Posted by DW on October 21, 2009, 11:49 pm, in reply to "A difficult answer"
75.161.75.247
I think maybe some of the cats we have would be embarrassed but Curie is not. The peeing outside of the box seems to be of two origins. 1 ... she seems to be experiencing some sort of discomfort directly related to the kidney failure (maybe it feels like a bladder infection but the vet said the white cell count is normal). The other reason is there is one cat in particular who gets his jollies ambushing other cats. If I keep the bedroom door closed she's more comfortable reaching her box and less likely to squat where she is
The bits of poop are probably related to the dehydration from the kidney disease ... and possibly an abnormal bone formation around her tail and spine. The vet wasn't sure what it was really, but she's a Manx and maybe it's an arthritic condition related to her breed ...or something else, lord knows what. Her mobility is still good though. Sometimes things don't evacuate until after she is leaving the box so the turds are a few hops away. Sometimes it seems to happen when she's using the scratching mat.
She seems happy for the most part - if I'm late with her breakfast on weekends she moans and calls for up to two hours until I feed her. The last several months have made her really brighten up with having her own room, door open, extra gushy food. (We used to bring her into our bedroom but I'd fall asleep before taking her back. Savage would bounce up and scare her and her bladder would let go. The husband did not like getting up at midnight to strip the bed and replace the sheets. I'm an idiot so I did it about three more times before I admitted he was right on that one.;-)
So while she may not feel great all the time, she hasn't crashed since June and that was my fault for 'testing' to see what would happen if I did not give her the usual breakfast soup.
Anyway, the thyroid meds come in a 3 month volume. That's my next 'think it over' time assuming there are no majorly bad symptoms to force the issue. I'm a little afraid though. Treating the thyroid is going to make the kidney failure a lot worse.
Here's the deal and part of the tough question. We have two more homeless kittens now. If I knew for sure that two of my elder cats would cross the bridge in 2010, I might think about keeping the kittens. Our goal is to have 3 to 5 cats, 2 to 3 dogs by the time we reach retirement. Using age 65 for my target in 19 years it's likely every animal we now have will have crossed the bridge. So those kittens don't divert us from that goal. It's just that we are both agreed the numbers need to go down from now on.
I looked at our first choice shelter for those kittens. They have 96 cats found and/or adoptable. Over 30 of them are black kittens 4 months or under. I don't like the thought of taking them two more. We are exploring other options ... there is a no kill cat shelter in Colorado with no kittens listed. Just takes an 8 hour drive to get there if they'd take out of state kittens. :-(
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