I called her tonight just to rant about three weeks of cleaning up cat and dog pee; of scooping up the odd nugget-size turd; and of washing diarrhea off the cat's ass.
The cat, he has an excuse. Poor baby has been sick as a dog, even though the dog is not sick. He had pneumonia and nearly died. He had runny eyes and a runny nose and he could barely breathe, his chest was so full of phlegm. For two weeks, Dodge laid on the floor (or in the bathtub), not moving. He didn't eat or drink. Sometimes he tried to drink, then wound up resting his head in the bowl of water. Always a clean cat, suddenly he just peed on the floor, where he was laying, and stayed laying in it.
The vet gave him three needles right off the bat and then six pills to be administered twice a day. Have you ever tried to give a cat a pill?
So it's been a horrible time, fighting with pills, cleaning up messes, washing the cat and hoping Dodge would pull through another day. He's only a few years old, he's had all his shots and he's an inside cat – this sickness has been plain weird. Our other cat, Ben, got a cold from out of nowhere and then recovered a few days later. Then Dodge started sneezing and everything went downhill.
The cat peeing on the floor, I understand.
But the dog? Our six-year-old dog who has been housetrained since forever? Suddenly she is using the floor as her own personal toilet. We're having a particularly nasty bug season (black flies and mosquitoes) and Dave thinks Misty doesn't like going outside in the bugs. I think she sees and smells the cat pee and thinks, hey, if that stoopid cat can pee on the floor, so can I.
The good news is, Dodge is feeling TONS better. He's still skinny as a rail but he's moving around, using the litter box, eating and drinking and behaving more like his adorable, happy self.
Dave and I are exhausted, however, from cleaning up after the animals' messy selves. Tonight we thought we had everything spic and span. I was cooling my jets on the couch watching mindless TV when I realized I could still smell pee.
Right then and there we moved all the furniture out of the living room and mopped the floors. Then we decided to try rearranging the furniture. So we moved couches here and there, and pictures there and here, and the heavy entertainment centre here and there and here and back... you get the picture. Remember the Flintstones' episode where Wilma had Fred move the stone couch all over the house? Only to have him put it right back where it started?
Yup. That's what we did. All that huffing and puffing and we put everything back the way we found it.
And so far, everything is good on the smell front.
Our house smells like the Lysol gods shat on it.
If I see one drop of urine, one eensy teensy tiny droplet of pee on the floor tomorrow morning when I wake up, all the animals are getting it.
And I'm not talking about Pampers.
No matter how sick a cat is they can always find one small dreg of energy left to fight "the pill". Our vet told us to put the cat on top of the freezer or the dryer..somewhere where the surface was slick and slippery....the cat would be unable to get a toe hold and the process would go a little smoother. It did help a bit.
ReplyDeletePoor Dodge! I'm glad he's better (and your furniture is back in place - poor Dave) ;)
ReplyDeleteI've tried the cat and pill combo before... O.o
You think it's maybe Misty's natural instinct to cover the smell of another animals urine with her own? Otherwise I agree with you, she figures the rules have changed, screw it. Hope the whole crew is getting back to normal.
ReplyDeleteI feels your pain Cathy... My cat got sick and I had to give it some pills... 10 of them... it was a battle every GD time. I tried to hide it in treats... in tuna, tried to mash it up into water and use a syringe... but once that coating came off the pill, which is always did and the cat could taste it, it was battle-fest, trying to push it down their throat, in that tiny mouth, past all those sharp angry teeth with the head snaps and teeth jabbing into your fingers. Ugh... I've never seen a cat drool so much in my life... might as well of had rabies it was out of control. However, got through it.. and now it's better. So much easier with dogs... "Hey doggy want a treat?" NOM NOM NOM! Done!
ReplyDeleteI've been such a bad blog friend. I'm so sorry. Life and summer has nudged my love of blog reading to the side. I love your new header! It's so original and fun.
ReplyDeleteI can totally empathize with your furry problems. I'm glad your kitty is feeling better. But cat pee, ugh, it's just the worst. In my old house, right after we moved in, I kept smelling cat pee. We didn't have a cat, so I knew it must have been something that the previous owners gifted us with. The smell was really strong in our living room, but I couldn't locate it. I would douse the carpet with carpet fresh constantly. It wasn't until we pulled out the carpets to put in wood floors, did we realize that there was cat pee in the corner that had saturated through the carpet and into the concrete. We found out later those people had had 5 cats.
One of my big puppies tore her ligament in her back leg. We just discovered this last week. The vet wants to do pins and surgery. But after much research, I've decided to give rest therapy a chance. So for the next 8 weeks, she can only go outside on a leash to go to the bathroom and come back. No playing. No running. Just rest. It's been tough for such an active baby, especially since her sister, her partner in crime hates going outside without her sister. But the option is surgery and 12 weeks of staying immobile. It's so tough, especially since they don't understand.
I hope your animal issues correct themselves soon. These furry little ones, they have our heart, don't they?
Glad to hear that Dodge is feeling better :-)
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