A kitty post

The week before last, I noticed that Pez had developed a kind of cough. I never knew that cats could cough, so I assumed he had some sort of nasty hairball lurking and that it would come up eventually. Two days later, when he was still doing it, I called the vet. They recommended laxative (which we already had for Louie because he has lots of hairballs) and, if that didn't work, mineral oil. Poor Pez had a very greasy butt for a little while. Unfortunately, the coughing didn't stop, so I brought him in to the vet; it turned out he had some sort of kitty bronchitis. They gave me pills and liquid to give him twice a day. Luckily, Drew was coming home that day.

The first night, we crushed up the pill and put the liquid medicine in some tuna - about 2 tablespoons. Normally, that cat devours tuna like nobody's business, but I guess he didn't like the added taste. He didn't even eat half of it. The liquid smelled a little like minty antacid. Pretty foul. The next morning, we thought maybe if we give him MORE tuna the taste will be diluted some. Nope - he wasn't fooled. We had to take away their food (a cardinal sin with our cats) and give Pez his medicated tuna whenever we thought he was hungry.

Finally, we gave in. We couldn't ply him with food. One of us would have to hold him down, the other would have to shove the medicine in his face. This, too, did NOT go well, but we had already wasted two doses of his medicine, we had to get serious. Drew held him while I medicated him. Here's how that went:



We tried this three times before we realized it wouldn't work. He took his medicine, but he was scarring my husband. Finally, we decided we'd have to use extra restraints. We decided to wrap him in a towel VERY tightly, so he wouldn't be able to claw anyone. This worked swimmingly. He even purred at first... before I started shoving my finger in his face to get his mouth open, that is.



Isn't that the cutest?

That worked pretty well. Except for the fact that my boy's a bit of a drooler. (Pez, not Drew.) (Heh, Drewl.) When we got the medicine in his mouth, he would work his tongue around it so furiously that it would start foaming and leaking out of his mouth. This caused a foul, sticky mess, especially when he shook his head and got it all over Drew the first time. We had to pretty much follow him around after he got his medicine and wipe up, because he drooled so bad.



I could be wrong, but that does NOT look like a happy kitty. And relative to the other days, THIS was minor. At first, we tried to smoosh the drool back into his mouth, but that proved completely fruitless so we just held him until he sucked most of it up, then we'd wipe it off. He walked around with a yellow chin for several days (Drew called him "Curry Kitty") until he gave up fighting and just swallowed it. Thankfully, Stella's a good foster mommy and she happily licked a lot of it off his chin.

But, it's just another day in the life of being a mommy to four cats. My boy's not coughing anymore, which is a huge relief to me and to his daddy. So, it's all worth it.