for him after his surgeries and because it was new, explained the "quite a lot" to me.)

So as of now we are practicing benign neglect. I'll keep an eye on him and make sure it doesn't get worse and hopefully he'll be careful since he won't feel perfect. He's not limping or anything. He didn't break anything. Basically I think he hit the ceiling with his shoulders when he landed on the bookshelf (I heard two thuds). And there's a narrow band of heat over his shoulders right in back of his shoulder blades. The vet said most often it's jumping down from places that makes injuries like that but I told her about the fact that he jumps down all the time and never had this happen but it started right after he did that leap and (I think) hit the ceiling so I think it's that and she allowed as to how that was a distinct possibility.

Thimble just wants to go home. He's had enough.
Apricot is wondering just why and how he's no longer in the back of the crate.

Thimble, once released, headed into the crate where Apricot had wedged himself into the back. That's Thimble's spot! So he simply wedged himself into the back on top of Apricot. As he is heavier and the crate surface is slick, Apricot got scooted forward. But as Thimble's tail is much longer and fluffier, it ends up wrapped around Apricot. (This happened last year, too). 

Colby's waiting to go home.

It took a while for the vet to type up her notes about three cats for me to take home, so we were once again alone in the room for a while.

It took so long that Apricot decided to come out and explore again. I asked him what did he think he was doing and we were going to go home soon and now I had two cats to load up before we could leave. Apricot realized I was merely fussing to hear the sound of my voice and wasn't truly upset (because I made sure I didn't sound upset) and went about his business. Actually I thought it was funny and a sign that Apricot was getting braver!

Admittedly this was the extent of his exploration.

When we got home Apricot tried to hide under the sofa and couldn't, because I'd shut the door first thing that morning (I'm not completely incompetent when it comes to impending vet visits!) and I wouldn't open the door till he came out and let me take off his harness. This was because I knew where he'd go and I didn't want to have his harness get caught on the mechanism under the sofa (it has both sides turn into recliners).

So he finally came out from under the headboard of my bed and let me take the harness off and then he had to climb around both boys when I opened the door to the room with the sofa due to the two of them being curious and standing in the doorway.

The boys were fine. They hung around me the rest of the day.

I was on the bed. So they had to both be there too.
And Colby reached out a paw and "held" Thimble's paw.

After an hour or so of quiet time, Apricot came out and was around, too. By evening I had all three with me. And it was calm and nice.

Thimble and Apricot to the right of me.

Colby to my immediate left. (He's leaning on me.)

We all survived this year's vet visit. Despite the rain. And the relocation of the vet office. And my sore arms the day after from carrying the crate.