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drunken officeparty posted:It’s not that the spray doesn’t work, I barely ever even have to actually spray. Just picking up the bottle is enough to send her running. It’s that she is too That's pretty normal for cats. I don't think they're programmed to think "maybe I shouldn't do x because y won't like it and will do something I don't like" instead they just do what they want and if someone gets mad that just means they should come back later when they're less mad to try again. It's how my cats treat each other too. Now if you can get her to link the bad thing to jumping up directly rather than you being involved at all, that might get you somewhere.
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Sep 17, 2021 12:42
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to make the connection of what causes me to pick it up. She just goes right back to doing whatever it was.
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EvilElmo posted:I feel I should start to prepare myself for it... does anyone else prepare for their pet passing? Part of me wants to get another pet so I have one to help me mourn the loss, but also, I don't want to put stress on him by introducing him to a new kitten or puppy in his old age. My roommate and I are going through something like this right now, actually. We lost the older of our two suddenly on Wednesday (he was only 11), and while we’re spoiling the other one rotten with attention it’s loving heartbreaking to hear him going from room to room with that short, trilling “mrow” looking for his counterpart. The comment about two kittens may work best but I’m in agreement with you; I wouldn’t want to stress him out with a new pet. I know personally speaking that I’d need time to mourn and then get lonely again afterwards before getting a new pet but YMMV.
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Sep 17, 2021 15:29
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Thanks for everyone's support and advice with the cat who isn't eating. He had a fun excursion at the vet today and had a bunch of his teeth condemned. So now we're looking at dental treatment plus thyroid surgery. This poor cat just cannot catch a break.
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Sep 17, 2021 19:20
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Well, I finally was able to bring Jackie in to the vet today - had to call back several times this week worried. Jackie had a big lump on her side that appeared on her Monday, a few days after she had a BIG fight with Murfy, her roommate the fierce Savannah cat who is less than half her age and has more than twice her strength. Anyway, it felt bigger (and almost hot) this morning, and I felt some urgency. So we got her in, and sure enough it was a big, "deep" abscess. Too big to just lance with her conscious, so they're going to give her some mild anesthesia (via gas) and probably put a shunt in as well for draining pus, as well as keeping her overnight after the minor surgery. She had a temperature of 105  Poor Jackie! Anyway, the vet didn't seem really concerned that anything bad or unexpected would come of this. Glad I brought her in today instead of waiting until Monday when her scheduled appointment was, though.
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Sep 18, 2021 00:36
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Alright, so things are going really well with Quill, she's just about to come up to her 4 week mark where I'm going to take her in for the next round of vaccinations (she'll be about 12-13 weeks old). She's really gained a lot of agility in the last couple weeks but she's also been loving up a bit, she gets into Mustafa situations where she's holding onto the edge of something and dangling 3-4 feet off the hardwood floor and meowing for us to come pick her up. Usually this happens when she's messing around on top of ikea organizers with plants on them. She's been too interested in the plants so we moved them to a different room - before this we were spraying her with water when she got up to no good but honestly she doesn't seem to give a poo poo. The other day I came home and there was soil on the floor from where she was digging in a planter. It's not the end of the world but I do love these plants and have had several of them for 10+ years. I know before someone recommended that spray can of air that has the motion detector in it, so we'd put that on the organizer and then it'd spray air at her if she jumped up - my issue with it is I don't want her to be startled when she's 4' up above hardwood and on a hard-edged wooden slippery organizer thing. It's easy to imagine her falling awkwardly onto her side or hip (or falling between the organizer and the wall, onto the weird radiator that lives there) and I straight up can't take the chance. What's the next best thing to do? I know there are products that you spray on plants that cats don't like the taste of but I haven't really seen her eating/biting any of our plants. She puts her face up to them, paws at stuff, etc. For what it's worth she's been incredible, I spend almost every night/morning cuddling her, I can't believe she's real and in my life. I give her extra love every time I read something sad about someone else's cat on here. I don't know if that means anything to you guys going through this but it feels like all I can do. kaworu posted:Well, I finally was able to bring Jackie in to the vet today - had to call back several times this week worried. Jackie had a big lump on her side that appeared on her Monday, a few days after she had a BIG fight with Murfy, her roommate the fierce Savannah cat who is less than half her age and has more than twice her strength. Oh no! Are they planning on starting antibiotics as well? If she's got a big abscess and a temperature it would be indicated in humans for presumed sepsis. VelociBacon fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 11:00
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Honestly it's just basically impossible to keep a cat off a surface they want to go onto. Is there a way you can cover the soil so she doesn't dig in it? I've basically never had house plants because I've always had cats. I'm just starting to introduce them to my house in carefully chosen places that the cats can't get to. It's a problem! Bitter spray can help but it does wear off and a determined cat will still munch. I wouldn't worry too much about her falling off stuff, kittens are resilient. Pepper has *very* bad balance for a cat and especially as a kitten used to fall off things all the time. She once spent an entire afternoon practicing a particular jump until she finally got it. They're very agile creatures and don't often land badly.
