Feline Friday

 

Well, we've had a week of ups and downs around here. But it's Friday and I think I'm a little more educated and Lily's in a better situation than she was on Monday, so I'll take it!

On the plus side, Lily is recovering well from her surgery. Her incision site is looking good and the swelling has finally gone down. She stopped taking pain medication earlier this week and has been hungry and social as usual. Her activity level has been improving, and she has even played a few times. All good news!

The downside is that she's been struggling with constipation issues. I've never had a kitty with constipation, so I wasn't aware that straining can cause vomiting. Now I know that this is normal but at first it was alarming to witness. 

As a result of this, I've taken Lily to the vet twice this week. She's had a radiograph and been examined by two vets. The

general consensus is that her constipation is a temporary and was brought on by a few things: Both the anesthesia she had for surgery and the pain medication she took afterwards can slow down the intestinal tract. In the meantime, she's on a canned food diet (no dry food) so she's been drinking less water. So the poop that was in her colon her dried up and became hard to move. (More than you wanted to know!)

To counteract all of this, she's now on a stool softener plus Metamucil (I should say Meta-MEW-cil!). I've been mixing water into her food and occasionally giving her water by syringe squirted into her mouth. She's been able to go potty a little bit most days and the vet thinks it's just going to take more time to get all of that old stuff out.

Because she's been struggling so much, the vet suggested I bring her in for an enema yesterday. She was able to go potty a little bit after that procedure and I'd hoped that they would keep her until she was pretty much cleaned out, but she's so stressed and difficult to handle at the vet that they were anxious for her to go home as soon as possible. 

On the drive home, I started smelling a most unpleasant smell but it wasn't until I got her out of the carrier that I discovered that most of the poop that had been on the inside was now on her backside, legs, and feet. YIKES. While I assessed the situation, I confined her to the bathroom. It was clearly well beyond the scope of a paper towel clean-up and Lily wasn't taking any purr-sonal responsibility for the mess (TOO GROSS, MAMA!) so I put a few inches of warm water in the tub and bathed her. It's been a long time since she's had a bath and she tolerated this one remarkably well. I think she felt so yucky that she appreciated the clean-up help!

She stayed in the bathroom until she was dry and I could see that she wasn't going to have any accidents.

She had her dinner and rested a bit...

...and now she's all fluffy and clean. I'm hoping that with our new regimen, she'll soon be "regular" and we can begin to put all of this BEHIND us! 😌