18 May, 2008

Simon Sunday: Getting Back to Normal

Simon has been home for a week, after his Bogus Journey to the emergency veterinary hospital last weekend. We finished the Clavamox and Baytril prescriptions for his urinary tract infection last night, which was good because he had sort of figured out the pill pockets.

Oh yes, the pill pockets. Last Sunday I didn't have much trouble pilling Simon: the Clavamox are small and the Baytril followed immediately after when Simon was too confused to put up a fight. Monday was a completely different story. I got the Clavamox down him easily but he wanted nothing at all to do with the Baytril. I spent close to thirty minutes trying to get that stupid Baytril down him! To anyone observing, it must surely have looked like Wile E. Coyote v. the Roadrunner: No matter what clever scheme I tried (Shoving it in. Shoving it in again. Covering it in goat cheese. Covering it in Petromalt. Shoving it in again. Covering it in more Petromalt and smearing the whole thing on his face.), he outwitted me. By the time I got the last remnants of that damn pill into his mouth, it felt like I had played my guitar all night, but instead of steel strings, it had been strung with barbed wire. So, on the recommendation of the vet's office, I stopped at Petco after work on Tuesday and bought chicken flavored pill pockets.

The pill pockets worked really well, but still required preparation to keep up with Simon. I started off giving him one sans pill, then stuffed a Clavamox in one and gave it to him, which he ate quickly. The Baytril one, he tried to chew at, so I quickly grabbed one of his crunchy cat treats and offered it to him so he'd just swallow the Baytril and eat the new treat. That system has been working out fairly well, though the last couple of days Simon started trying to dissect the pocket and refusing the extra treat until he had chewed at the pill pocket some more. But, hey, no problem because we're done with meds, right?

Yeah, not so much.

For reasons known only to him, Simon thought it would be a really neat idea to use my head as a springboard to try to leap on top of the heater. It didn't work out too well for him and he ended up tearing one of his toenails and if you've ever accidentally trimmed too far on your cat's (or dog's) nails, those suckers bleed like a son of a gun! Naturally, I sprung straight into Mom Mode and put his foot under the faucet to try to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. He was having none of it and tried to run away several times. He yelped and growled and bit on me (clearly not wanting to hurt me, just trying to get me to stop what I was doing) when I put the wash cloth over his foot. He yelped and bit some more when I tried to hold cotton balls on the wound to staunch the bleeding. I finally got it stopped and just let him lay on my bed by himself while I cleaned up the kitchen and got ready for bed. He groomed the foot for a while but he hasn't been favoring the foot, so it seems all is as well as can be.

The discharge instructions from the emergency vet said I had to get Simon in for a follow-up urine test within 48 hours after discontinuing his meds, so I made an appointment for this afternoon. I felt horrible when it was time to put him in the carrier and he actually piddled a little bit (not surprising since, for one, he did NOT want to go back to the vet and for two, I had made him "hold it" all day so the vet would be able to grab a sample). He yowled all the way to our regular vet's office (thankfully, the emergency vet said we could go to his regular vet for the follow up, which is a much shorter car trip). The vet who saw him said that the notes that had been faxed over from the hospital said that he wasn't to be seen for five days after discontinuing the meds. We talked about what to do and I made it very clear that I did not want to put Simon through another trip to the vet. She ordered a regular test (not the culture), so, unless they see something off in that, we should be done with vet trips for a while.

The vet and I both nearly forgot about looking at Simon's foot, so she took him back to the exam room. She showed me how the nail had torn away from the toe a bit and that he'd probably eventually pull the nail off himself. Alternatively she could sedate him and take it herself, but neither of us wanted to put him through that today. So, he's back on Clavamox for the next five days in an effort to head off any infection.

I'd better go check the supply of pill pockets.