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Sep 18, 2021 12:46
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Any recommendations for chew toys? Latte loves to chew and she’s mostly been chewing on cardboard. Would like to get her something slightly more durable.
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Sep 18, 2021 18:26
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VelociBacon posted:Oh no! Are they planning on starting antibiotics as well? If she's got a big abscess and a temperature it would be indicated in humans for presumed sepsis. Yeah, pretty sure they gave her a big dose of long-term anti-biotics yesterday when she got in. I mean, it was a pretty big and dramatic-looking lump. We just picked her up from the vet this morning, and she's pretty miserable at the moment but everything went well. I mean, she does have a big stitched-up wound on her side with a drain in it:  And she's wearing a cone of shame that makes drinking water from the big aquarium near-impossible:  Also, her young friend the Mini-Scratcher really missed her while she was gone and won't leave her alone at the moment, when all Jackie wants is to pretty much be left alone. I think things will be OK though, seems like this new vet did a great job. We're bringing her back in on Monday night (which was when the original appointment we made was) which is when she'll probably take out the drain. We also have a syringe with some good stuff in it for cleaning the wound out. All in all, I'm relieved we took her in when we did and it wasn't worse. We're all furious at Murfy though, who at least had the grace to look truly and legitimately guilty when Jackie came out of the character. I don't think I'd ever seen Murfy look guilty before about anything, but I'll be damned if I didn't see legit guilt in his eyes.
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Sep 18, 2021 18:38
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I've been having biting issues with my cat for quite a while now, probably near the start of the year, but it's gotten increasingly frequent the past month or so. He'll sort of hover around my legs while I'm working, sitting on the couch, or using the computer for a few seconds before jumping up, grabbing my arm, and biting really fiercely. I can often tell when he plans to strike but that just results in me getting up to walk away which doesn't do anything to curb the behavior, and isn't always an option anyway (if I'm in a work meeting, doing something I can't interrupt on the computer, etc.). Even if I could always do that I certainly don't want to. I've never encouraged it by playing rough with him or laughing/ignoring when he does it, I almost always say "ow!" (because it actually hurts, I have like 10 visible scars on my right arm alone) and get away from him when he does it. I try to play properly with him regularly but he's very particular about his toys and often ignores the few he sometimes responds to. Sometimes he'll bite my leg instead of my arm but he seems smart enough to know that bare arms hurt more than jean-covered legs. I've been trying the squirt bottle for a few weeks now after not wanting to use it before - my vet assistant friends all really pushed positive reinforcement rather than negative but I don't know how to positively reinforce not-biting-my-arm. It really hasn't helped, or at least he's still going for his bites 1-2 times a day regardless. I just don't know what to do about it and it's getting really bad. I've noticed that I start to lean away or flinch sometimes I see him walking up to me while I'm working just because I've become conditioned to his attacks. I'm really running out of patience with this, I've had him for over three years now and I hate feeling like I don't want to be around my own cat-friend because he'll just randomly decide that I need a new red gash on my forearm. e: here he is being very Not Bitey 
Countblanc fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Sep 19, 2021 |
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Sep 19, 2021 02:51
