melair

Well, sure enough, when Jim got home, Dingle followed him up the stairs, almost made it into Jim’s office before stopping at Dizzie’s bedroom door, then he began to wail.  We thought we were going to have to keep them separated for weeks, but with some supervised visits, they took to each other very quickly.

Unfortunately, a happy ending still remains to be seen.  The shelter sent us home with a memo about upper respiratory infections in kittens and sometime on Saturday Dizzie started sneezing and snotting all over the place.  At this point, she sounds a lot more like a pug than a kitten.  In the meantime, when we got back from a day trip on Saturday, we had a present waiting for us on the floor in the way of a pile of kitty vomit.  Later that night we watched Dingle retching over and over again   Our vet happens to be open on Sunday, so we loaded them up in their kitty carriers and took them to the vet.  Dizzie definitely has an UPI, and Dingle was said to be fine.  The vet said it was good he hadn’t vomited anymore, but Jim and I weren’t convinced because we knew he hadn’t eaten anything since he last got sick.  So- back home, Dingle ate a small dinner and threw that up a couple of hours afterward.  Then, the next morning at breakfast, I thought we were in the clear.  We’d rolled up all the rugs he’d been puking on, just in case.  I didn’t see anything waiting for me where the rugs used to be, then when I was on the phone with Jim, I saw that right by the sliding glass door in the kitchen, there was another 2-3 puddles.  <Sigh>  I called the vet again and they said they would normally have me come in for an appointment on Monday evening, but they were all booked up.  So, they asked if I would mind bringing him in for over night observation, and I said sure.

Of course, he was dehydrated, so they asked to send him straight to the hospital to be put on IVs.  He was so pitiful on the way to the vet that I actually cried when I dropped him off, and I am typically no sap at all for animals.  Not even my own.  Whereas he’d normally be talking and crying the whole way there, he just plopped down in his carrier, balled up in a fetal position and napped the whole way.  I kept rapping on the cage, scared to death he wasn’t breathing.

They say he is taking well to the IV and getting fluids now.  When we talked to the vet this morning, they had fed him an hour previously and he had not yet yakked.  So far so good.  We are leaving him until this evening because we’d already paid for that long anyway.  Plus- If he throws up again, I’d rather he do it there, as pretty much the whole house smells like tuna fish no matter how much laundry detergent and Resolve carpet cleaner I’ve used.  Hopefully, he’ll be home soon, feeling better and we’ll be a great big happy family again.

Please forgive- I have much more happy things to blog about: Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!  and a day trip to Julian.  But as I’ve been elbow deep in kitty puke the last few days, my priorities have shifted.  I’ll let you know when Dingle is home.  I may even look to have a telethon on PBS to help pay all the vet bills and carpet cleaning.  I’ll call it the Jones’ Cat-Cash-o-thon.