Geriatric Pets

On Friday, KTDID came over and watched X-man so that MacTroll and I could take the black and white mafia in for their annual vaccination and physicals. You have never seen three cats aged 11-13 look so absolutely miserable in all their lives. I'm not sure if it was just the trip to the vet's that caused it, or the fact that they now have to go with -- The Puppy. :-) And as usual, Dr. Mary had the entire back crew fire up every piece of lab equipment to get ready for our crew.

First off, I expected the puppy to go crazy since she wasn't thrilled about being there the last two times. But she managed to get through her second distemper, rabies and physical examination just fine. Her fecal sample was clear of worms, so that was nice, too. She just has one more set of shots and she's clear to play. We also typed her while we were there. In 2 weeks or so, we'll receive a breed analysis that will tell us what kind of adorable, cute, fuzzy, black, medium dog Lily is. This helps in a couple of ways. It helps us with her medical future in that if she starts to show any signs of illnesses that are specific to some part of her genetic make up, we'll have a better chance of treating it because we'll know what she is. The test also screens her for certain disorders she might have right now based on her type, so we'll know about that as well, and her blood gets used in future medical studies for mixed breed dogs.

Secondly, Clawdio was the healthiest cat there. That's going to tell you a lot about the rest of the visit. Our oldest cat, who is on his last life, was a healthy 9.5 lbs. His coat is shiny and beautiful. His elderly teeth are somewhat discolored but in okay shape. His heart murmur is still there but hasn't gotten any worse.

Thirdly, in all the crap that's been going on lately, I've been watching Nyssa but I haven't actually been checking out Nyssa. I noticed she was getting thinner and that she was licking on her front left paw in the last few weeks. A few months ago we had her in and she tested borderline for liver issues and had some other issues that we figured was pre-hyperthyroidism. So the wanting to eat more of Clawdio's left over wet food (and the diarrhea that comes from it) made sense. But had I checked my cat out, I would have noticed that at some point, she broke one of her canine teeth and the reason she was lining up for the wet food was because it was painful to bite into the dry food. And the fact that she was getting thin, according to her bloodwork, was because of the pain she was in. The good news is that her bloodwork is fine, so next Thursday, I'll be dropping her off for a dental with Dr. Mary. And well, at that point, she's got a while of eating anything she wants to eat to bring her back up to around 8.5 lbs. She's currently at 7.8 lbs.

And last but not least, Luke. A few years ago, Luke's microchip migrated away from between his shoulder blades, I know this because I thought it was a hard mass and took him in panicked. The vet waved her wand over his chest and boom -- the microchip wand went off.

Well, in the last few months, I noticed that his chip seemed to be getting bigger. That is, there was something hard around it. I wondered why it would bother him now. Mary stuck a needle in on Friday and examined what she was able to draw. She did not get any cancer cells out to diagnose, but I could tell she was really hoping it was just an abscess. Now we have to take him in to have the growth removed and analyzed. It's about the size of a dime, but in case it is a skin cancer, she'll be removing as much of the growth and the surrounding area as she can. He has the surgery next Friday and will need to be restricted in his movement. The incision is likely to be 3 inches wide. And he'll need some decent recovery time. And then, we'll get the labs back and know if it is benign or malignant.

So, next Thursday and Friday are going to be very interesting times for my family. As such, I'm going to end up canceling my plans to go to the spray park in Bloomington on Friday. I'll have to try again some other day.