It’s not. Russell’s expensive blood test finally proved on Saturday that he is still not making Vitamin K himself. This drastically affects his clotting factors. The vets had run out of injectable stuff so gave us pills to give him.
Have you ever given a pill to a cat? The S&H who wasn’t here advised us not to wrap him up. The vet advised us to wrap him up and shoot a pill into the back of his throat with a pill shooter. My mother opined that it wouldn’t be easy. She has had experience with cats. My father once took a cat to the vets in a string bag. She said it couldn’t be done safely. When the cat put its legs through the holes and started to run around the car, finally settling comfortably under the brake pedal as the car sped along, he was obliged to agree.
We were frightened of lifting up his top jaw in case we broke it but as Russell didn’t want his mouth opened it was all academic really. The OT, who wasn’t allowed pets as a child, thought that he could sit beside Russell on the settee in a matey fashion and hand feed him the pill. This is the man who laughed the first three times I asked him to hold the cat basket vertically so I could post the cat in. ‘Won’t he just go in?’ The OT is a man on a steep learning curve. I thought he might be making progress tonight when he put his thick leather gloves on before attempting to give Russell the pill.
When I’m saying pill the correct dose is three quarters of a pill, which is either, as broken by the vet, three quarters of a long hard lump or three little hard, not tasty, lumps. Why no cat pill manufacturer has yet invented the mouse flavoured pill is completely beyond me. I freely give this Nobel prize winning idea to any cat chemists who are reading with absolutely no let or hindrance whatsoever except that they get their fingers out and get on with it at speed.
The first night, after half an hour of blood, sweat and tears I finally managed to give the pill off my hand coated in crushed cat treats. Tonight after the battle I managed to get about a third and a bit of a third into him in a bowl of food. Tomorrow, depending on how I am, we may pay the vet to show us how it is done. No doubt that will be expensive, but then, good entertainment always is.
Depending on how I am is because the cold has got into my lungs. If I can stop coughing long enough to eat then I can start coughing with my Barrett’s oesophagus. I wonder how many calories you use up with a good coughing fit? I would go to bed early but Russell has taken to the hills dangerously. Some nights he likes to come in with the OT returning from the pub. Last night the cats were in early with me in the lounge, both slightly interested as the OT outside whistled for a good ten minutes before coming in. ‘I can’t get him in’, he said ‘oh, there he is.’ He’d been trying to whistle in the ginger tom from two roads away, who looks as much like Russell as the Prime minister looks like the Queen.
Some of us are born to cats in the house, some of us learn cat and some have cats thrust upon them, saying unto them, ‘You do the pill this time, I’ll hold him.’
Would that the S&H were here dealing with his own cat while I concentrate on my coughing.
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