Feline Friday

Hello, blogging friends!

I'm pleased to report that Lily has made big progress in the last week and is almost back to normal. She started drinking water again on her own which was a huge relief. Who knew that constipated cats can stop drinking?

Although she's not "regular" yet, she is now able to go potty without duress. She is still taking stool softener and a motility drug but hopefully soon she can be taken off them. I've been stealthily mixing both into her food which is much easier than trying to get a pill or syringe of liquid into her.

On the downside, earlier this week I noticed that her lip was swollen. She has a zit on her chin which I'd had the vet check on her last visit, so at first I assumed it was due to that. 

 

Rather than stressing her out with another trip to the vet, I e-mailed a picture of her lip to the office and picked up a prescription for Predisone. Meanwhile I read online that Metamucil can produce an allergic reaction which causes the lips to swell so I've taken her off that and resumed her canned pumpkin program. We may never know the culprit but at least it appears the swelling is resolving.

It has been so great to see Lily getting back to normal. Without her painful anal glands, I've observed her to be more active, more curious, and generally more engaged than she had been prior to the surgery. The vet believes the impacted glands were very painful for her in recent weeks so although we've had some ups and downs, the surgery was clearly the right path for her. Poor girl has been having anal gland problems since 2012. It's been a long haul for her.

Now our next job is to get her to lose some weight. We're going to start by cutting down on the treats and eventually eliminating them. I'm totally responsible for her putting on a couple of extra pounds and feel badly about that. I'm hoping that she'll now be more active and playful which will help her take off a bit of that extra weight. Wish us luck!

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a great Feline Friday!

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! 😌

Feline Friday: Successful Surgery!

Blogging friends, please forgive the lateness of this post! I've been totally distracted with Lily's recuperation and care and completely forgot to post this update.

Long story short: The surgery to remove Lily's anal glands was successful, and there was no sign of cancer! Hooray! After an overnight at the clinic where Lily has been labeled a "difficult cat" (read: impossible to handle...), she's now back home recuperating. I anticipate that it will be several days before she's completely back to normal but she's doing very well, considering the delicate surgery area.

Our surgery story:

She had to fast after 7pm Tuesday night and did surprisingly well with food restriction...until about 4:30 in the morning when she was starving like there was no tomorrow. I dropped her off at the clinic shortly before 8am and was such a blubbering mess that I could barely sign the paperwork in the parking lot.

 After she cleared the bloodwork test, her surgery was done that morning. I was instructed to call after 1:30pm to see how things went.  I was overjoyed to get the report that all had gone well and there was no sign of any tumors, as the emergency vet had feared. My clinic vets had not been concerned about that possibility but once the seed had been planted in my mind, it was hard to ignore.

After a quiet evening without Lily, I picked her up Thursday afternoon. The staff reported she had not been too happy to be there, which of course was no surprise given her bad behavior during regular appointments. She was none too happy to see me either! She growled and swiped the whole way home. Poor stressed-out girl.

  

When we arrived home, she ran out of her carrier and straight to her food bowl, which I took to be a good sign. Meanwhile, I read the take-home information which indicated she'd need an e-collar if she started licking the surgical area. I was hoping she would refrain, but of course that lasted about 5 minutes. 

So off I ran to PetSmart where I purchased this lovely inflatable donut which Bailey says looks like a travel pillow. If I'm watching her, she can go without it but otherwise she needs to wear it for 4-5 days. Licking the surgery area seems to be her main goal in life right now, and that's probably understandable.

 

I had barely inflated the donut when I noticed she was scooting. That can't be good, I thought, given that she was scooting directly on the surgery site. When I spoke to the vet, he realized they'd forgotten to send me home with her pain medication. Luckily I had a few doses left from our recent visit to the ER and have since picked up a large supply which will last us a few days. But even with the pain medication, she is still scooting. The best I can do is try to distract her if I see it happening. 

Scooting seems to be her second main goal in life right now.

My main goal in life right now is is to prevent it. So I was awake with her off and on throughout the night, trying to prevent scooting. At 5am, I gave up on that and fell asleep on the couch. And finally, she today she's relaxed enough to actually close her eyes and rest. When she's sleeping, she's not scooting. :)

Thankgfully, she has no mobilility issues and is eating normally. She's very excited because she gets to have ONLY CANNED FOOD with pumpkin for the next 10 days. 

 I'm not going to post a picture of her poor little bottom as it's just too painful for even me to look at, but I do need to keep a close eye on it. I sent over some photos today and the vet seems to think it looks good. It's just going to take some time for it to feel better. The vet says we just need to keep her comfortable for a good 3 days or so in order for the area to start healing, then she can lick and scoot as much as she wants. :)

The vet told me that her glands were full of "petrified" liquid. For some reason, the liquid in her anal glands doesn't stay liquid -- it hardens and cannot be expressed in the normal way. That situation must have been very uncomfortable for Lily, so I'm very hopeful that once she recovers, she'll have a much improved quality of life...as will her meowy!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!
jp and Lily

Feline Friday

On July 5, Lily and I found ourselves at the ER vet again -- NOT the place to go the day after a noisy holiday.

