On Tuesday, Russell, younger cat of the S&H began to look a bit under the weather.
We remarked, as often before, that he must have eaten someone who disagreed with him, for he is a fierce mouser, but as Tuesday wore thin, so did he. We said we’d see how he was on Wednesday.
Interestingly we were also seeing how the OT was. He was right off tins and biscuits too. On Wednesday evening he went to the pub as usual and I went to bed as usual, hoping both would be sober and in good heart in the morning. The OT was but the cat wasn’t. Nothing tempted him. We felt him all over to see if he was broken. We rang the vet to see when they were next open. Friday morning 8.30. Thursday night as we sat and watched James Bond Russell slid off his cushion on the settee and didn’t have the strength to haul himself back on again. I rang the emergency vet, we thanked our lucky stars I had bought a sat nav and sped through the night to the outer reaches of Coventry and the all-night emergency vet. A blood test confirmed that Russell had eaten a poisoned mouse and we heard some horrifying effects of the new generation of rodent poisons designed so that the rodent bleeds to death whilst desperately thirsty, ensuring it will crawl away from the poison searching for water which it will drink unquenchably until death. So will the cat that eats it, or the dog or the bird or the child, or the hedgehog that takes the bait, or the person that picks the dead bird off the bird table without gloves. The only possible treatment was to give Russell special food administered by syringe to get his electrolyte levels up and Vitamin K injections every day for ten days. The total cost including the out of hours vet likely to be around £800.
Naturally we asked the vet to proceed with the treatment. We were distracted from the cost and remembering that the S&H had not taken out insurance on his pets because they were ‘young and not likely to have problems’ by another couple, whose dying ancient Labrador was in the car. Yes the vet could leave Russell’s blood test under the microscope and rescue the Lab.
One way and another the First of the new year was a grim evening. The Labrador was put down and the couple, who had made the decision not to keep the dog going so their small children, at home in bed, could say goodbye, left crying. We gathered Russell, limp, floppy and injected with the first dose and some antibiotic and took him home. There I rang the S&H and told him the situation, in case Russell died before he got to see him, so the S&H and his OT decided to come for lunch the following day so the S&H could go with us and the cat to his usual vet to hear all about it for himself.
We were due to have our usual Christmas do with the neighbours at the weekend, so, on Friday morning, on the way to the local garage, which is also a big food chain convenience store, to get supplies for the surprise family lunch, I popped in to ask.
I was told the neighbour evening had to be that night because the husband, who is working away, had to go back at the weekend and the following weekend the daughter would be back at uni. So saying Let’s do it tonight then’ I left for the garage. There they enquired why the long face and when I told them about the cat, they asked where I lived. ‘Just over there’ brought forth a long silence followed by God Save the Cat.
I then got my skates on and, in between feeding Russell every half hour with the special food by syringe, I cleaned the house and vacuumed while the OT went food shopping. The dinner was on, fortunately the previous evening I had been cooking a big turkey casserole to freeze, so I had it just about ready when the S&H arrived, so I served it and we were all there when my mother’s carer rang to say my mother couldn’t move her arm, was having a heart attack or stroke and the doctor had been sent for.
Came the hour, with updates from the carer, and then the next carer when the shift changed, and off we went to the vet. Here the cat was injected, consulted (£80) and booked again on Saturday and in Rugby, the practice branch which is open on Sunday, on Sunday. 2015 was turning into the Year We Toured Veterinary Practices in the West Midlands.
We returned. I rang my mother, who was extremely perky, surprised to hear she had been poorly and keen to pay for the treatment for the cat. We accepted, I photographed the cat, propping himself up on the television stand legs, as above, made it into a card and a thank you from the cat for my mother and gave it to the S&H who set out to deliver it on his way home along with the trendy tin of biscuits he was giving her for Christmas.
So I then (in between feeding the cat half hourly with the syringe, which I was now beginning to master with less down the holder and more down the cat) cleared up the lunch and set the table for dinner and put the stuff the S&H had brought in the oven, wiped off the cat dribble and became glamorous by setting my hair whilst doing my eyes and putting on earrings and clean socks. They were not the supermarket socks either, they were a named brand.
So the neighbours arrived a little late, which was good, my curlers were out, which is always better. They said they didn’t think we were going to have them for some reason so the husband had asked some friends of theirs round in three quarters of an hour. I have never given gifts, poured drinks, or eaten a buffet so fast in my life. They thanked, they left, I tidied, the OT went briefly to the pub. I finished the tidying and washing up and putting away the OT returned………….
………and was up all night vomiting with sickness and diarrhoea, he reckons it’s Norovirus, having looked himself up an his phone in between being sick.
So today I wrote and delivered 120 letters to the neighbourhood warning pet owners of the poisoning danger. I started by delivering one to the local convenience store, who are obliged by law to do something about vermin. After the first 60 I got a phone call from a local lady who had lost her cat to poisoning two weeks before Christmas, which is just when Russell first looked a bit off colour.
So I made the OT, who had surfaced a cup of tea, did the other 60 ( about another 100 to do tomorrow) and headed for the vet with the cat. The OT went back to bed and here I am, telling you all about it.
The third. It’s only the third. Of January.
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JaneLaverick.you couldn’t make this stuff up.com
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