Tag Archives: anya

A continuing tale of two cats…

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Anya has spent more of her life with me wearing a cone than not. I feel badly about that, but it has been an unfortunate, necessary evil to get her through her initial eye infection, the corrective surgery, and now her spay procedure. I wish I were half as resilient as this little seven pound cat seems to be.

All the literature is quick to point out that spaying your cat is a simple, outpatient surgery. Most of the authoritative online resources say that in 48 hours, your pet should be back to something of their normal selves. The spay itself may be an entirely common surgery, but it’s still invasive as hell, and Anya wasn’t one of those who came around in the usual fashion. Fortunately, she was eating well, drinking regularly, and moving around enough to get to and from the litter box as needed. It’s just now, a full week after her most recent surgery that she’s starting to come around to what I’d consider normal behaviors for her.

This morning she was on my bed demanding ear scratches as soon as my alarm went off. She then followed me around while I prepared and delivered breakfast to all the members of the menagerie. She perched in her overwatch position on the cat tree while I got caffeinated. It doesn’t seem particularly newsworthy unless you know she spent the last week snoozing for 22 hours out of every 24 and often not budging for 8-12 hours at a time. Based on what was reported as “normal,” my level of concern for how she was getting along was beginning to elevate dramatically.

Here’s hoping that this is the start of trending back towards normal… Which should get her there just in time for Cordelia to go under the knife for her own procedure next Monday. Getting these critters settled in has made for an awfully long spring. Had I known what I was in for, I might have made some radically different decisions when picking these two out of the mix. File it away as one of the very few times I’m glad I didn’t know then what I know now.

Maybe by Independence Day, we’ll have everyone off the sick and injured list and start seeing what normal really looks like. I’ve probably just jinxed myself by even thinking about it.

On cats and making assumptions…

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I’ll hold the major update on Anya until the end of the week, when we’ve met with the ophthalmologist for her follow-up visit and evaluation. Based on the feedback I’ve been getting from her temporary caretakers in Pennsylvania, her eye is looking good and most of the surgical trauma has resolved successfully. Thursday will, hopefully, release her from the daily regimen of a metric shit ton of drops and pills and leave us with something more manageable in terms of ongoing care. 

While Anya has been gone, I’ve had a fair amount of time to work individually with Cordelia. She’s been challenging in her own way and it’s been slow going. We’ve progressed, though, from her spending all daylight hours under the bed to at least some level of comfort in prowling about the house when Jorah and I are awake. If I plop down on the bedroom floor, she’s quick to break cover to come over for pets. In the last few days, she’s even taken to curling up on my lap. 

It’s a big improvement for a cat who six weeks ago was abjectly horrified if I so much as brushed against her. I’m cautiously optimistic that eventually I won’t have to sit on the bedroom floor if I want to interact with her. Getting this cat out of her shell is a real work in progress. I’d very much like to get her comfortable enough that I can reliably lure her in, if only so I can get her first vet visit in the books and get her scheduled for a spay. Even now she’s too likely to bolt to her favorite hiding place to guarantee delivering her up for a scheduled appointment.

Assuming Anya is, in all likelihood, coming home on Thursday, I’m mentally preparing to take a step backwards with both of them. Anya spent six months in the shelter, a month here, and then two weeks with the vet. Getting her reintegrated into the daily rhythm of the household, I’m sure, won’t be instantaneous. Having her back in the mix will be an adjustment for all of us – but I’m ready to get it started and finished. It feels like it’s about time to settle in and enjoy some time together that isn’t an ongoing low-grade medical crisis from day-to-day. Hopefully. 

A good report…

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Anya got a good report from her surgeon. They were able to break down all of the adhesions and resect “a lot” of conjunctive material that has been hooding her eye for months. They laid in dissolvable stitches in a few spots to, hopefully, keep everything retracted as it heals. 

There’s a chance, they say, that the issue could reoccur over time. The ophthalmologist recommends this be a “one and done” shot at correcting it. If it reoccurs, the chances that it will continue to do so is apparently high no matter how many times we go after it. At that point, the course of action is to leave well enough alone since it’s not life threatening. I don’t think he or I have the appetite to chase diminishing returns.

Doc says the eye will probably end up looking “a little wonky” because of how much material they cut out. We’ll see how things look when the swelling comes down. Not that it matters. We may also have to revisit her third eyelid. He’s optimistic it will retract more on its own when the swelling goes down, but if it doesn’t, we’ll figure out what the right approach is – somewhere between do nothing and a follow-up surgery.

Our girl checked out with a bag of pills and drops to administer over the next few weeks. I’m (mostly) happy to be leaving that part of the recovery process in the hands of professionals. I’ll hate not having her here, but that’s entirely outweighed by the benefit of making sure she’s getting her meds in a more timely and less traumatic way than I could possibly manage on my own. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to have a proper medical staff watching for infection or any other potential post-operative issues… and I’m obviously thrilled that I’m not going to be the bad guy chasing her down and forcing meds on her for this stage of things. 

For now, Anya is a temporary resident of Pennsylvania. How long that lasts remains to be determined. I’m satisfied that the surgery went well and we’ve hopefully improved her quality of life in spite of whatever short term trauma we might have caused… I’ll be happier, tough, when she’s back home bouncing off every wall and flat surface in the place.

Not for the faint of heart…

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Anya is scheduled for eye surgery next Tuesday. The plan is to remove some of the conjunctive material currently obstructing her left eye as a result of the repeated eye infections she went through early in life. The underlying eye is mostly undamaged and this operation is intended to remove the existing trouble areas in order to prevent them from eventually adhering to the eye itself. It’s not inexpensive, but it’s work that needs done that should improve both her long term health and her ongoing quality of life.

