Drove to B'fld to pick up Owl's medicine this morning. It's a liquid form of Metronidazole. I also have a written prescription for the dry food. I can't afford to buy it right now anyway, but if I get the chance, I'll go up against Petsmart and see if they dare try to prevent me from buying it.

I've had to cut back on the canned food, too. I'm only giving it out in the morning. Last night, Theseus planted himself in front of me and let out a very loud, plaintive, ''WHY?!!!!"

Puck's been the very devil himself about getting out the door. It's become a twisted and dangerous dance I have to do each time I leave, and he still gets past me sometimes. If I have the time, I let him roll in the dust and eat grass, which is mainly what he wants to do.

I'm so mad I could spit. I'm coming to intensely dislike companies that make prescription cat food. I mean c'mon, prescription cat food!? What a crock. Like what, I'd get hold of the stuff and turn it into crack or something? The whole concept of prescription cat food is absurd.

My vet recommends that I feed this particular dry food to Owl. Owl's thyroid levels weren't indicative enough of hyperthyroid problems to go that route, which means treating for inflammatory bowel syndrome. I need to get to the vet's for a specific medicine for him, but in additional, it would be beneficial to feed Owl this food.

If I buy it at my vet's, it's outrageously expensive. My problem is that I can't just give it to Owl without creating huge headaches for myself, but buying enough for the entire Horde is out of the question. You'd think the damned stuff was made out of gold.

I tried to get a better deal on it at a big petstore chain, Petsmart. Listen to this scam. The maker of the food, Hill's, has made some kind of sweetheart deal with a veterinary chain, Banfield, so that in order to buy the food at Petsmart, I have to take Owl to their vet.

Like hell. It sounds borderline illegal to me. The more I learn about this particular pet food company, the less I like it.

It was Owl's turn to be hauled off to the vet, yet again. I saw a couple of splashes of blood on the side of his catbox which sent my concern level soaring. I was also right in being concerned about my sense that he hadn't put on any weight. In fact, he's lost a few more ounces in the past month.

The vet brought it down to three possibilities that seem the most likely at this point: a) intestinal inflammation of some kind; b) hyperthyroid; or c) cancer. He thinks Owl is rather young for it to be cancer. We did another blood test to check the thyroid. I won't have the results until tomorrow. Once the vet sees that, he will either have me start with a thyroid treatment or an anti-inflammation treatment.

We didn't even try to address why Owl is continuing to pull out so much of his hair. The anti-histamines don't seem to be doing anything for him.

Speaking of lovely old Owl, he just crawled into my lap for the third time tonight, blessing me with his steady-state purr. And this is even afer I subjected him to Vet Torture which he really, really hates.

Meanwhile, we had the results on Querida's urine culture. Totally negative! Not a damned bit of bacteria grew in it. Which means she has some *other* problem. He thinks a kidney cystitis problem that may be exacerbated by the thyroid treatment (it's a balancing act between keeping the thyroid under control and the damage it can do to the kidneys in the process). I'm to start a steroid treatment on her, but only after we get her eye infection totally cleared up. I got more eye ointment today, too.

The vet remains worried about Tribble. I told him Tribble's been much bouncier and more his old self on the Baytril, so I'm continuing that until the course is done, then he wants to test Tribble's thyroid levels again. In the past couple of days, I've noticed that Tribble has had moments of being unsteady on his feet. Worry, worry, worry.

I took part in a kitten rescue last night. Around dinner time, my cat-lover neighbor across the street called to say that one of the local little girls found a just-born kitten that had been put into trash bin. It still had the umbilical cord and some afterbirth on it, so we're talking brand-new. My neighbor, knowing how many cats I have, was hoping I might have some kitten formula or bottle-feeder.

Last time I dealt with kittens was when Tribble was born (Querida's second and final litter) and that was nearly 16 years ago, so I couldn't help. I did warn her to keep the kitten very warm. Then I called the cat rescue people who helped me catch and fix Ariel and her sister. They were strongly insistent that the only chance the little one had was to bring it over so they could put it with one of their three nursing queens.

