A quick update. Piccolo still has occasional, visible abdominal spasms, and his former formidable appetite is gone…but he clearly is ecstatic to be home and well on the way to a full recovery. How do I know this for sure? Well, this morning I found one of Piccolo’s toy balls on our bed (he must have dumped it there during the night)… 🙂

To our utter surprise, he has turned out to be THE purrfect patient. He licks his medicine right off the tip of my finger. No kidding. No running away and hiding under beds or behind boxes in the attic. No need for us to search the house inch by inch to find his hiding place. No need to stalk, grab and hold him down (=all of this is more or less what we have to do with Puzzola, our eldest kitty). None of that. Piccolo is making my nursing duties so MUCH easier …

And now for an amusing story (I think so, anyway). On Monday afternoon, as I was waiting for Piccolo to have his ultrasound, I heard a cat screaming bloody murder in one of the examination rooms. Oh, you have no idea…and this terrific meowing/screaming ruckus went on and on and on. I finally asked the secretary what was happening to that cat. Her answer: “Oh, he is having an ultrasound.”

An ultrasound…er, I see…

I retreated to my seat. Images of me sneaking Piccolo out of the clinic began flashing through my mind. But my sensible side took over, “forget it, Piccolo will be fine, this won’t hurt him a bit”… And, in fact, Piccolo was extremely brave. He didn’t even meow, let alone scream. He tried to get up a couple of times, but that was it. 

As “luck” had it, Mr. Scream-My-Head-Off, a gorgeous five-year-old kitty named Ciccio, occupied the cage next to Piccolo’s. A sign that read “MORDE” (= “HE BITES” in Italian) hung ominously on his cage door. I felt really sorry for Ciccio, who had one of those horrible Elizabethan collars circling his little neck. He looked totally miserable and growled almost constantly, which was very unsettling for Piccolo, as you can imagine. Early in our acquaintance, I tried cooing reassuringly to Ciccio, but that only seemed to make him angrier. I can hardly blame him. I would probably growl, too, if I were stuck inside a cage with a plastic torture device around my neck, AND a complete stranger making weird noises were looking in at me…

Anyway, on Tuesday morning I met Ciccio’s “owner,” a very nice, classy Florentine lady. We fell into conversation almost immediately, since we were the only visitors there. She told me that, like Piccolo, Ciccio also had acute pancreatitis.

“Ciccio is the sweetest, most darling little thing,” she beamed, snatching her hand away just as Ciccio reached out to scratch her. (No, I swear, I am not making this up…) “Yes, he is a really gorgeous cat,” I commented cautiously…

Anyway, I am happy to report that Ciccio had a loving (and rather oblivious) human family that visited him as much as we visited our Piccolo.

This morning I had to go back to the clinic to pick up Piccolo’s papers. I asked about Ciccio. The visibly relieved secretary informed me that he had gone home, too. She added that sweet darling little Ciccio had scratched the classy lady’s arms to smithereens right before they left the clinic…

I went to visit Piccolo (see previous post) yesterday morning. In the beginning, he was unresponsive. I cooed to him but he remained motionless in a corner of his stainless steel cage, staring into space, without seeming to recognize my voice. A scary moment for me, but luckily I remembered that his painkillers (administered via an IV line) must be making him a bit dopey. In fact, after I had been calling his name for about 30 seconds (it seemed like forever…), he looked straight at me and meowed the following, which I will translate for you: “hey, where the heck have YOU been??? Take me home, I don’t like this place!” Then he got up and made his way slowly to the front of the cage so I could reach him. I opened the cage door and gave him a good scratch. The nurse had asked me to try to get him to eat or drink…I tried and failed. Since Piccolo is always the first cat to appear at mealtimes, this was the most upsetting part of the morning visit.

Okay, let me shorten the story. I realize that not all my blog readers will understand how Stefano and I feel about Piccolo…only those who really love cats/pets will. What can I say? Our cats mean the world to us…and Piccolo’s illness has been very scary and upsetting, in part because everything happened so swiftly, but mostly because we came very close to losing the cat who still fills our bed with toy balls during the night, hoping that we will wake up to play with him…the cat who talks to me when I get home from work…the cat who scolds me whenever I return home late after playing cards with my girlfriends, then throws himself on the carpet so that I can scratch his tummy…the cat that bumps his forehead to mine to let me know that he loves me, too…our exceptional cat.

Oh sorry, I got carried away. Okay…well, basically, let’s say that I wasn’t very happy after my morning visit with Piccolo…apart from refusing to eat, he didn’t purr at all for me, whereas normally he is the biggest purr-box in the universe.

In mid afternoon, I managed to speak with the vet that had first visited him, day before yesterday. She told me that Piccolo’s condition was “stable,” but that they had waited long enough for him to begin eating on his own. They would have to begin force-feeding him (=giving him food inside a needle-less syringe) that afternoon. My presence was not required…she assured me that they would be very gentle.

When Stefano and I arrived at the clinic a few hours later, the vet informed us that Piccolo had swallowed the food from the syringe and had NOT thrown up. That was a very good sign, she added. She told us that we should learn how to feed him with the syringe because his fever was gone and his vital signs were so good that he could probably come home with us on Thursday. Another vet showed us what to do, but Piccolo stubbornly refused to open his mouth.

