Still doing ok

Icy is doing fine-she did not eat well yesterday but has no fever and her bloodwork looked good today so I tried her on appetite stimulants and she had 2 reasonable sized meals. We had to replace her IV in her other leg-I hope it is still working tomorrow. Hopefully we are well on the road to recovery!

In other news Zodiac is back to working a little obedience this week since agility was cancelled and he actually seems to be getting the scent articles now. I have been using 2 dumbells and he brought back the correct one consistently after checking both of them out. Yeah!

Icy is Home

I got Icy home this evening. You can see in the picture she still has her IV in case we need it (covered in pink) and her feeding tube in-although it has never been used, but just in case. It's the white thing coming out her side. You can see most of her incision in the photo but it does extend futher than you can see in both directions! She may look unhappy in the photo but she had just been let out of her carrier, flopped on the floor and started purring. She seems very comfortable on her pain meds and is not terribly excited to be confined to a dog crate!

Update

Thanks to all Icy's well-wishers. She is doing better today. She is out of the oxygen cage and has had her chest tube pulled. She is eating well and her bloodwork today looked good. If all continues to go ok I will be picking her up tomorrow afternoon!

Icy's Saga

We had a week of unusual cases and weird diagnoses at work that culminated with my own sweet Icy. Friday night she became suddenly very ill-we returned from a few errands to find her acting painful and breathing hard, very lethargic, not eating, etc. Saturday morning she was no better so I brought her to work with me. I started her on pain medications and antibiotics and took an x-ray. The film showed a large gas-filled stomach similar to a dog with bloat. I tried to pass a tube to relieve the pressure but was not able. We gave her some Barium ( a liquid that shows up on x-rays to show movement through the GI tract) to see if she was just swallowing air secondary to another source of pain or if the stomach was somehow obstructed. No barium moved out of the stomach in an hour so we decided this was a surgical problem and the girls rescheduled some of my Saturday AM appointments so we could do surgery. I was still unable to pass a tube even when she was under anesthesia so we proceeded with an exploratory surgery where I made the surprising diagnosis of a diaphragmatic hernia (a hole in the muscle between the abdomen and chest cavity) and that her stomach was trapped in her chest! This is not a problem we are able to handle so I closed the incision, quickly saw my last two appointments and drove her directly to the Vet School in Columbia ( a place that consumed most of my life between 2000 and 2004!). The surgeon on call was actually one of my classmates who had returned for a surgery residency and she did a great job. She was also unable to pass a tube and so in addition to her abdominal incision she had to make a small incision into her chest to decompress the stomach. They then put all the abdominal contents back where they belonged and repaired the hole in the diaphragm. Part of her stomach and spleen had to be removed as they were too damaged to save. She also had eaten a large piece of hay (from the rabbits) that was looking like it might not pass through the intestines so they took it out just to be safe.

Icy is still in the ICU and in the oxygen cage just to be on the safe side, has a chest tube for drainage, a feeding tube in case she does not eat well, and an IV for fluids and medications. She is stable but still not out of the woods, although we have passed the biggest hurdles already.

How this happened is still a mystery-usually these are a result of a trauma but Jill seemed to think it was pretty recent and not related to her previous accident. So how a house cat managed to get that kind of injury is unknown. Leave it to Icy!

Berries

Last year I had a tremendous crop of blackberries. This year looked like it would be another great crop as well-but then we got beetles. First it was just little beetles and they died when I sprayed with Sevin. But before we left for vacation we started getting big ugly beetles that congregate on the berries and suck the juice out. I sprayed but it didn't work-they are totally infested with big beetles and little beetles and then they invited the flies. So we switched to Ortho Max Bug-B-Gone and that seems to be helping. I will check them again tomorrow in the daylight. Hopefully I will be able to salvage some of the crop although they definitely won't pass for "organic" at this point! My carrots are still growing but since carrots grow underground I don't have any idea of when they are done. Guess I'll dig one up occasionally.



Here is another random vacation picture.

