When it rains...

I love my animals. They enrich my life in untold ways. So far, I've been very lucky and had healthy pets. I attribute this to a combination of things: luck, having "mutt" cats and no purebred dogs (until now), minimalist vaccinations, and benign neglect. Some of my cats are getting old, however. Two of the current 5 indoor cats are pushing 12 or 13 years old. That's not ancient by any means, I've seen many, many cat patients in their mid to late teens. Still, they are now geriatric. My birds are still young in bird years. Heidi is middle-aged for a Doberman.

I love my pets, love love love them. I love animals, obviously...but tonight...ahh, tonight.

The kittens are old enough to urinate on their own. And they did, on the couch after being fed. My fault, I should have put them back with their towels and "litterbox" (actually just newspaper). I cleaned that up.

I went to do laundry and found cat urine in the laundry room. This is unusual. Although I have 3 male cats, I have NEVER had an outside the litterbox peer - thankfully. I've been fortunate. Apparently, someone was stressed and/or unhappy about the litterbox being not pristine and/or locked in the laundry room and/or angry about the dog, and decided to urinate in the laundry room on the dirty laundry (thankfully) AND on the expensive vacuum cleaner (!!!!!). I cleaned that up.

Heidi, who is being spayed tomorrow, walked into the living room, paced around (after having been out a mere 3 hours previously), squatted, and urinated on the rug. The second the smell hit me, I knew I needed to take her to work for a urinalysis. Sure enough - raging urinary tract infection. The signs have been there for 3 days, but I've been wrapped up with work and I missed/semi-ignored them. Now I feel terrible, of course. She must've been very uncomfortable. She was drinking massive quantities of water, urinating every 2-3 hours, and urinating large amounts frequently. She also peed on the rug. All signs pointing to lower urinary tract disease. My fault. She's at work now, on IV fluids and antibiotics in preparation for her spay tomorrow. Her urine culture is pending. I'll let you know what it grows.

I came home with medications for her and also for my old fat white cat. He's 13 years old and has a recurring, nasty rhinosinusitis (basically recrudescence of his Calici and herpes virus - he was infected when I adopted him at 1 year of age). I was afraid it was cancer a while back, but biopsies confirmed a raging lymphoplasmacytic inflammation. When it flares up, he gets all watery eyed, drooping, and sneezes ropes of snot. So, now he's taking prednisolone and azithromycin (Z-pack). Pilling him usually ends up being an exercise in torture (and claw marks) for both of us. Usually, it only takes a couple of days of meds before he's on the mend completely.

My 12 year old tabby barn cat Zeppelin continues to lose weight...and I know it's time to start her on prednisolone and Leukeran for presumed inflammatory bowel disease and/or GI lymphoma. I just don't want to put her under the knife to get a diagnosis when I'm pretty sure I know what I'm dealing with...

All of this makes it sound like my house must be disgusting - what with cat pee, dog pee, cat snot, etc EVERYWHERE, but really, I'm a neat freak. I've been cleaning and scrubbing since I got home, and the house smells nice and fresh. You'd never know that 3 animals have had accidents in the house.

But STILL. GEEZ. When we have kids, I'm going to have to hire someone to take care of the pets.