In the early hours of Sunday morning, I had to bring my little black and white cat Pepper to the emergency clinic.
Let me back up a bit: I woke up to the smell of dark grey liquid-like foul odor of feline diarrhea. As I opened my eyes and sat up in the early grey morning, I looked around on the floor and found smears of the awful excrement everywhere. Jumping out of bed and tip-toeing over the splotches, I ran downstairs and found my other cat Binx laying on the floor just outside the laundry room. I gently lifted his tail and took a tentative sniff, half expecting to have my nostrils filled with the odor. Nothing. Surprised, I went back upstairs with paper towels and cleaning solution in hand to clean up the mess. As I cleaned up the mess, I found my little girl laying on the floor just a few feet from my bed. She was panting slightly, hardly moving at all, and her backside covered in hardened mats of poo.
Gently, I picked her up and brought her downstairs into the kitchen. I laid her on a towel on top of the table and started cleaning her up. Normally, she would protest and try to escape every which way she could. However, she simply let me wipe her bottom without even the slightest mew. I turned to my mom, who was watching everything from behind, and we both decided to bring her to the closest emergency clinic.
A little less than an hour later, we arrived to a clinic filled with people waiting for their animals to be seen. We probably waited for at least two hours, talking with other pet parents about our fur-babies’ ailments, including a very friendly 7 month old German Shepherd pup who was highly interested in making friends with Pepper.
At last, it was our turn. I watched carefully and with apprehension as the vet tech took Pepper’s temperature, weighed her, then took diligent notes of every symptom we witnessed. Then, the vet came in and talked with us about various tests that could be done to try and narrow down the problem, including x-rays and blood-work. Once we came up with a game plan, the vet tech came back in and took Pepper out of the examination room. We waited for what seemed like an eternity. The vet tech came back with a disgruntled Pepper, telling us she behaved well, yet was more than eager to come back to her human mommy.
After waiting for another 20 minutes, the test results came back. No failing organs, no stray chemicals within her body, yet her white-cell count was way higher than it should be. This meant she was either fighting a virus, a bacterial issue, or something along the lines of Pancreatitis. After some more discussions, we decided to take the route of antibiotics and bring Pepper back home for some much needed R&R.
I stayed up for almost half the night watching over her. She had decided it would be much better laying/sleeping in the litter box in my room, probably so she wouldn’t create any more messes. Then, right around 11:30ish, she had her first solid bowel movement, instantly gained some of her pep back, then jumped onto the bed and snuggled with me for the rest of the night. I didn’t care that she still smelled like a septic tank long overdue for a cleaning.
Earlier this morning, I am happy to announce her appetite came back in a voracious volume. She still has to take her medicine – which she absolutely hates, by the way, and spends as much energy as she can to try and spit it all back out.
During all this emotionally draining experience, I couldn’t help but to think: Is this what it’s like to be a parent?
L.J. LaBree 