Back to work

It was great to be off yesterday to have some time to recover from our trip but today was back to work again for me (I did work monday-barely) and also for Legend who headed back to agility class this after a few weeks off. She did great-especially for not doing any agility since sometime before our trip. I was quite pleased with her. I really need to get Zodiac back into training for Utility if I have any chance of showing him in October.

These pictures are of Oreo playing ball at the cabin last week.

Vacation

We arrived back home late Sunday night. We had a good time on our trip and could easily have filled another week with stuff to do. I have posted some of our favorite pictures from the trip.

This photo is of Rainbow Falls which is I think the tallest waterfall in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's about a 5.5 mile round trip to see it, which got kind of long going up but it was worth it when we got there. Tennessee is having a drought so I'm sure it's even better after a good rain.
This is a picture someone took for us at a scenic overlook on our way to our white water rafting trip. However since there is low water right now the rafting was not very exciting. We spend a lot of time pushing the raft off the rocks instead of flying down the rapids. Our guide had to get out and drag the boat several times. We did a discount though.
There is only one trail you can take dogs on in the park and here is Oreo off the side of trail hanging out at the river. It was a nice flat, scenic trail so we got to take our time and make several stops along the river. He seemed to enjoy it and we were able to get back to the car before he got too hot and tired.
This is a deer right along the side of the road at Cades Cove-one of the most scenic areas of the park.
Here is a fawn we saw with it's mother along the road but I can't remember where.
This is probably our favorite picture. It was taken at a smaller waterfall we passed on our way to Rainbow Falls.

Here are Oreo and I along the doggie trail.
These last three are all along the Cades Cove area-I said it was very scenic didn't I!



I'll probably be posting more photos over the next few weeks-we have a ton!

The Cats Part 5: Icy

In January 2007 a terrible ice storm hit the Springfield area. The clinic I work at spent 11 days without power. Towards the end of the first week someone showed up with a cat they had found-they reported she had not ate, drank, or moved since they picked her up the day before. They had no money to take care of her and if we didn't take her they said they would just put her back where whey found her. We couldn't let her be put back in the cold to suffer and die so we decided even if we had to put her to sleep we would take her. Since the week had been so miserable already the staff asked if we could please try to help her instead of put her down-I agreed we would try to save her. It didn't hurt that she looked oddly similar to Squall but with long hair. The stray cat had a broken jaw, broken teeth, missing teeth and something clearly wrong with her pelvis but since we could not take an x-ray we didn't know how bad it was. She also had fleas and intestinal parasites and was dehydrated. So we started with what needed to be done first. We put her under anesthesia and since the afternoon light was fading I wired her jaw back together by flashlight. We started her on pain medication and antibiotics, treated her for parasites and gave her some fluids. "Broken Kitty" started purring over the next few days as we carried her around in litter box we had made into a bed. Even though she found it very hard to walk she only failed to drag herself in and out of her actual litter box one time!

When the power came back on we found that her pelvis was fractured in 3 places but in such a way that didn't need surgery-just rest. So for 4 weeks the broken kitty-now "Icy" lived confined in our bathroom. Every time we went in to check on her you could hear her start to purr and she would hobble over and sit in my lap. It didn't take long to get attached to her but she was very afraid of dogs. We worried that she would not fit in here but in time she learned not to be afraid-of anything!

Icy made a full recovery and even had her broken tooth root canaled! She goes everywhere she wants in the house-including places we would rather she not go and places Jelly has never dreamed of going. She gets into a lot of stuff she shouldn't and has broken a few things. She is not afraid of the dogs or the vacuum or anything else, even if she should be. She does not appear to be a particularly smart cat (she sleeps on the edge of everything, has fallen off several pieces of furniture trying to do stuff she shouldn't, and will fall asleep sitting up) but makes up for it with sweetness (she's very loveable and cuddly) and cuteness. We just blame her "specialness" on her head trauma!

Icy loves to pose for pictures, get in the way when we are doing stuff, harass Jelly, and snuggle. She likes everybody but is mostly "my" cat. We never let her outside-she has survived so much already. She and Jelly are our house cat princesses.