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xzzy posted:Our vet puts profile pics of the cats into their records and it gets printed out in the corner of all reports and bills for that kitty. One of ours' picture is of her sulking in a sink. It's adorable. Mine does the same thing. This is Megatron, my tortie. She doesn't like the vet but tolerates it well enough:  aaaaaaaaaaaand Nibbles, who will murder anyone in the room to try and escape:  The above was taken by a big burly male vet tech, cowering in the doorway who immediately fled for his life after snapping the pic. Don't blame him one bit. vvv Cell phone photos of tiny thumbnails printed out on a cheap laser printer  Here's one of my favorite photos of Megatron, just to prove that she's real: I just now noticed one of her pupils getting constricted (what's the opposite of dilated?) from the flash 
Takes No Damage fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Sep 20, 2021 |
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Sep 19, 2021 06:56
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Powerful cryptid energy from those pictures
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Sep 19, 2021 17:56
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I'm taking Quill in for her next round of vaccinations this week or next. I'm mildly concerned that she didn't really 'get' the dose of dewormer that was given, because it seems to mostly have been all over her fur. I wouldn't expect it to be dangerous to give two dewormer doses even if she got 100% efficacy from the first one but is this a weird request? She's been doing really well, she seems to double in cat ability every 5 days. She's extremely agile now, alternates between being a snuggly cute cat that wants I've noticed in the last week she'll now look around a lot, she looks up and seems to plan acrobatics before attempting them (before she'd just jump around at/on whatever was in front of her). She now has her tower right up against the windowsill and loves to watch the activity outside. She's knocked over the Monstera that was in another room, didn't eat any of it though. I'm really really hoping she'll just leave it alone because that plant means a lot to me.
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Sep 20, 2021 08:37
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I have finally found a selection of cat soups and VelociBacon posted:I'm taking Quill in for her next round of vaccinations this week or next. I'm mildly concerned that she didn't really 'get' the dose of dewormer that was given, because it seems to mostly have been all over her fur. I wouldn't expect it to be dangerous to give two dewormer doses even if she got 100% efficacy from the first one but is this a weird request? Meh, sometimes it does that. There's always a bit that gets onto the fur and leaves it matted, but as long as most of it got onto the skin it's fine. I wouldn't double-dose. VelociBacon posted:She's knocked over the Monstera that was in another room, didn't eat any of it though. I'm really really hoping she'll just leave it alone because that plant means a lot to me. She won't, RIP beloved plant.
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Sep 20, 2021 22:52
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Lady Demelza posted:I have finally found a selection of cat soups and That sucks, and occasionally happens with my boy cat when I have to switch from wet food to dry due to budgetary issues which the vet said was because of the diet switch itself. Hopefully he’ll adjust to the new diet soon.
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Sep 21, 2021 00:05
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Maybe try mixing a bit of unsweetened canned pumpkin into the food or something? It's used for constipated cats because the extra fiber helps things get moving along, but the extra fiber can also helps firm things up when they've got the runny shits.
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Sep 21, 2021 03:30
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My cat spent the first months of having houseplants cheerfully digging up their soil and trying to poop in the pots. She no longer does that for some reason, maybe just because it's no longer new. Still chews them!
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Sep 21, 2021 07:43
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VelociBacon posted:She's knocked over the Monstera that was in another room, didn't eat any of it though. I'm really really hoping she'll just leave it alone because that plant means a lot to me.
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Sep 21, 2021 11:24
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I have to put river rocks in all of my plants or they constantly try to gently caress with them.
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Sep 21, 2021 11:29
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How does the litter robot handle stand-up pissers? If a cat enters the robot and stands to piss directly against the back wall, will that portion of the wall touch the sand when the unit rotates to clean, or will there always be a ring of piss spots that never touch the litter as the eggshell rotates? I used the PetSafe ultra scooper for a few months. It was nice, but the crystals could NOT keep up with two cats pissing on it constantly. Within 1-2 weeks, the crystals would be green and reeking, and no amount of stirring would help that. Since I swapped back to manual boxes with clay litter, they've been competitively pissing in the box, because they hate each other's smell. If I don't scoop the box multiple times per day, Asiago will go in 3 minutes after Vuli uses the box, dig up her fresh piss, then re-piss on it and bury it. If the box is empty? She'll just piss on the walls of the box and not bury it to mark it. I'm either finding softball sized merged piss clumps, or the annoying "piss on the wall so it runs down and pools up in the corner at an angle" piss clumps to stab at with the shovel. I've tried wiping the walls down with cleaner or dusting with Feliway, but they're back to pissing on each other's pisses within a few hours no matter what. I'm curious about the litter robot, but I don't want to drop $500 for a giant rotating piss bucket target for the piss rats to piss on. I've searched, but it seems like the Cat Thread's problems center around whether the cat actually uses the thing in the first place.
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Sep 21, 2021 15:59
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It sort of depends on where they actually pee? If they're spraying parallel to the floor every time then no, it's gonna dribble down into the litter and clump there. Now, the actual shell that revolves is a single piece of plastic with a rubber lining on the bottom half which reasonably gets swished around with litter during the cycling process. If they're the sort of cats to spray and pray then you'll have to periodically clean off the backsplash; the whole thing disassembles pretty easily (disconnect the bonnet, lift the entire rotating shell off the tray). But given the design most cats shouldn't have the space to lift a leg and spray in any arbitrary direction either, so it should go right into the litter. All cats are different, etc.
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Sep 21, 2021 16:40
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Related to Litter Robot discussion:quote:On September 27, 2021, Litter-Robot 3 prices will change as follows: Just received this in the email from them.
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Sep 21, 2021 19:05
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I'll keep my fingers crossed that the runny poops stop once he's got used to the diet. If he wasn't in so much pain I'd have tapered it, but never mind.
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Sep 21, 2021 20:10
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I adopted a kitten from a local rescue after my oldest cat died and he ended up having FIP. I have another cat that is 12. How worried should I be? I already went over everything with a bleach solution and they didn't interact too much but I know she used his litter box and they both ate canned food from the same bowl a few times.
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Sep 22, 2021 00:56
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My husband and I adopted a 2 year old shelter cat 2 weeks ago. She is fine with me but when my husband stands up or tries to pet her she runs away. He gives her treats and plays with her but she's still skittish when he comes near or moves a bit fast. Is there anything else we can do to make her more comfortable around him?
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Sep 22, 2021 08:47
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Reharakhti posted:My husband and I adopted a 2 year old shelter cat 2 weeks ago. Time probably. One of our two cats is kinda like that. We’ve had them both for a year and she’s gotten better but we assume there was some prior trauma there even though her sister is perfectly happy.
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Sep 22, 2021 08:54
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Hey catpeople. Is it ok to occasionally give my cat a few scraps of raw chicken (i.e. when I'm preparing chicken for my own meal)? I tried googling it but it's very hard to find anything about cat health that isn't also trying to sell me something. tia
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Sep 22, 2021 11:19
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Armitag3 posted:Hey catpeople. Is it ok to occasionally give my cat a few scraps of raw chicken (i.e. when I'm preparing chicken for my own meal)? I tried googling it but it's very hard to find anything about cat health that isn't also trying to sell me something. tia Many people feed their cats raw meat. If it's been frozen, it's probably safe, if not I'd worry about parasites and bacteria. Of course, "unsafe" still means nothing happens 99% of the time, but I personally wouldn't risk it. Give them a piece when it's cooked but not seasoned? The chicken bone thing is afaik specifically about cooked chicken, so that's not an issue.
