I love my pets but boy howdy do they stress me out sometimes

First off, EVERYONE IS FINE. But. Get pets, they said! They’ll lower your blood pressure, they said!

A few weeks ago at Tulip’s yearly checkup, they noticed she had a broken tooth. No big deal, made an appointment for the next thing they had open that I also had a day open, and the 29th was it. As an aside, she’s also getting a haircut because since she doesn’t like Honey Butter, she no longer sits on my lap for hours at a time, so I don’t get to groom her long coat as much. She’s got a number of matts that I can neither brush out nor get her to hold still long enough to let me cut them out. So… shave-down and start over, it is! Don’t worry, I will definitely be humiliating her with showing off pictures, haha.

Then last week I saw that Moya had a suspicious swelling in her face. Maybe another cat with a broken tooth? I called, they were able to fit me in the next day, early. She did have a broken tooth but the swelling was not an abscess, so they did a biopsy and sent it off (we’re still waiting for results). She is my oldest baby; she turned 15 just this month. Tim and I got her and her sister, Serenity, when they were… about eight weeks old (you can read about their first day with us, here  – GOOD LORD I have been blogging a long time). I had always gotten cats in pairs, either by accident or on purpose, and we’d had to get my then-oldest cat Buddha (niece of my cat Rembrandt, who along with her sister had become mothers at their first heat, sigh) put to sleep. A friend of mine had a cat who had kittens, and did I want any, and …. maybe? Maybe it’s too soon? But it’s a pair of girls, and … you all know where this went, haha. Serenity, who was Tim’s cat, had to be put to sleep two months before Tim died (you can read about that day here – the TL;DR is that I couldn’t take her to the vet because Tim was getting a procedure that day I needed to be there for, so my friends Denise and Tarrant took care of it for me). I am really kind of surprised that Moya outlasted Serenity by so long – I genuinely thought she’d cross over soon after her sister did. But she is still here, still as sweet (and fat) as ever.

SO!

Fast forward to “so early it might still be yesterday o’clock” this morning, and Honey Butter wants to go out. I take her outside but all she does is barkbarkbark with a dog way far away.  I let her do that about fifteen minutes, then back inside. Maybe an hour later, she wants to go out again, and like THE WORST DOG MOM EVER, I tell her to shut it, I need sleep. Maybe half an hour after that, I get a text from Jeff from the other side of the house, telling me to come, now. He’d already wrangled everyone and I’ll spare you most of the details but there was a line of small and large drops that made me think right away that someone had killed someone else. It seriously looked like a crime scene. Honey Butter had diarrhea and it was NOT pretty. But. She seemed fine! She was running around the back  yard at night, still barkbarkbarking with the other dog way far away, and when she came inside she let me feel her all over and she didn’t yelp or flinch in pain at any of my poking and prodding. So what to do? Drive over an hour away to the open 24-hour vet emergency clinic? Or since I had to drop Tulip off at my vet a mere five hours later… bring Honey in then? I’m either going to feel like an asshole for not attending to my dog immediately, or I’m going to feel like an asshole for springing a sick dog on the vet half an hour before they’re even officially over. Whelp, asshole #2 it was (although I stayed up until almost 4am, watching her sleep). (Peppa was unfazed by the whole event.)

This morning she still had diarrhea but it wasn’t … red … but I still took her with me to the vet, with Tulip. Tuli was sent right back and I talked to the vet tech about what was going on with Honey. They said they could see her, but not for three hours. I could either take her home and bring her back, or, leave her there. I opted for leaving her there, as she might need an IV for dehydration (it can happen SO FAST with animals!) and then also, if she had another… uh… “squirt bottle” episode… they’d be right there to see it.

So when I went back for the appointment, there was good news and iffy-good news. It’s likely not a scratch or injury of some sort internally; the color of the blood tells them that it was farther down in the digestive system. And the fact that it’s now changed to more of a mucusy texture tells them it is most likely colitis. So I am to keep eyes on her for 48 hours, there’s one med to give her every eight hours until that’s gone, then switch to this other med and give that every twelve hours until that’s gone. If there’s any negative change in that 48 hours, call them immediately. Oh – and no food until tomorrow morning, and then a tablespoon of this very bland prescription food. I can give her a tablespoon full every few hours if it doesn’t disagree with her, until I’ve used up one can; then the same with the second can but mixed with a few pieces of dry kibble.

Right now, both she and Peppa are asleep on my office floor while I’m writing this up.

Oh! And Tulip has been hiding in a towel, they told me, waiting for her tooth surgery. The only time she lifted her head up out of her towel was when the tech walked Honey Butter past Tuli’s cage and paused to sniff it. I KNEW THEY REALLY LIKED EACH OTHER! Fakers. Hah.