I May Never Be a Lap Cat

I love this poem. I repost it in hopes that those reading it might reach out to a cat in need of help.

I may never be a lap cat,

Or one who comes when called.

I may resist the hand that tries to touch

And some may think I’m flawed.

I may prefer my freedom,

To your warm and cozy house.

I may reject her bowl of food, 

And settle for a mouse.

But the box you put out for me,

Feels safe and warm and dry.

And I raised my eyes to thank you,

As you go walking by.

I eat the food you give me.

I listen for your voice. 

I may never be a lap cat,

But you offer me the choice.

One day, I’ll see the winter.

One day, I’ll see the rain

I may grow old, not knowing

That there is freedom from this pain.

But I know you tried to help me.

And although my days will end.

I may never be your cat, 

But I know you were my friend.

~ Unknown ~

A Little Bit of the Old Kota

For a tiny glimmer of a moment, Kota has returned to me. I’m not sure what brought on this sudden burst of energy, but we embraced it.

He had been laying down most of the morning. Uninterested in food, didn’t want to go outside; doing a lot of heavy panting, and showing multiple signs of discomfort.

I’m letting him call the shots now. Not asking him to do anything that he’s not willing or able to do. Rising from my chair to go in the kitchen to get a glass of water, as I passed by him, he woke up and grabbed his tug-toy. He ran by me and went to the back door.

I followed him. We went outside and briefly we had our time together. It was only two tosses in the air, and one strong tug from him and it was game on. Alas, it was over in an instant. 

It seemed to dawn on him that things are now different. He dropped to the ground, settling his stomach on the coolness of the grass. He did a few back scratches however, when he did his belly roll. Things were different instead of bringing him joy, it brought him to pain.

We called it good and went back inside,  I’m hoping that next time this happens, it will be a longer period to enjoy together without it ending in pain.

Kota: Time Will Tell

Since Kota’s “agitated liver” diagnosis has been made, he’s returned to his liver support pills. His belly, due to the malfunction of his liver, has really been bothering him. He used to wake me up two or three times at night to go potty. Now, it’s increased between seven to ten times. He will not go potty but what he does is lay in the grass. When he lays in the grass, he will stretch his front legs completely out as far as you can, and his head will settle between his legs. His back legs will be stretched out all the way behind him with his paws exposed. He is trying to reach the fire in his belly and put it out.

What you see in the picture below is he is laying on what they call a Summer Ice Pad for dogs. The purpose of this pad is to keep the dog’s body cool in the summer-time.

For him, he will not get off of it even in the coolest of weather. Speaking of cool, the cats think this is the neatest thing they’ve ever seen. Flash will pull it off of the dog bed, then dive underneath it. And she will wait, baiting the others until they come along and attack her.

At this point, Kota comes over to me. I can just see it in his eyes: he’s asking me, “Mom! Help me!” Then I go over and break up their game of hide and seek, restore order, and put the pad back on top of the dog bed. It’s a game we play daily. More than once or twice a day. Honestly, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve had to break up this game of hide and seek.

The pad brings him such great relief. Having it here has also cut down the number of times where he interrupts my sleep so he can go outside and sleep in the wet grass.

He is showing intense signs of nausea: yawning, lip-licking, blanket licking. He will be sleeping, and suddenly he will whip his head around and look directly down at his stomach and then just start licking his tummy. So now I have him on Prilosec.

I have been doing a lot of self-reflective thought, along with filling my days up with prayer. I have reached a decision, one that was extremely difficult to make. If his levels do not decrease or if they increase, instead of going ahead with a very invasive biopsy, I will instead just let go and let God take care of him. I will allow Kota to be a dog, until he decides he doesn’t want to be a dog any longer. That’s when I will take him in and spend the last moments of his life with him before they let him go.

Even if I had the money for this very invasive surgery, I wouldn’t put him through that. The recovery time is hard. There’s a chance he could die on the table. There’s a chance that all kinds of things could go wrong. It’s not a chance I want to take.

Don’t get me wrong: I love this dog more than life. Half of my heart broke when Michael left. When Kota leaves, the other half of my heart will go with him.

I am at peace with my decision. I am praying that his levels will go down and normalize. But if they are still elevated within three months, I may even just take him off the medication. It’s getting increasingly harder to recognize him based on his behavior since this diagnosis. I hardly recognize him anymore. I am having to learn what his new “tells” are: how he shows me he’s in pain, how he displays his need to go outside and go potty. All of it has changed.

When people come to visit, he no longer runs to the door to greet them. I find him during the day, just staring blankly at the wall or the door. If I stand behind him and clap, my hands, he will not respond. If I stand in front of him, he will not break the stare. Even the presence of his tennis ball will not stop his trance-like state. I just have to wait it out. Time will tell.

And the Results Are...

...Inconclusive.

I just got off the phone with the vet. He’s looking at the radiologist’s notes. Kota could have a lymphoma forming in his what they are calling “agitated liver”; however, it is not full-blown yet, so that was the first thing they noted.

Also,

•  He has gallbladder debris.

•  He has a mass on his left kidney but, by the size of it, they suspect it is benign.

