Poor Thom-Cat

Poor Thomas had to be rushed to the vet yesterday. He ws absolutely fine - or appeared to be - in the morning, but then early after lunch he started being very weird, limping and sitting on the shoes next to the hallway radiator, but keeping his bottom up off them, then he started wailing. I carried him to the sofa to try to investigate (thinking maybe he had a sore back leg or something) and he lay there trying to keep his back leg up off his tummy. I rang the vet and they said he should come in immediately but the emergency vet is at Heworth (across the river and miles away) conveniently :-(

When we got there the vet said his bladder was very full and there was a gritty substance coming out when she investigated his nether regions. So she reckoned he might have FLUTD and his urethra might be blocked by crystals in his bladder, and she said they would do a small procedure to unblock and flush it out then keep him in overnight. Awwwwwww,poor little kitty!! But she also said it was a good thing I noticed immediately because this can kill cats if it is not treated; their bladders can rupture and they end up with fluid in their abdominal cavity, which leads to infection, shock etc. The thing is,it is so easy to notice when Thomas isn't himself, because he just lies there and forgets about terrorising the other cats and the home!

Well, he is back now and wearing a rather fetching transparent cone-shaped collar to prevent him licking his little winkie where they had a catheter. He does have FLUTD and the vet said his bladder was full of these stravite crystals and they had formed a plug, blocking the urethra, and so preventing him from peeing. He is now lying in front of the fire looking decidedly pissed off because instead of looking funky in his usual highly fashionable black and white skull and crossbones pirate design collar, he possibly knows he looks ridiculous in the veterinary collar. I have to take him to the vet on Tuesday to see how he is doing and to get some special type of cat food which is low in minerals (as normal dried cat food such as Iams actually has too much and this can be a major cause of crystals in the urine) I also have to give him more canned cat food. (The vet said to introduce him to it,but as he already has this sometimes it will be easy enough to switch over to that and the special dried stuff) It isn't just for cats with that condition and so it can be given to the other two too. At 7pm I have to give him a dose of this anti-spasmodic thing, which is because after having a catheter up his tiddler all night it will be a bit sore and the little muscles can spasm, which will make him think he needs to go to the litter box (which I notice he has been doing the past half hour or so.)

So...an evening of knitting with Thom-Cat sleeping on my lap I think. I'm knackered - after failing to sleep last night,then having to go on the bus and Metro to collect him then bring him back (he weighs almost 6 kg, plus his carrier, which is an aircraft-safe heavy duty one, weighs a ton too)On a more positive note, I have ordered this gorgeous limited edition Botany Lace from Wild Fire, to replace the BFL in 'plum' which when I received it just wasn't right colour-wise; the customer service is fantastic and I plan to buy a lot more from Vikki in future, as the quality is brilliant and of course each skein is unique. I am going to ask Dad to buy that fab Arctic Lace book for my birthday and this fabulous yarn will become a lovely scarf either from the book or the 'Iceland' wrap from KnitLab.

What I'd love to do is design my own patterns, very geometric, like Cold Mountain and Iceland, but I know it can be frustrating. I think I'd like to design it first on squared paper then work out which stitches would work best. There are obvious 'rules' such as needing to have an increase stitch for every yarnover if you aren't reducing stitch numbers....and so forth.It never ceases to amaze me what can come out of such simple stitches.

5p.m: I have given Thomas his painkiller via a syringe (not with a needle though) into his mouth, and also used that very convenient method to make him drink some more water. The other two kitties are very wary of him; a) he smells weird - of the animal hospital - to me, so to them he must smell really odd - not like himself at all; b) he looks very scary with his collar contraption on! I'm going to have to get a bigger one at the vet's on Tuesday because when he tries to lick/pull at his bandage the edge of the collar is right next to and actually rubbing against the very area it is meant to stop him licking on the back of his front paw, and it has been bleeding again. I remember one of my childhood cats pulling her stitches out after she had just been spayed, despite a similar collar.