An expensive cat

Marlo, you may recall, was having trouble jumping and rushing around early this year. His back legs were no longer as powerful as they had been. He had lost his bounce.  So we took him to the vet, where he was diagnosed with arthritis and possible hip dysplasia and prescribed anti-inflammatories.

He is still on the anti-inflammatories and goes for a check up at the vet every now and then.  I decided that now would be a good time because we are going away for several weeks shortly and he will be going to stay with Freyja, Simon and Aidan while we are gone.  Better if he had a good supply of medication, and also that he was pronounced to be fairly healthy before we disappeared.

As it happened, he also had to have blood tests, because his bounce has deteriorated a bit, and he had a slight heart murmur and for various other reasons.  He has been put on pain killers in addition to the anti-inflammatories.  I had to get double lots of everything to tide him over while we are away cavorting.  It was a very expensive visit to the vet!!!

So we got home with his brand new pain killers.  Tiny, tiny things they are.  I hid one, crushed up, in his dinner.  He took one mouthful, backed away and looked at me with a very accusing glare.  What have you put in my food?  Why are you trying to poison me???  I hid one, crushed up, in his treat paste stuff that he absolutely loves.  He sniffed it and backed away, deeply offended.  I took the whole lot away and put a whole one in a new dish of food.  He ate most of the food - but not the bit that the tiny, tiny tablet was hiding in.  Sigh.

Somewhere, in the deep depths of the freezer I knew there were some turkey slices. Marlo's most favourite thing in the whole world is turkey. I found them and dug them out.  This morning I hid one of the tablets, uncrushed, pressed into a turkey slice.  He ate his contaminated turkey with no fuss at all.  All gobbled down, pain killer pill included.  So that's good then.  But he's supposed to have two a day for the foreseeable future.  That's an awful lot of turkey slices :-S  I'm going to have to see if there's another way to convince him to swallow them.

It's just as well that he is a friendly, affectionate and snuggly cat.  It would be very much cheaper and a whole lot easier to replace him with a new model that works :-D



PS Friday 27th November.  The turkey trick isn't working. It only worked the once.  Since then he has wised up, eats the turkey and spits the tiny, tiny tablet out.  I don't really know what to try next. The vet suggested crushing it up, putting it into some water and syringing it into his mouth.  I don't think so!!!