No matter how much my cat, Penn makes me mad, all I have to do is look at his gentle face and I fall in love all over again...
Over the past 13 years, he's made life very difficult for me. I think he's peed on the carpet of every house I've lived in. Last year he started having the all-expensive dental problems. I've spent hours upon hours cleaning up his messes. I've taken him to the vet more times than all of my other cats combined, and spent who-knows-how-much money on office visits, hospitalization, tooth extractions, medications, special food, and carpet cleaning chemicals.
Almost a month ago, he did the unthinkable... He peed on my bed. The duvet, down comforter and sheets were all soaked in cat urine. I thank my (and his) lucky stars that I had a plastic mattress cover on underneath it all, so at least the mattress wasn't affected. I was so mad at him. Its one thing to pee on my carpet, but to pee where I lay!? That's just a whole new level of disrespect in my mind. Of course I considered that he was sick and was trying to communicate that to me by doing something so drastic, but I was just so mad. I wanted to kill him anyway. I dismissed it by chalking it up to a behavioral problem.
I gave him the cold shoulder for a while because I wanted him to know how much it pissed me off to have to clean cat pee out of my bedding. Time has passed, I've cooled off, and the bedding has since been cleaned. About a week ago, I started to notice him taking less interest in food, which is totally out of character for him. He's always the one begging to be fed morning and night. I also noticed that his chin seemed to be tender to the touch.
Since we are dirt poor, there's really no money for anything extra and unfortunately for the cats, they are included in the "extra" category for the time being. When you're poor, you gotta do what you gotta do, but I don't want to throw my hands in the air and leave it at that. It just so happens that I had bought a few different types of antibiotics online to have on hand in case anyone got sick. I tried some Doxycycline on him because I was concerned he had an infection in his mouth. It seemed to work for a couple days. Then he started throwing it up.
I tried switching to a Cephalexin, which is a milder tasting broad-spectrum antibiotic that also covers the urinary tract, but he couldn't keep that down either. In fact, he hasn't even been able to keep water and food in his stomach for the past couple of days. This means his body won't even be able to synthesize the medicine even if he could keep that alone in his stomach.
I went to bed last night wondering what in the world I can do for this cat. With a visit to the vet being about $50 and blood work, tests, and medications being extra, this could end up costing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Not an idea we can even entertain at this point since our credit cards are maxed out and we only have a two-digit figure in the bank until next week's payday. I began to feel frustrated and desperate since I knew that once dehydration sets in, his organs will soon start shutting down.
I woke up this morning with a fresh perspective. I got up early and sat on the couch with Penn in my lap and asked, "In any survival situation, what's the most important element to get into the body right away? Water." In his case, he can't take it orally, so I decided it would be my mission for the day to get some fluids I can administer subcutaneously. This was something I always did for sick animals back in my days as a veterinary assistant. I got online and searched everywhere for fluids called Lactated Ringers.
Every site I came across, required a prescription for fluids so I quickly abandoned that idea. Besides, I need it today and the soonest they could get it to me would be tomorrow. Next, I called a couple of vet hospitals. The first one told me that it was against the law in Arizona to sell fluids without first seeing the animal. This is the response I expected.
Hoping for a more optimistic answer, I called the next place. A nice lady answered and I explained my financial situation and Penn's dire medical condition. I asked her if they sell fluids over the counter and she said they do!!! I was so excited to have some sort of chance to help my sick cat. She asked me a few questions about Penn's condition and asked if I'd ever administered fluids before. After answering her questions, she said that I could come right in and they would have everything ready for me.
I took the half-hour drive to the clinic. They had everything ready to go. Just as promised. I got two bags of fluids, a drip line, and some needles. It cost me $48, which is still expensive, but doable for our situation. I left feeling proud that I had accomplished what I set out to do for the day. However, I still have feelings of guilt for not being able to do more. It makes me feel somewhat better that now I have a chance and hope to help Penn get better or at least make him more comfortable if he ends up dying from all this. After all, the worst thing you can do is to do nothing at all.
Here's what my impromptu fluid station set-up looks like:
