Ok I had such big planns for this summerholiday, blogwise and elsewise but worries about my cats had my panties in a twist and focus on other things. Where to start....

In July 2007 I moved to the home where I still reside today, and catlover I am I ofcourse had to take a few feline companions, so when someone I knew had a litter of tiny little kittens I went to have a looksee and found myself the new owner of two adorable alpha cats and named them Ash and Simi (for you booklovers of the PRN genre aha yea indeed named after two main characters in Ms. Kenyon's Dark Hunters). It was love at first sight with the both of them. See for yourself they were gorgeous!!!





You see aren't they just adorable! So you can imagine that now three years later, they are my heart, my soul and my life! In my childhood, we had plenty of cats, but most of them didn't make it past 4 years due to urinary diseases. When my holiday started, the first week was planned for doing my garden. My dad and brother were going to stay with me for a few days to put up a fence so finally my cats could go outside in the yard without me needing to worry for their safety. (we have a cat-hater in the area, leaving around meatballs with poison in them, 10 cats have died so far)

On Saturday July 31st I brushed Ash in the morning as he is still changing his coat and losing a lot of hair, I like to help them along nothing wrong. He was content and after his brushing session with lots of cuddles and love he fell asleep like a king in his kingdom. He slept for like 2 or 3 hours and when he got up his frontpaw was twice the size compared to normally so my eyes did the cartoon thing and my heart skipped a beat. Now the internet is great for seeking information and looking things up, but when you try to figure out what could be wrong you find the most cruesome stories so after five minutes of research I knew enough! I phoned the vet to see which one was on duty (they are not open in weekends normally). Thank God my own vet was on call so I have to say, it's that I didn't have any sirens and lights on my car to flash like an ambulance otherwise I would have rushed him over them at warpspeed, but now I had to drive up 20 minutes anxiously and worried out of my mind what was wrong. He was doing this sickly miauwing and OMG tears struck my eyes because I just cannot see a cat suffor in pain. Ýou just cannot explain to them, that you are on your way to help them. All they see and feel is that they are in pain and in a dreadful car and that their owner is not ok on top of all!

At the vet when I took him out of his transport-box his paw was nearly thrice the size and the look in his eyes was filled with pain. The vet checked him out, gave him a painkiller- and antibiotica shot and gave me a weeks course of antibiotica tablets three times a day one tablet. He had what they call a fighters-paw. Now I had never heard of it before but it's usually when cats fight and they get bitten in their paw, it get's inflamed and that spreads quickly in the rest of their immune system.

BUT MY CATS DON'T FIGHT AT ALL!!!! I was thinking about it and my mum came up with the idea that, because they only live inside, there probably was a sharp little stone in their litterbox where he stood in which got infected. The vet confirmed that that might do the trick as well. But with the two shots and heavy antibiotics his paw should go back to it's normal size within a day or two, if not I had to go back in. He said that it was a bad case, even with a broken leg it wouldn't be this swollen.

Thankfully after nearly two days the swelling was gone and all went back to normal, finished the course of antibiotics and he was perfectly ok. So that was one less worry, my fence was up in the yard and my holiday could finally begin...



However scare number two came around very quickly.....

Last Saturday (what is it with these Saturdays!!!!) August 14 I went to spent a day up at my parents place, brought my dog along, the cats where their happy selves, had enough food and drink to get them through at least a day, litterboxes were cleaned out so they were in heaven so to speak. However when I came at home in the evening neither Ash nor Simi was at the door. They recognise the sound of the car, and they are just like dogs, they come from wherever they are to greet me when I come home, but they were nowhere to be found.

Because this was so very odd, and they didn't respond when I called out their names I went on the look-out and noticed they hadn't touched their food and didn't drink a lot either. When I came upstairs they were both laying on the bed and appeared to be a bit flueish. Luckily I had some syringes in the house so I went to give them something to drink by hand and that got them going again for a bit. Repeated that a few times over the next 3 hours and they seemed to be coming around again so I thought maybe one of those one-day flues, we all have them sometimes, and cats and dogs as well, the next morning however I found they had diarrhoea. I phoned the vet and they told me to put them on rice and cooked chicken for a day, the day after should be fine, however they didn't eat it at all and control freak I am I wanted them to drink so I went to give them water through the syringe again every hour, hour and a half but they slept the whole time and didn't want to eat.

Monday morning Simi was nearly none-responsive and Ash appeared to be very ill as well I didn't doubt a moment, put them in the transportbox up to the vet again, whom  said they were really very ill. Cecked them out, took his time for it as well, gave them both two injections, one antibiotics and one to give them an appetite so they would get the impuls to eat. And again a set of antibiotica course. In that day and a half Simi almost lost 3 pounds of bodyweight and was worst off out of the both of them. They had major bowel infections and we have no idea where they got it from. On top of that, they were emanciated and if I hadn't given them the water by hand they would have to be hospitalized. The vet told me to give them two syringes of water each hour to both of them all day long untill they would drink by themselves. And give them the special food to get their bowel going again. I took them up to this morning to start drinking on their own and finally they took their first few bites of eating as well.

There is nothing as worse for pet-owners in my opinion, than when you pet is sick. I had three sleepless nights but as long as my pets are going to be ok again it's been well worth it!!! But by goodness I had such a fright.

Hopefully their back to their own playful selves again wreaking havoc and eating like tasmanian devils!