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Sep 22, 2021 11:38
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hasegawa posted:How does the litter robot handle stand-up pissers? If a cat enters the robot and stands to piss directly against the back wall, will that portion of the wall touch the sand when the unit rotates to clean, or will there always be a ring of piss spots that never touch the litter as the eggshell rotates? Sam is a stand up pisser and the rubber on the back wall of the thing goes high enough that the piss goes into the litter pretty well. The unique thing about the litter robot is the interior is actually a globe/sphere shape instead of a square/flat box so there's no corner to catch clumps in, it'll all end up in the bottom drawer. That said you will need to occasionally take it apart and hose it down. (It's not that bad, it's designed to be taken apart for reasonably easy cleaning.) I could never use a covered dome (he'd piss on the wall and it'd run out the crack where the dome attached) and uncovered boxes he'd just straight up piss over the side, and I can say the LR is a huge improvement over both of those situations. If you're having issues where the cats are being over each other's piss it'll be pretty huge since they'll always be stepping into a clean box as long as you change the drawer out every 2-3 days.
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Sep 22, 2021 13:46
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When you say stand up pisser I’m imagining fully upright like a guy at a urinal.
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Sep 22, 2021 13:49
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It's way more mysterious than that. He just stands there on all fours normally and the piss goes straight backwards at tail level. I don't know how the physics of this even work.
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Sep 22, 2021 14:08
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drunken officeparty posted:When you say stand up pisser I’m imagining fully upright like a guy at a urinal.
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Sep 22, 2021 14:31
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Sometimes Aleta sings to herself right before she poops.
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Sep 22, 2021 16:19
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Reharakhti posted:My husband and I adopted a 2 year old shelter cat 2 weeks ago. We've had Perdy for...Jesus, four years at this point, and she's still a literal scaredy-cat. She's more comfortable with us now, but she lives in our room, doesn't like quick movements (or any motion around her really, until she approaches you), and is waaay more comfortable with my wife than me. She does have the most adorable little meow though - opens her mouth like she's gonna yowl but this little squeaky smoker's-cough meow comes out to say "feed me" or "pet me". 
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Sep 22, 2021 16:25
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Dudes b traumatizing cats, a lot of my friends cats are also like that around guys
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Sep 22, 2021 16:36
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This is a pretty good deal if anyone was looking for a tree.  https://slickdeals.net/share/iphone_app/t/15294376
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Sep 22, 2021 19:54
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Just keep in mind those things are cheap as hell. If you have several active cats they will eventually break the top cylinders, which are likely made of cardboard. I ended up DIY fixing mine with 2x4s.
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Sep 22, 2021 20:33
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So my cat had a bad reaction to some pain meds the vet gave him for an injury to his back leg. He started throwing up and refused to eat. They did some blood work on him and he appears to be ok so pretty sure it was just an issue with the meds but he is dehydrated and still not eating. They gave him a subcutaneous water injection and he has a big watery lump near his front leg but he is also dripping water from his mouth. Is that normal? It's getting the front of his chest wet.
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Sep 24, 2021 02:14
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I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that's a question you really should ask your vet instead of us.
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Sep 24, 2021 02:16
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Well they're closed right now, just curious if other people have seen that before. He doesn't seem particularly bothered by it.
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Sep 24, 2021 02:17
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| # ? May 16, 2024 18:26 |
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That sounds pretty sketchy, man. I'd definitely call up the vet ASAP when they're open tomorrow morning no matter what. As to whether or not you should immediately be taking him to an emergency vet, it sounds kinda right there on the line, to be honest. Basically, is your cat obviously or clearly in any pain? Is he showing interest in eating food/drinking water? Is he using his litterbox without issue? If any one of those three things is a factor, in addition to what you described in terms of the bad reaction to the pain meds and everything that's happened already, then I would seriously consider doing something sooner rather than waiting until tomorrow morning. On the other hand, if he's not clearly in pain, is showing interesting in eating and drinking, and is still pooping and peeing normally, then I think it might be reasonable to wait, but then I'm not there and I'm not a vet. Just saying what I'd be doing if I were in your shoes.
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Sep 24, 2021 02:24
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