Lily seemed to be doing fine until about 3pm that Sunday, when I found her suddenly vocalizing in a tell-tale way, then repeatedly squatting outside the litterbox. Since we've been here before, I could see that she was having a problem urinating. I scooped her up and put her in the bathroom with her litterbox and towels. She hovered over all of them, producing no urine, and finally was able to go in the bathtub.

While not ideal, the advantage of her going pee-pee in the tub was that I could see definitively what was going on. This picture clearly shows blood in the urine and is something which needs prompt attention. It could indicate a urinary tract infection (UTI), cystitis, or even a blockage which can be dangerous. 

 Lily has used the bathtub now on three separate occasions and it's my understanding that cats will often do so when suffering from a UTI. It's worth keeping an eye on your tub for spots like this.

While this was happening, I called the ER vet to be sure they could see her and off we went.

 

 I'm very grateful for the good care she received while there but it took nearly four hours before we were back home and feeling better. During the time I sat in the parking lot waiting on her, I saw dog after dog being taken in for emergency care, some being carried in the arms of obviously frantic owners. The vet later told me they'd had lots of cases that day requiring urgent attention. 😔

 

As it turned out, Lily was diagnosed with a UTI which, according to the bacteria present, indicated that she hadn't been cleaning her girl parts sufficiently. The vet says this is due to the way her "parts" are tucked in, probably due to her size. 😟 Lily is not huge but she's definitely a couple of pounds heavier than she  should be.

Surprisingly, even though her anal glands were enlarged, the ER vet could not express much fluid from them, and obviously the UTI was unrelated to her chronic gland problem. The ER vet told me that this is concerning as they both have an abnormal, almost lumpy, presentation. This is consistent with what our own vet clinic observed at her May appointment. At that time, we talked about doing surgery to remove her glands and the ER vet agreed it needs to be done. In addition, she was concerned that the abnormal presentation could indicate a malignancy, although my vet clinic seems less concerned about this possibility -- especially since both sides seem to be affected and cancer typically shows up in just one. Anal gland cancer in cats is extremely rare, so I'm hoping the ER vet was just being overly cautious.

At any rate, Lily was soon feeling better and was weaned from her pain medication after about three days. Meanwhile, I spoke to our vet and arranged for her surgery next week. I'm very worried about Lily but am hopeful this surgery will provide her with much-needed relief from this chronic problem. And I'm praying that, as my vet believes, her anal glands have just developed a fibrosis and not anything worse than that.

So I'll update next week on how things are going. Let's hope this surgery, although it comes with risks, allows this sweet girl to live a more comfortable life. I'll do anything I can to make that happen for her. 💓

Feline Friday

  Yesterday, Lily had a bird's eye view of a....BABY BUNNY!

 Unlike other kitties I've known, she shows no desire to hunt the critters that visit the garden. Instead, she seems to want to be their friend!

Lucky for this little guy, we're not going to put my theory to the test. He's safe to stop by anytime he wants...as long as he eats the weeds!

Heritage Album Update

It's been a LONG time since I've updated my blog on much of anything, I know. Let me try to jump back into the swing of things with an update on my heritage albums. Of all the scrapbooking I've done, making my heritage albums has been one of the most rewarding projects. If you haven't documented your own family's story, I hope you'll be encouraged to do so by this post!

 

In recent months, I've spent most of my personal scrapbooking time and energy on this big project and I'm so happy with the progress I've made. I have seven albums in the works or complete. Now I'm ready to start the section for my parents and my own childhood. So that is big progress! 

In this post, I'll share some of one of the albums that I consider "done" -- at least as done as it CAN be for the time being. I'm continuing to research my family via Ancestry so will be adding to the my family tree as I go along. But the actual photos and memorabilia I have for this particular line are now all in the album, safely stored for posterity.

I have four sets of albums, two for my dad's side of the family and two for my mom's side. This album is for the Blood family, my dad's mother's side. My grandma's maiden name was Blood and she was the keeper of our family's genealogy, so it's been fun diving into her side of the tree. I've learned a lot and have much more to discover.

 

Now that I've filled out several generations of my family tree with some degree of confidence, I've printed a tree to go in the front part of the album. Unfortunately Ancestry no longer has a good "print" function (they direct you to go to a third party site where you can pay to print a poster or book, or print a test copy with limited formatting options). So I've done the next best thing: Pulled a screenshot of my tree directly from Ancestry and added text box overlays with additional details. It's not super clear but it's readable and at least provides a roadmap to who's who in the album. As time goes on, I will update and hopefully print more generations.

The album itself is divided into tabbed sections by each set of grandparents, beginning with my great grandparents in this case. I started each section with a picture of the grandparents.

 

  Then I included the earliest pictures I have of them as a couple and throughout their marriage. My great grandma lived a long life. She was interviewed by the local paper in her golden years, so I included a copy of that article in which she describes her family's life and activities.

 

Side note: If you're new to family history, you should definitely check out Newspapers.com. It's not free but is a treasure trove of historical newspaper articles from all over the country. I've found a ton of information about many ancestors through this site. Ancestry sometimes offers a discounted subscription for members.

