Tag Archives: vetrinary medicine

Diagnosis and the way ahead…

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Anyanka had her follow-up exam with the ophthalmologist today and we’ve arrived at several conclusions. 

First, Anya is a carrier for feline viral rhinotracheitis (FVR), often called “cat flu” or less popularly known as kitty herpes. Odds are the virus was transmitted by her mother at or shortly after birth. The virus often presents as a standard upper respiratory infection with the expected coughing, sneezing, and watery eyes, but it can also cause a nasty infection of one or both eyes – in Anya’s case, her left. 

There’s no “cure.” Barring a breakthrough treatment, Anya will be a carrier for the rest of her life and may or may not experience further flare ups. One of the most common causes for these flares is stress – things like living in a shelter environment or suddenly finding herself thrown in a crate and taken to a new home. Given how little I enjoy change myself, I’m optimistic that as things settle into a routine here, we’ll be able to minimize whatever stress she may experience going forward.

Second, most likely as a result of ongoing infection in her eye from a very young age, Anya has conjunctival symblepharon. For lack of a proper veterinary explanation, this is a condition where her third eyelid and portions of her inner eyelid are adhered. It’s why even now that the infection is controlled, you can really only see about 1/3 of her eye. Fortunately, the eye itself doesn’t appear to be damaged. Assuming no further issues, we’ll schedule surgery in about a month to correct the adhesion and try to get her a wider field of view in that eye.

Even with surgery, it’s never likely to look “perfectly normal.” That, of course, is an issue I’m perfectly indifferent about so long as it improves her overall health and quality of life. The vet’s recommendation is that this is a “one and done” effort. If for some reason the surgery doesn’t take, it’s better to leave well enough alone than try repeatedly.

I had a hunch I was getting into something when I decided on this little gray kitten hunkered down in the back of her cage at the shelter, though admittedly this has gotten more involved than I planned for originally. Whatever. Everyone wants an “ideal” kitten. After already spending three months getting passed over, there’s no telling how much longer “the cat with the weird eye” would have lingered there or worse, been returned or dumped somewhere, once they realized the cost and level of effort required to get her fixed up. She’s in no danger of that fate here.

On the good news front, the cone of shame is now tucked in the cabinet and we’re down from four medications three times a day to two medications twice a day. That level of treatment feels much more manageable, especially since the two meds we’re continuing are basic eye drops rather than the ointment that stuck to everything or the oral suspension that she disliked mightily.

Now that we have Anya on the mend, it’s probably time to shift a little focus towards helping Cordy come out of her shell a bit. Given her background as having been “caught in the wild” just a few days before I brought her home, I can’t help but feel like this is going to be a whole different kind of project. But at this point, what’s one more thing to do?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 24 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. So, we’re still grinding along with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 24 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Scheduling. Short of hiring an assistant there simply isn’t a mathematical way to give Anya her medication as scheduled on days when I can’t avoid being in the office. I suppose I could take a two hour lunch every day and double my commute to two 40 mile round trips a day. Maybe I could do that for a week or two, but if the meds end up running for a month? Longer? Yeah. No. I’m fairly fanatical about getting these guys the best care I can find, but after all these years and all these animals, I’ve never cracked the code on how the hell to give them medicine every eight hours, or worse, god forbid, every six. At least three times a week there’s a middle-of-the-day dose that just doesn’t happen, so if you’ve worked out a solution, I’m all ears.

3. Russia. Are we really supposed to take a country that rolls out 60-year-old tanks to replace their “modern” armor lost in combat and then uses a manned fighter jet to sideswipe an unmanned drone seriously as a country? That’s before we even consider their questionable standing as a regional power, let alone their once held status as one of the world’s two superpowers. The Russians, like the Soviets before them, have always been a little bit “different.” Maybe it’s just me, but lately the tired old antics of the ailing Russian bear seem to make it much more an object of mockery and scorn than any kind of fear or intimidation. If they haven’t been doing the work to maintain even their most basic equipment in fighting shape, I’m left to wonder what are the chances they’ve had the time, expertise, and money to maintain anything more than the illusion of a strategic deterrence force. 

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.