I had several phone calls back and forth with my neighbor to urge her to do that. At first, she seemed set on feeding the kitten herself. But finally she came around and realized a day-old kitten probably wasn't going to make it without a mother-cat. Since it was now around 11 pm and I was the one who knew how to get to the cat haven, I offered to take it.

Randy, who is all heart, wanted to drive so that I could cradle the kitten in my lap. I have one of those bean-bag things that you heat up in the microwave to wrap around your neck. With that heated up and put inside a towel, I had a toasty-warm nest for the kitten.

It was so tiny! Just an itty black peanut of a thing. But he/she/it sure talked a lot, and he was on a determined search for the elusive teat for the whole drive. We got him settled in on a mama cat right away.

I called this morning to see whether he made it through the night. He did, and was scrapping with the rest of the slightly-older kittens to get his share of the milk. If he survives, my neighbor is determined to take him back and plans to call him/her Miracle.

Puck knocked over my coat rack for the zillionth time. The upper turning rack is so badly messed up that I've had to wire it together. The Lord of Mischief has also been using every chance he gets to sprint outside. Yesterday, I let him roll in the dust for a while and eat a bunch of grass, knowing full well I'd have to clean up the grass later when he threw it up. Which I did.

Ariel is being highly skittish around me after I was gone for 8 days. I was afraid that might happen.

Owl is doing well, though it doesn't feel to me that he's added any weight yet. I was really hoping to see results by now. He's lost all interest in eating his special food, so that's causing a problem, too.

Tribble and Querida are on Baytril during this interim period while I wait for the results of the lab culture to determine the best course of treatment for them. They seem to responding well. Tribble is more active than he has been for some time.

Querida came home with an infection in her left eye that no one but me noticed. Luckily I have ointment on hand and her eye is improving.

I've put the SSPO pages back up in a modified form that I hope will keep the bandwidth problem under control. We will see.

When Randy came to pick me up at the airport in Bakersfield, he dropped Querida off at the vet's. She was having blood in her urine again and losing control of her bladder. Fortunately, my plane arrived on time and early enough that we could rush to the vet's to discuss Querida's situation. It turned out better to leave her there overnight while waiting for test results.

Which meant I had to return to B'fld today. I took Tribble with me. He continues throwing up, feels thinner to me, and clearly doesn't feel well. When I got home last night, all the cats except Tribble greeted me with enthusiasm. Tribble didn't feel well enough to come out of his sleeping box at all.

They're both home tonight with anti-biotics. Tribble had lots of blood and white blood cells in his urine and has lost an entire pound since Feb. The vet has had to do an expensive culture on Querida to determine the exact nature of her infection so it can be treated more effectively. She could possibly be in the early stages of renal failure, but we can't be sure yet.

Given how closely Tribble's illness matches his mother's, we're going to be giving him the same treatment she gets. The interim anti-biotics are to give them some immediate relief since the results of the culture won't be available until next Tues.

They're both quite old, so these problems aren't unexpected, and they're such good, sweet moggies, I can hardly begrudge the vet bills to keep them well for as long as possible.

The Moggyblog is going on a short hiatus while I fly across country for a family reunion. I should be back around 4/22. I'm sure the moggies will be glad to see me when I return.

The problem with leaving the dry food out is that Owl is turning up his long Siamese snoot at the special canned food, and I still need him to eat good portions of that. So today I put the dry food away in the afternoon and lo! the moggies are gathering around beaming the hungry vibes at me.

I was worried about Tribble last night because he didn't show up at all for either the treats for the Good Food. He was way up in his box on the top of the highest shelves where it's a true feat of balancing and dexterity to get to him. But get to him I did, in order to give him the thyroid pill. He seems fine today, so I guess he simply too tired to bother with food just then.

Oh, yuck, Knobby just sneezed all over my hand, which he's now licking clean.

I didn't end up taking Tribble to the vet. I'm going to observe him a while longer, since in every other respect he seems to be doing well. I'm so far behind the curve on vet bills, I have to be more careful about what I can afford to do.

Ariel is still sneezing, but she's eating and otherwise seems to be fine. Lately when I come into the office, I find her cuddled up with Querida in the cat bed next to the heater behind my chair. It's a sweet thing to see, though I really hope she doesn't give this cold to the Old Dame. Of course, the moment I come in, Ariel takes off since they would simply be too close to the human.