•  He could have Chronic Hepatitis 

•  He could have Copper Toxosis

•  He could have Leperodosis 

He has a mass on his spleen. This we already knew about and, according to the vet, it hasn’t changed in size since the last time we saw it, which was when he was about eight months old; he’s eight years old now, so it was a good thing I decided to keep his spleen intact. 

They are recommending a hepatic and a liver biopsy.

I talked at great length with my vet, and we’ve decided to put him back on the liver support medicine as well as the Cerenia. He also wants to start him on Ursodiol to help smooth out the gallbladder sludge.

Kota will stay on these medications for three months. If something drastic changes with his behavior or his health, I am to notify the vet immediately and get him in ASAP. I have all of the warning signs for all of these various diseases on my kitchen wall now.

Because of the Copper Toxicity, I am immediately taking him off of his dry kibble because it has copper sulfate and copper protonate in it. I found out that even the limited ingredient dry foods for dogs has copper in it.

I was directed to a website called BalanceIt. There I can find a supplemental powder that I can add to what I’m already feeding him, minus the kibble, that will give him all the vitamins and supplements that he’s not getting now because I’m feeding him rice and meat, and a few vegetables. Everything is boiled, and all the juices from the boiled meat are being discarded so that his liver doesn’t have to deal with any extra fat or any other type of substance that it can’t break down right now. 

So do we have a definitive answer? No. But we don’t have an indication that he has cancer, so that’s a good thing. He is showing some strange behavior. Usually, he wakes me up in the night for two or three times to go potty. Now, it’s seven or eight times, and instead of going potty, he’ll go and lie in the cool grass. My vet explained that his belly is feeling pretty inflamed right now because the liver is not doing its job. So he’s seeking a cool spot where he can lie down and not hurt.

Knowing this now, I’m going to make him a cool pad to lay on in the bedroom. Hopefully that will stop all these frequent trips and interrupted sleep for him and me. We are taking it a day, and a time that’s all we can do at this point.

Yesterday's Vet Visit

Yesterday was a pretty rough day for my boy, Kota. Who am I kidding? It was a rough day for both of us. We left the house at 7:30 a.m. and headed to the vet. I had to have him there by 9 AM. My friend was kind enough to drop us off at a park nearby before she had to report for work.

We were about five blocks away from the vets office. So we had some time to spend in this beautiful park near the water - no one around to bother us - until we finally headed to the vet. 

I wanted the time just to be with him before he went in for his ultrasound. I also wanted to work off any nervous energy he may have displayed at the vet’s office. We arrived right before nine o’clock. The walk was good for both of us.

Knowing how much he suffers from separation anxiety from me. I brought with me a tee-shirt that I have been wearing for the last four days. Heavily saturated with sweat thanks to having a tree (one of my heritage trees, that is about 350 years old) trimmed of the dead-fall limbs before winter sets in.   

                                           The wood-pile in the background,

                                          with cat Poe in the middle distance 

Cleaning up the debris took several days. It was a lot of work, but I welcomed it because it meant that my scent would be stronger on the shirt. I put this shirt in a  plastic bag every night and then put it back on in the morning. They kept that shirt with him during the entire time except for the actual procedure. 

They told me ahead of time that they would have to sedate him, because they have to turn him on his back and on his side, push really hard in order to explore his liver, pancreas, colon, gallbladder, and common bile ducts. Of course they also had to shave him.

We arrived back home about two o’clock and he barely moved afterward. He didn’t even wanted to eat anything, not even his treats. He whined for about two hours straight after we got home. I ended up just curling up with him on his couch to comfort him and let him know that the bad part is over. 

At least that’s my hope. I won’t find out the results until tomorrow. The outside company that comes to do these scans sends the results back east to the radiologist team. They in turn send the vet the results. He assured me he will call me as soon as he knows something.

If there’s something wrong with his liver, the texture of it, the walls of it, f he has a mass, he will return to have a biopsy. So now it’s just a waiting game. 

I know I’ve mentioned this before in previous posts, but I am so grateful that he decided to snack on those raisins. If it wasn’t for that incident, we would have no idea that he was sick. 

He’s just such a different dog now I hardly recognize him. He is reluctant to get up and get going in the morning. He doesn’t follow me around the house. If I go outside, he’s not waiting at the door when I come back in. There is something majorly wrong with him. Within 24 hours, I hope to have the answer as to what it is. Whatever it is God, please let it be curable.

One Week to Go

We are still one week away from our vet visit and what will hopefully be the last blood draw for Kota.

His encounter with the raisins, although traumatic for him had no lasting effects on him, thank God. I’m sure it wore him out though because he is definitely laying around a lot more than he used to. I hope he doesn’t think I want him to be a couch potato. Once I get over all this swelling and bruising. I fully intend to start taking them up the mountain and going for walks.

That’s my intention; however, we still don’t know how his liver is doing. I guess I should be grateful that he decided to sample raisins that day, because it pointed us to the fact that something might be wrong with his liver.

I am hoping not. I am hoping that his trip to the emergency room vet, being handled by people he didn’t know, without me in attendance, just managed to raise his cortisol level and elevate his liver values.

If not, we will know on the 17th, if his levels are still elevated or are even higher than they are right now. The plan is to do an ultrasound on him. If they see a mass, the first thing they will do is a biopsy. Then, we just wait for the results and go from there.

He gets his liver support pill every morning. It’s getting to be quite the challenge to get him to take this gigantic pill. It’s supposed to be chewable, but apparently he doesn’t even like the smell of it so I have to bury it in liver sausage. Not very much because he’s supposed to have an empty stomach when he takes this pill.

Hoping we can hit the trails again soon!

Raisin the Woof

UPDATE: read below.

Who knew? There are three human foods that when a pet eats them they can potentially cause great harm or even kill your pet without instant intervention?

These foods are chocolate (especially dark chocolate), grapes and raisins. Personally, I knew these foods were toxic to animals. It’s pretty common knowledge among true pet lovers that these foods are to be avoided. However, until Saturday, August 22nd, when for some reason, Kota pawed a box of raisins off my kitchen counter and ate some, I did not truly know how toxic raisins could be.

Thankfully, I caught him at the beginning of the act. I hustled him outside, threw the raisins and the box in the trash, grabbed up my cell phone, found the Pet Poison Hotline, and dialed. By the way,  even though this is an emergency hotline, you don’t get to talk to a human until you agree to pay $89 to speak to a specialist and pay with your credit card. I had to go through about a 10-minute process to get all that done before I spoke to a human. The cost is one time. You can call them repeatedly after that for any questions you might have or to get additional guidance.

While I was sorting all this out. My mind was racing. What did I have on hand to induce vomiting? Doing a mental check: activated charcoal? Nope! Unopened box of baking soda? Nope! Hydrogen peroxide? Bingo! Grabbing a large feeding syringe, a small bowl, a set of measuring spoons, and a 3% bottle of hydrogen peroxide, I joined Kota in the backyard.

Finally connected to a calm, controlled voice belonging to Brianna. She instructed me that I needed to give Kota 17 teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide. Their formula is one teaspoon per five pounds of weight.

He must’ve been feeling pretty punky at that moment, because he put up with me syringing this harsh chemical into his mouth. I was told to put it gently between his gums. He didn’t like that program. Clenching his teeth, I ended up having to carefully shoot the solution through his teeth and down his throat. I stepped back, and here it came. He tossed his cookies ten times within ten minutes. That’s when the treasure hunt began. I will spare the details, but I could not locate any raisins. 

Brianna then told me I had to do it again. I called Kota over, convinced he wouldn’t come. But he surprised me so we went at it again. This time, he vomited until there was nothing left. Again the treasure hunt ensued, with no visible results.

Should this ever happen to you and your pet - I pray it does not - here is the breakdown of symptoms within the first six to 24 hours after ingestion without intervention inducing vomit: additional vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite, dehydration, abdominal distention with pain, excessive, drooling, lethargy, swollen and uncoordinated limbs.

After that time, the same symptoms will remain, but others will come on board which are way worse. I was told unequivocally, to get him to the vet first thing in the morning. Sunday morning we found ourselves at an emergency vet clinic. We were there at 9 o’clock in the morning. We got home at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

They will not allow you to accompany your pet into the room. I know that Kota has extremely bad separation anxiety when I’m not with him. I tried to give them my T-shirt to take with him, but they refused. We waited with bated breath while they did bloodwork. They do it in-house so the results take maybe ten minutes.

Thankfully, his kidney values were normal! They did tell me, though I needed to take him to the vet on Monday, and have the bloodwork redone, even if it comes initially back normal. I would have to return to my vet on Thursday and have it done again. Once that comes back with the values normal, we’re golden. There’ll be no chance he has any toxic waste in his system. So we can’t quite breathe easy yet.

Kota is totally tapped out today. He is crashed on his bed, which doubles as a loveseat. I know how he feels. I have fed my outdoor cats and my indoor cats. That’s all I feel like doing, but we have a vet appointment at 3 o’clock today. We will have another follow-up appointment on Thursday at 2:20.

They have given him medication to soothe his stomach, reduce the inflammation of his throat and his gums. Sunday morning when I woke up, it looked like someone had injected Botox into his lips. I knew it was a reaction to the chemicals in the peroxide, so I gave him a small bowl of whole milk. He drank it all up and his swelling eventually reduced. 

Other medication is to eliminate any chance that he will develop an ulcer. Note to anyone who is reading this: if you don’t have to use hydrogen peroxide, please don’t. It’s not the best choice, but when the alternative is possible death, you’ll have to use it.

Who knew that eating more than five raisins could easily take down a dog of Kota’s size without getting professional advice. I didn’t. I do now. I am thoroughly educated. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone or their pet. Pass the word along; this is some serious sh**.

UPDATE: The second round of bloodwork was a bit disconcerting. Kota’s kidney levels are fine; however, his liver values are skewed. The doctor said that could mean either that he has a mass, or it could be the exposure his body had to the hydrogen peroxide that I gave him. We are retesting Thursday at 2:20. I would appreciate any prayers flying our way. If they find that the values are still skewed, they will do an ultrasound on him immediately to determine if he has a mass or not.