Late last week, Lister became a bit less active than usual. Instead of exploring our new location, he started spending a lot of time curled up in the footwell in front of the driver’s seat, which is pretty dark and secluded with the window covers up. I didn’t need to refill his dry food as often, and he even started avoiding wet food, which he usually starts begging for hours in advance. He wasn’t even jumping up on the bed for attention. Friday night, Melissa and I pulled a tick off him. He was drooling pretty badly on Saturday morning and had a puffy lip. We decided to take him to the emergency vet clinic.
They were very good to him, got him in immediately, and ran lots of tests at great expense. They found no definite cause. In a way, no news is good news, because it also means they ruled out any major problems or diseases, which we were extra concerned about because of the tick we found on him. The best they could guess was some kind of oral infection, given the puffy lip, drool, and his refusal to let them look inside his mouth. We could have had him sedated to let them check, or taken some pain and antibiotic medication on the assumption that was the problem and see how he acted over the next few days. The meds were on the menu regardless, so having ruled out any more serious emergency, I decided to take the meds and run. If he didn’t get better, we’d take him to Melissa’s local vet to proceed further. It was an expensive visit, but he’s my buddy, and he’s worth it. That’s partly what my emergency fund is for.
Once again, Melissa was an enormous help with all this. She drove so I could focus on Lister. She’s a lot more experienced with this stuff than I am, and gave me some good advice. This is the first time he’s ever needed an emergency vet visit in the 10 years he’s been around. He’s also an older kitty, which was part of the reason I wanted to avoid sedating him if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
The vet gave him injections to get him jump-started. He didn’t handle our oral injections well at all, so I started mixing it with wet food, which he quickly started eating. Once he wasn’t in pain, he was very hungry and started making up for lost time. Yesterday, he saw further improvement, becoming more active, eating both wet and dry food, and generally returning to his normal self. Last night, he slept on the bed instead of in the footwell. I’m confident that he’s on the mend as long as this trend keeps up.
I’ve had to keep him inside at the vet’s recommendation, but it’s been wet outside anyway. We also need to treat the area we’re parked in for ticks and other nasty critters like we did on top of the hill, which we didn’t have time to do before it rained. We plan to do that today, and after tonight’s predicted rain and giving him a flea and tick treatment, it should be safe to let him out again.
In other news, Melissa has both Friday and Saturday off work this week, which are the two days in a row we’ve been looking for to take a short camping trip somewhere nearby. Assuming Lister’s feeling up for it (at the rate he’s going, he should be fine), we’ll take only the van somewhere of Melissa’s choosing for a couple of nights. She did a great job making a selection at Palo Duro Canyon, and she lives here, so I trust her to find somewhere nice and tell me where to go.
Smokey Da Van 