Our blind cat Bobby has been undergoing treatment for a recurring urinary tract infection, and the week before last he had a relapse — straining and peeing bright red blood again. He had only been home from the hospital a short while. After talking with Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, our vet who had been treating Bobby, she had me start him on a daily injection of Baytril. That seemed to work, but then last Thursday the infection came roaring back. Jennifer was off that day, so Dr. Brenda Culver at the clinic had me continue with the Baytril but begin giving him subcutaneous fluids.
It turns out that the type of urinary tract infection Bobby has can have new episodes triggered by stress, and we think we know what happened. Popeye the blind cat has increasingly become a bit of a bully in the cat house, and in particular he has been picking on Bobby. (Just because you’re disabled doesn’t mean you can’t be obnoxious.) Alayne was putting dogs up in the cottage one evening last week and heard a cat screaming from the outdoor enclosure off the cat house. She went running over and found Popeye had Bobby turned upside down and was flailing on him. She broke it up, but that was the final straw — Popeye was voted off the island.
We’d never seen Popeye do that before, but we don’t want to ever see it again. Popeye is now living in the isolation cottage until we can figure out a better answer for him. There were a lot of cats doing high fives with their paws when I moved Popeye out that evening.
One thing we will not tolerate around here is that kind of behavior. We have an incredibly well-behaved, gentle, and social bunch of animals, but if we see a pattern like this developing, we have to do something about it. Jennifer suspects that the incident with Popeye was indeed the "stressor" that caused the latest flare-up.
So now Bobby gets a daily dose of fluids, about 200 mls under the skin, and will for the next few days. Alayne took the photo of Bobby getting his fluids this afternoon. He is getting better, and the cat house is back to being a mellow feline social club.
Yes, I know it’s yet another photo of me on the blog, but I am really not competing with Widget for blog appearances. In my defense, let me point out that a) in this case, Alayne is allergic to cats (having Bobby in the house for five minutes is about all she can take) and b) getting my better half to appear on camera isn’t always easy because, well, she needs time to prepare. (I think this is a gender thing, but I’m not sure.)
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