Life With Ladybug: Kitten crisis!

By Shannon Magsam, Ladybug’s mama

We’ve have a bit of a kitty crisis around here.

Right before I picked up Ladybug from school yesterday I said goodbye to the pets (and turned on the TV for them to stave off any loneliness my absence might cause. Sucker) and noticed the kitten’s right eye looked very odd. It was glowing fluorescent and its surface looked like a swamp in Louisiana. It was so filmy you could barely see her pupil.

By the time I got back from picking up Ladybug, Asia’s eye was blood red. Ladybug noticed it first, gasping when she got a good look. I called the vet and got an appointment within the hour (love Stanton Animal Hospital).

Visiting the vet was a miserable experience and I’m sure the kitten wasn’t very happy either. She got blood drawn to check for a few life-threatening diseases (negative, thank goodness), her temperature taken via a very unexpected place (in her opinion) and some pink medicine forced down her throat.

After paying the $126 bill (woo-hoo!), we were sent home with three medicines. One I have to administer three times a day to the affected eye, one is the aforementioned pink that to be forced down the kitten’s gullet twice a day and the third is once a day in the eye.

That last one is just absolutely awful. Dr. Smith warned us that Asia might “hypersalivate”. Well, that was understatement. Perhaps the phrase “She’ll foam at the mouth like Cujo” would have better prepared us. If the vet hadn’t told us about it we would have no doubt thought the kitten was dying, considering she flung the spittle from room to room in a futile attempt to runawayfromthespittle.

And I get to do it again tonight. And for the next five nights until we go back to the vet for a re-evaluation.

When Asia looks at you from just the wrong direction, she could be a cat from Pet Sematary (Stephen King book, made into a horrible movie). But I can see a slight improvement. Poor kitty cat.

I was really proud of Ladybug after we left the vet’s office and I tsk-ed over the bill. I have no idea why I said this out loud, but I said, “Well, that was your birthday party money.”

After it came out of my mouth, I regretted it. But then she said immediately, “That’s OK. I just want my cat to get better.”

Wow. That was a very mature response.

In other news, Ladybug had to have two LARGE hunks of hair cut out near the base of her scalp. She has so much long hair you can’t really tell, but there’s no putting it up in a ponytail for a while. It was just such a tangled snarl in there and there was nothing I could do. I’d tried all kinds of conditioner, tangle-free goop and intricate combing – to no avail. She is really tender-headed (as we Southerners say) and her screaming when I tried the combing strategy could probably have been heard in Benton County.

Speaking of Ladybug’s hair, John just emailed me this picture with the comment: “I don’t remember as many hair problems when it was shorter.”

 

Seeing this picture (she’s nine months old here) makes my heart hurt. She turns 8 next week. I guess maybe that explains the unexpected bouts of mature thinking.  Happy Birthday, little Ladybug! (Photo credit, Bedford’s)