After the vet had left us alone with Piccolo, I had an idea. I put some of the mushy food on the tip of my finger and offered it to him. He licked my finger clean. Triumph! After a few minutes of finger-licking, Stefano tried putting the bowl in front of Piccolo. Our boy stuck his head inside and ate hungrily….on his own. I skipped off happily to tell the vets. Yaaay!!!

Well, as a result, it looks as though Piccolo will be coming home with us this evening, not tomorrow. The vets wanted to keep him one more night (cats in his condition must be kept under observation at least 48 hours), but they also know that he will recuperate MUCH more quickly at home with us. We will have to keep him on a special diet AND give him antibiotics for ten days plus another liver-protective pill for about one month. Easy peasy.

So this is very good news. Oh, I forgot. After eating yesterday evening, he lay down and, in response to our caresses and reassuring voices, began purring and kneading the newspaper that covers the floor of his cage. That’s my boy!!! 🙂

Update of the update: Piccolo was doing so well that the vet sent him home with us this morning. He is now fast asleep in a comfy chair downstairs, where I will join him after lunch. All is well in the feline household again…

In my May 26th post, I mentioned that my kitten, Pinga, had a sore throat and needed antibiotics…our vet taught me how to give her a shot, since she wouldn’t take her antibiotic in pill form (yes, I have seen all those “how to give your cat a pill” supposed-to-be-funny stuff, even though some of it is NOT funny at all but very anti-cat…). Giving shots is really fast and easy, even though I can’t do it by myself…I still need someone else to hold Pinga, as small as she is…

Now for the “pouring” part of today’s post title…Well, I actually have two stories. Let’s start with the not-so-bad one.

Puzzola, our eldest cat (9 years old), has a urinary tract infection…so she needs shots of antibiotics, too. How did we find out, you ask? Simple, she peed on our cotto floor. Luckily, I managed to draw up (into a syringe) a teeny tiny sample, which I took to my vet’s office last week. The sample contained enough blood for the diagnosis: cystitis. Treatment: antibiotics.

Puzzola is not as easy to fool as Pinga, though. I expected trouble from her, and trouble has in fact been the name of the game!!! She is a big strong girl with a stubborn streak when it comes to medical procedures (kind of reminds me of someone else… 😉 ). Anyway, we took her by surprise with the first shot, but now Stefano has to stalk her, grab her and hold her down while I rush in with the syringe…yes, it’s a real pain. But it’s A LOT easier than trying to get her to take a pill…sigh, you have no idea…

But this is nothing compared to what happened over the weekend. On Saturday, Stefano and I took Piccolo to the vet for a routine check-up. The vet found nothing terribly wrong with him…she told us that he is a bit overweight, but his kidneys are fine (he is 7 years old; male cats tend to develop kidney problems as they get older…so this was a big relief for us). He needs to go on a diet, she said. Fine, we replied.

But that very same evening we noticed that he had teeny tiny spasms in his gut area…and he threw up a couple of times. By Sunday morning he was much worse. He spent all day on a chair…he stopped eating and drinking. We knew it was serious, but since it was Sunday, all we could do was worry and sit with him…and wait.

I was at the vet’s office before opening hours yesterday morning. As soon as she arrived, I told her about Piccolo, and she said that he probably needed an ultrasound, that he might have swallowed something that was causing these symptoms. She sent me to a bigger clinic (=that has an ultrasound technician) on the opposite side of town. I rushed Piccolo over there…

To make a long story short, he has a case of acute pancreatitis that has inflamed his stomach and liver. The vets think we caught it in time, but his recovery will be slow. No question about that. But get this: the only way this particular condition can be diagnosed is with an ultrasound.

Nothing peculiar, except for a slight elevation in his white cell count, showed up in his blood tests. Nothing in his urine tests and X-ray. Yes, he had a fever, but the vet at the clinic thought he had some sort of infection, nothing serious.

She asked me if I still wanted Piccolo to have the ultrasound, and I said “oh yes, absolutely.” Thank goodness I always follow my gut instincts. Otherwise, we might have lost him (no, I am not kidding)…She would almost certainly have sent him home, you see, and he probably would only have gotten worse, in spite of the antibiotics that she undoubtedly would have prescribed for him. So we were “lucky” in our misfortune, as the saying goes (I think)…

That ultrasound saved his life.

Anyway, he spent the night at the clinic where he is receiving fluids and antibiotics and painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs. He may have to stay there for a few more days…as you can imagine, I left the clinic in tears, with an empty cat carrier…but I am stronger now…and determined that he is going to be okay. I must be positive!

I didn’t go to work this morning. In about a half hour I am going to visit Piccolo and speak with the vets again, and Stefano will meet me at the clinic this evening (unless Piccolo is well enough to come home with me, fingers crossed…). Our house is turning into a small hospital…just in time for my parents to arrive from the U.S. (next week!). Oh well…

The important thing is that Piccolo, our boy, is going to be okay. Nothing else matters…nothing at all…