yurts, cat

[cellio]

I got mail from another school class looking to build a yurt. Did some education journal just run an article on yurts or something? These are ninth-graders in Albuqueque, so it's probably just a coincidence. (I'm out of the loop on tent supplies. Where do people buy canvas these days? I mean raw materials, not prepared tent parts.)

I dropped Baldur off at the vet around 7:30 this morning. Around 9:30 I got a call saying everything had gone fine. That was much faster than I expected. And the good vet of years past called; I'm glad he was the one to take care of him. (This was the vet I saw regularly until his hours completely shifted to weekdays and the more-distant location.) I can pick him up between 4 and 7; given weather forecasts and traffic, I think I will aim for earlier rather than later.

Ironically, Erik is finishing a round of antibiotics and Baldur is about to start a round (for the gingivitis that led to the dental treatment). So the pill-in-canned-food exercise is just going to shift one cat over, it seems. Baldur has been jealous of Erik getting special treatment, so now it's his turn. I wonder if I can head off any sickness in Embla that might be looming by just giving her the good stuff too?

The form I had to fill out when I dropped him off asked me to rate (good/fair/poor) several factors, including "appetite". I decided against writing in "enthusiastic". I do have hopes that simply hiding a pill in his food will work, though; with Erik I've had to crush them and mix them in. Baldur resembles a vacuum cleaner when eating, so I might get lucky.

Comments

[cellio]

It's a desperation move. Only one other time have I had to give medicine to one of my cats. It was Erik, and that time I was able to use one of those plastic plungers to insert pills and hold his mouth shut until he swallowed. He seems to have learned from the experience, though, because this time that trick just wasn't working. One time I thought I had it nailed for sure; it turned out he cached the pill in his cheek and swallowed air. Then, once, he accepted a pill buried in moist food. After that, he'd eat the food and leave the pill, until Dani suggested pulverizing the pills and mixing them in. That works, but I do wonder what I'll have to do with him next time, should we be so unlucky as to have a "next time". We haven't tried liquids.

I don't normally give them canned food at all. So this has been a treat for Erik, albeit one with strings attached.

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

I had to give Max liquid antibiotics for the abcess on his leg. It was banana-flavored, apparently, and we discovered the messy way that Max doesn't like bananas. Unless I got a good shot with the syringe, he'd drool it out. Then I'd try and wipe as much of it as I could off my hand and onto his fur, on the theory that he'd have to lick it off. That was when we disscovered that you could, on occasion, have poor personal hygiene.

In the end, though, he took most of the medicine, and his leg looks fabulous, if a little odd due to the shaving and the hair growing back.

[cellio]

Wow, that sounds like a struggle.

It turns out that Baldur's antibiotics are liquid, too. The bad news is that it's very hard to get him to take a liquid; when they tried to apply mouthwash during the exam things, um, went badly, and no one was trying to get him to swallow that. The good news is that mixing the liquid and some canned food seems to do the trick, and when it comes to food Baldur is a "good to the last drop" kind of kitty. :-)

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

It wasn't as bad as it sounds. He'd just move his head at the right moment, and it would get all over his tongue instead of down his throat, and then he'd drool it out, which was disgusting. I think it was worse because you so rarely see cats drool; if it was a dog it'd probably be a natural occurance. ;-)

To his credit, that was the extent of his strugling. There were no claws, no teeth, no fighting back more than trying to pull away and drooling. He's been a little mouthy since he came upstairs, but even when he jumps out from behind the curtains to pounce you as you walk be he doesn't use his claws. He's really been a good boy.