As for Owl, I have thrown up my hands and surrendered. Obviously, I could never be a secret agent, because all they would need to break me in no time at all is to lock me in a room with a hungry Siamese. I simply couldn't take it anymore, in my face, complaining plaintively, hour after hour. Aided and abetted by Tribble and others.

The food regime has changed. I'm continuing to lock Owl up overnight with a bowl of his special food. I'm not giving out the regular canned food in the morning because the rest of the Horde was leaving too much of it behind. I'll give it to them once a day, in the evening, after Owl is in the Cave and can't get to it.

Meanwhile, I've gone back to leaving the dry food out and accessible during the day. Yesterday, Randy and I went to a Petsmart and investigated the best possible dry food we could get. We got lucky and ran into an employee that actually knew about cat nutrition. We ended up with a highly digestible food with none of the crap stuff in it like chicken by-products or corn, plus it's formulated with vitamins specifically for indoor cats. We spent a long time talking to him and he gave us coupons for two free 8 lb. bags of food, so we were delighted.

I'm taking a chance letting Owl eat the dry food, but frankly, it's either that or go completely NUTS. Looking at him right now, I think his face looks a bit less gaunt. I hope I'm right and that he'll continue to put on weight.

He's driving me crazy, I tell you! It's Siamese Cat Torture.

This afternoon, even hampered by his bad leg, Owl managed to get all the way to the top of the set of shelves that backs onto the bookshelves where I've been putting the dry cat food up out of reach.

This requires that he: jump up a set of "steps" created by three chairs that I've clumped together for the sake of the other cats, then onto a stack of boxes, then a jump up onto a 2'x4' board walkway that leads to the top of a set of storage shelves, a jump across the gap between those shelves and another set of shelves, then across another board walkway to the top of yet another row of shelves, and thus over to the top of the bookshelves.

Having gotten there, here is what he did.

In other news, Ariel is still feeling poorly. She's all sneezy and congested.

Couldn't get Tribble to the vet today. He's rescheduled for Friday.

Puck gave his cold to Ariel. Poor girl has been sneezing all day.

There is nothing, NOTHING, more persistent and annoying than a hungry Siamese. You have been warned.

Hauling Tribble off to the vet tomorrow.

Owl's starting pulling his fur out again. When I called to make the appointment for Tribble this morning, I asked whether it was okay to give him anti-histamines along with the steroids. They said yes. I stopped giving him the anti-histamines when I started him on the steroids to give him a break from taking two pills and to see whether the steroids alone would keep him from denuding himself. Nope.

I wish I could tell whether Owl is responding to the new regime. Too soon for that, I guess. He's so unhappy about being locked up all night that even the lure of food isn't proving strong enough. Last night I had to find him and haul him to the Cave.

It looks like I'll have to take Tribble back to the vet. He threw up bucket-loads, so now I know who's been doing that for the past week for so. Not good.

No sneezing out of Puck today. He must have gotten over whatever it was.

Check out this wonderfully funny page.

My Cat Annie

For more laughs, I've added lots of new photos to the Silly Sleeping Pose Olympics.

Poor Puck has either a cold or allergies. He's been sneezing vehemently for two days.

Meanwhile, this whole things with the cats and food is driving me crazy. Owl is climbing the walls trying to get at the dry food, then ignores the new canned food when I give it to him. Yeesh.

I swear Owl has talked to me more in the past few days, than in the entire nearly-8 years that I've had him.

There is nothing more obnoxious than a Horde of hungry cats. But they probably feel the same way about me by the time the night feeding finally comes around.

That said, Ariel once again turned her nose up at the food this morning. She seems perfectly fine, and since I was worried about her being too much of a Food Slut, I'm not that bothered to see her eating less. I don't want her to become a blimpette.

Another small "first" last night. I turned around in my chair and found Ariel sleeping in one of the cat beds next to the heater behind me. Pretty daring of her!

And now HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I've assigned April 1st as the arbitrary birthdays for Puck and Ariel. Puck is now 4. Ariel is 1 year old and as untouchable as ever. My wish for the birthday fairy is for Ariel to be happy to be petted by this same time next year.

Here's a great chuckle. How to Sleep With an Allergic Human.

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