She’s expected to be discharged Tuesday afternoon with a new round of oral medication and eye drops. Some of these could need to be given as often as every six hours for the first several weeks as she recovers. How a normal person who has a job or any other commitments can arrange to do such a thing is entirely beyond me. I get that the discharge instructions present the optimal course of action, but expecting an owner to be able to pin down a cat and deliver these meds on 16 separate occasions every 24 hours strikes me as perfectly absurd. Each drop, after all, should be followed by a 5-10 minute waiting period, so it’s not as if you could grab her up just 4 times a day and apply everything in a single go. I’m not embarrassed to say that I may have hit the panic button when I caught wind of what the coming weeks could look like. There’s simply no way I could sustain that level of post-operative care for any length of time.

Over the last four or five days, Anya has gotten increasingly combative and has started running away any time I walk into a room. She’s actively avoiding me, cowering, and essentially seeing me as an enemy. With most shelter cats, the advice and expectation is that they’re going to have some amount of time – weeks or months – to decompress and acclimate themselves into their new home. Anya never got that time. Three days after her arrival, I had to start holding her down and pouring meds into and onto her. It’s little wonder she’s losing whatever little bit of trust we may have developed.

Mercifully, I’ve got a friend who helps run a large veterinary practice outside Philadelphia. She’s going to arrange medical boarding for this poor gray fur ball for the duration of multi-time a day treatment. There, the techs will be doing the heavy lifting of keeping up with the schedule seven days a week and the on-staff vets will be around should something need to be addressed immediately. So, as soon as she’s released from surgery, we’ll be taking a short road trip through southeastern Pennsylvania to her temporary home.

Since Anya’s particular flavor of eye infection is often triggered by increased stress, boarding isn’t entirely ideal. It does, however, feel like a better option than having this poor animal at home with me stressing her out and inevitably missing doses of the medication she needs to recover from the surgery in a timely manner. It’s a real devil’s bargain.

I asked the doc yesterday if waiting until Anya was more settled here at home and more comfortable being handled was a reasonable option. He was of the opinion that although the eye isn’t currently an emergency, addressing it was something better done sooner rather than later as it created less overall risk to her sight in that eye.

I absolutely hate the thought of her being gone for two weeks or more, but I hate the thought of irreparably damaging what needs to be a trusting relationship with her even more. I’ve never shied away from getting my animals the best possible medical treatment I could find, but damnit, this one is hard because I don’t have the skills, nor the ability to learn them fast enough, to even be a part of the recovery process. Even if I did, Anya isn’t in the right headspace with me yet to give me the benefit of the doubt.

I know she’s going to be in good hands. The friend who’s helping me by arranging all this for Anya was also responsible for bottle raising Hershel before he came to live with Winston, Maggie, and I. I couldn’t possibly trust anyone more to keep a proverbial eye on my girl and make sure she’s getting everything she needs to get well. Still. The next weeks are going to be tough in a whole different way than the last month was hard. There’s a mile of difference between knowing what’s best and actually wanting to do it. It’s one of those times when the best interests of the animal have to be pressed well above my own selfish desires.

When all this is over, I’ll be putting on a masterclass about the hazards of taking on “project animals” from the shelter. She’s mine now. I’ll see it through. But Jesus, it’s not for the faint of heart.

Slow progress…

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The day to day of my world can be somewhat constrained at the best of times. It’s how I like it, so no complaints. For the last week or ten days, though, it’s constricted even more than usual. 

With Jorah, I spent the better part of six months keeping him contained in the kitchen. Fortunately, the kitchen here is spacious and well lit, so it wasn’t a particularly bad imposition in exchange for easy cleanup while we conducted remedial housetraining and cleaned up his all too frequent accidents. 

With Anya and Cordy, the confinement is considerably less spacious. It may be a generously sized guest bathroom, but the apparent space shrinks down considerably when you add in two cats, a litter box, scratching post, multiple food and water dishes, multiple beds, and some toys. At the moment, the confinement is mostly for the convenience of the repeated, daily rounds of medication I’m giving to Anya. Keeping them in a single space feels somehow more humane than chasing the poor girls through the entirety of the house thrice daily. Plus, she’s currently forced to contend with the cone of shame. Giving her the run of the house while the cone restricts her ability to squeeze into space that would let her avoid any unwanted canine attention feels distinctly unfair. 

The shelter recommended a two week decompression and adjustment period before introducing the new additions to the wider household and all of the additional room to roam. That would nominally end on Friday. The plan for the moment is to maintain the status quo at least through the weekend and Anya’s follow up appointment with her ophthalmologist on Monday. It seems that we’ve gotten a grip on the worst of the infection – her eye isn’t bright, weeping red – but there’s obviously still a lot of involvement with her conjunctiva. Assuming she’ll need continuing medication past Monday, I’ll need to reconsider our options. 

With stress being consistently listed as one of the causes for flare ups of her condition, getting her introduced into the house while also mitigating her symptoms feels like it’s going to be a fine line to walk in the coming days. I’d very much like to avoid a flare up resulting in another weeks long course of drops, ointments, and oral meds.

Anyaka has turned out to be quite the trooper. Despite our rough start and her being thoroughly annoyed with the current medical regimen, she’s purring up a storm and remarkably affectionate. Cordy remains uncertain of this new home. However, she has allowed me to touch her briefly while distracted with stinky food or toys. It’s slow progress all around, but it’s progress nonetheless.