We don't know if she was separated from her family during the ice storm or if she had already been a stray cat but no one ever came looking for her. I probably would not have given her back anyway!

The Cats Part 4: Pumpkin and Squall

These cats are no longer with us but have a story anyway...

Pumpkin

A few years ago we noticed a large orange and white cat that kept appearing on our deck outside the bedroom. He would run off if you approached or opened the door but kept coming back several days a week. I asked Jerry what we should call him since "orange and white cat" seemed a little long. He said we should call him Pumpkin because it would be October before I caught him. October came and nearly went and the cat hadn't been caught. I went out to feed the horses on Halloween night and there was the cat-in the barn. Surprisingly he let me approach and pet him and so I scooped him up, locked him in a cage and neutered him the next day. Once he allowed us to catch and pet him that first night he was a very sweet and docile cat. However he wasn't meant to be our cat. Shortly after I got all his vaccinations boostered he began wandering off. A few times we picked him out of someones yard and brought him home but he wouldn't stay. I guess he just found a place he liked better. Every once in awhile I still see him wandering the neighborhood. I don't know where he lives but I hope they appreciate the free neutered cat!




Squall


A few summers ago Squall was left at the clinic as a tiny kitten weighing 1.3 pounds. The tiny screaming kitten was pretty hard to ignore and I thought a new barn kitten might be fun-I'd never had a tiny kitten of my own before. All the other cats were older kittens or young adults when we got them. So she came home to live with Barney and Lefty. We were very careful to keep her locked in a cage in the barn and started letting her out gradually over the course of a few months so that she would get used to staying in the yard and not be scared off.





Squall was very entertaining-she helped with all the chores and especially loved gardening-she liked to chase the weeks we pulled up and threw out in the yard! She was also an excellent bug hunter. She was very sweet and social-she'd let me carry her around anywhere and would come running (always meowing) at the sound of the back door opening and she would always lay in the windowsills and look in whatever room we were inside of if we were in the house. Sometimes she would also climb the screens.





One evening in the fall we came home from dinner and did not see her. The next morning she did not come running when the back door opened. A short search ended with me finding her little body across the street-clearly hit by a car. She was just barely 6 months old. We buried her in the middle of the yard between the house and barn so she could still see everything that goes on. Squall's death left our yard quiet and our windowsills empty. We were very sad but it left a place in out house for a kitty that very much needed some help...

The Cats Part 3: Barney

Barney was picked up by a co-worker at a gas station where he had been seen multiple times eating out of a dumpster. He jumped right into her car when she called him and went right on home with her. She called him "barn kitty" and although she was quite fond of him had to find a new place for him to live due to personal circumstances. I agreed to try out "barn kitty" as another barn cat at our house and so he became Barney the barn cat!

Barney is a lazy cat. He loves to sleep and eat and will run into the house and find a comfortable place to spend the night if you let him. He is a very curious and social cat-always hanging out wherever people are outside and watching any activity that goes on. He walks under the horse during shoeing, gets on the hay during unloading, and wanders around and on the agility equipment during training. Barney is also very sweet and not shy at all. He's pretty easy to deal with unless he's getting any kind of injection-he does not like needles! And at 15 pounds (he's now dieting!) he can be pretty scary if he wants to be.

Barney is very territorial. He does not allow any other cats in our yard and will spend all night waiting up to make sure he keeps them run off if needs too. He has been injured in more than one fight but lately seems to be winning them all or else just scaring them off with a growl. He and Lefty are the best of friends however, and he never bothers the house cats when he comes inside.

Although Barney rarely hunts anything besides cat food we did come home once and find him lying in the barn next to a freshly killed adult rabbit. Since it is doubtful that a rabbit just wandered into the barn to die and Lefty was nowhere to be seen we had no choice but to assume that Barney had caught and killed this rabbit!

Barney rarely leaves the yard and is a very handsome addition to our outdoor zoo- and sometimes our indoor zoo too.