I am lucky to have quite a few photos of my great grandparents. I knew my great grandma as she lived just up the street from us, but my great grandpa died just before I was born.

To this marriage, six children were born. Since they are not listed on the family tree, I included a "Family Group Sheet" from Ancestry in each section of the album which details them all. Again, Ancestry doesn't provide a good way to print this chart so I resorted to screenshots, piecing it together to fit on one page. My hope is that this will clarify who is who in each family. The people at the top are my great grandparents, and my grandma is one of their children.

 

The section goes on to include  birth and childhood information about my grandma. I have several pages in this section of the album, as my grandma was a detailed memory keeper all of her life.

 

I was lucky to have a few pieces of memorabilia she had saved over the years, so I included pockets and pull-outs so it can easily be accessed. 

 

I also included photos of the entire family if I had them. In my case, I'm an only child and the official keeper of all of this so I used many originals in my album. I would normally not advise people to do this -- it's typically best to work with an archival copy and save the original elsewhere so others can have access to it. But in my case, the best and safest place for these items to be preserved is in an album.

The album continues by going back to the next generations, following the same general format. Of course, the farther back you go, the fewer pictures you're likely to have. This section includes the information I have about my 2nd great grandparents.

 

This great grandpa was a creative man and even invented a piece of farm equipment which he had patented. He didn't have the money to produce it but the patent was a point of pride for the family. He was also a gardener and talented woodworker, making chairs for many family members. A distant relative wrote two books about one branch of the Blood family, and I found many photos and stories about him in the books. All credit goes to my grandma for saving this information!

There's a family group sheet for this generation. Lewis and his wife Anna came from Maine and Indiana to settle in Iowa.

The next section details my other set of 2nd great grandparents, the Martins, my grandma's mother's family. Ironically, even though she had done a ton of family history research, my grandma hadn't done much work on her own mom's family. For instance, I have pictures of my 2nd great grandfather Willis but no pictures of my 2nd great grandmother Martha. But I recently connected with someone on Ancestry who has information about this line, so I'm hoping to learn more about her!

 

  Next we go back a generation to my 3rd great grandparents. In my grandma's records, I found a copy of this sketch or painting labeled with their names. I feel very lucky to have it!

 

I don't have much information about this couple, but I have enough to create a family listing. I've also visited the cemetery where they are buried so I included some photos of their stone.

Side note: You can find many photos of headstones from all around the world on Find-A-Grave, a free website which is easy to search. It's a great resource.

This gentleman is another 3rd great grandfather, Ira Sellars. I have no photos of his wife, Nancy, who would have been my 3rd great grandmother but I'm hopeful that there's a photo out there somewhere!

I included the information I could find about them to fill out their section of the album.

Family history is never truly DONE, as there is always something new to discover. As I finish additional generations, I can easily add what I learn to the album. In addition to this album, I have finished or almost completed three albums for my dad's father's side of the family and three for my mom's side of the family.

 

Although this has been a long and complicated project, it has been totally fascinating and worth every minute. My hope is that I've put our family history in a format which makes it easy and interesting for future generations to follow and learn a little bit more about those who came before us.

 

 

jp

Feline Friday

Aside from ranch dressing and cheese, one of Lily's favorite treats is popcorn. She can detect popcorn from her location anywhere in the house! As soon as Spouse opened his new bag, she was on the scene. She knows Spouse won't give her a single tiny morsel, but still she has hope!

  She watches him intently...expectantly...even waiting for him to drop a piece accidentally. (Not gonna happen...)

  Wait...what's going on here?

Trust me, he did NOT give her any popcorn, and that piece is WAY TOO BIG anyway!

 

No worries, I snagged a few bites for myself and broke off a tiny piece for Lily. She did not go hungry for long! 😊

 

Feline Friday with Rory

We're just back from a quick trip to Texas! We visited our daughter and her boyfriend to help with landscaping in front of the house. While I was a bit apprehensive about making a trip during these crazy times, we stayed at the house the whole time except for a brief trip to a mostly outdoor nursery to pick out some plants (social distancing, of course). This kept us safe and gave us plenty of time to hang out with the kids and Rory!

 Rory is definitely living the good life. She even has a brand new bench which provides perfect outdoor viewing, and now she has some pretty landscaping right out the window! The flowers we planted should attract bees and butterflies so there will be lots of critters for her to watch.

 

 She has many windows to look out with sills wide enough for her to comfortably sit. Out the side window are some beautiful, large grasses. Bunnies dart in and out, providing plenty of entertainment!

 All of this nature watching is very tiring, so Rory spends a fair amount of her day (19+ hours?) wrapped in a blanket or burrowed under the covers. She loves to be cozy, regardless of the season!

  Once she's asleep, Rory becomes completely limp and poseable! She sleeps sounder than any cat I've had in my lifetime. I read that rescue kitties like Rory often sleep very soundly once they know they are safe. 💖

 

 Once she's really asleep, out comes a little pink tongue tip! 😍

 

She's a lucky girl to have found such a wonderful forever home. She is dearly loved!

 

Happy Feline Friday!