Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Monday, February 23, 2009
A Very Bad, No Good, Terrible Weekend
When you hope that your cat only herniated a disk, and are wrong, it makes for a crappy weekend. We’re not sure what happened - did Bunny fall? Did she have a seizure? Did she have a stroke? Does she have a concussion? (cross your fingers for “concussion”, as it’s the best of the bunch, at least for the future) All we know is that she hurt her hip, and we don’t know if she fell and hurt her hip and hit her head, or had a stroke and then fell and hurt her hip, or really anything except her hip hurt, which is why we took her to the vet in the first place. She was going to spend the night getting treated for a herniated disk (oh, everyone has to be like Mom - first Cricket, then Bunny), and they had to keep an eye on her because steroids are contraindicated for her heart condition. When the vet called later that evening, she told us that Bunny was blind. Well, Bunny wasn’t blind before Friday evening, so something is affecting her vision, but we don’t know what. Her eyes react to light, so her eyes are seeing, but her brain isn’t. Ugh.
The good news, if there’s anything good in this scenario is that Bunny is able to get around the house not too badly. We don’t know if it’s because she has a little bit of vision (peripheral?) or if it’s because cats leave their scent on everything by rubbing up against things/people constantly. You know how sometimes it’s kind of annoying? Try to think of it as less annoying now, because we’re thinking that’s how Bunny is getting around. She’s marked the whole house with her scent glands (it sounds kind of gross, but we can’t smell them…as far as I know, and if I can’t smell something, it generally doesn’t have a smell) and it’s basically mapped the house for her. She’s still able to jump over the baby gates, go up & down the stairs, walk around the computer stand in the bedroom that we occasionally kick because the metal legs stick out into the path at the end of the bed. Several times, I was sure I’d broken a toe kicking that damned thing. It doesn’t even hold a computer, it has a Pachinko machine on it - a groovy one from a Pachinko parlor in Japan. But anyway, we kick the legs of the stand, and Bunny doesn’t. I put her on the bed, and just like she always did, she ran off by running over the blankets, jumped onto the headboard (which is an oddly shaped tree limb), and then down onto the ramp that sits at the end of the bed. From the ramp, she jumped to the floor. She navigated all of that without a misstep. It’s pretty amazing to watch.
The bad stuff - she jumped onto the kitchen counter and knocked a glass bottle of vitamins onto the floor, shattering it. Lesson learned, no more breakables on the counters. You’d think that she just wouldn’t jump onto things that are that high up, but Bunny has always been our most fearless daredevil. She’s the only cat that has jumped on top of the kitchen cabinets, walked the length of them, and then jumped onto the top of the fridge. While we’re grateful that the other cats stay off the cabinets, we would’ve preferred that the family daredevil not be the one who lost her sight. We have cats who do nothing but nap all day, when they’re not eating. They wouldn’t have even noticed if they lost their sight. Bunny has also been very very vocal since coming home. We’re not sure if she’s talking to us to make sure we’re still in the room with her, chatting because she’s confused about the sight loss, or doing what I’d be doing…complaining loudly about going blind overnight.
While having Bunny lose her sight at the grand old age of 2 (next month) sucks, what sucks more is that there’s a chance that the reason she lost her sight is related to her heart condition (Restrictive Cardiomyopathy) - if she had a stroke because of a blood clot, chances are good that there would be more clots in her future. Bunny is an adorable cat and we don’t want to lose her. She had a follow-up ECG a few weeks ago (she was diagnosed with her heart condition a little over a year ago), and nothing had changed, so we figured that we were in the clear, that her condition hadn’t worsened at all, so we had a lot of years left with her. Don’t tell the other cats, because I love them too, but Bunny is my favorite. I sleep with Bing, and Bunny refuses to sleep with me or even let me hold her for too long, but there’s just a special something about her. The cat that likes to play with your answering machine by walking on it and playing messages is going to either be annoying or adorable. Bunny is adorable. She’s been so healthy since she was diagnosed with her heart condition (she was in heart failure when we took her in - we thought she had a cold), and she’s more active than any other cat, which is good for a cat that you want to stay healthy and in good shape. Anyway, we’d really really really like it if her blindness is caused by a concussion and that she’ll slowly get her sight back, and be fine, as long as she doesn’t fall on her head again. However, apparently concussions are rare in cats. But, not impossible. We know all of the post-concussion symptoms from watching and reading about hockey, and if she had one, we would just make her quit her NHL career now, before she had any more concussions. Then, she could live a long & healthy life. The vets don’t think it was a concussion, but they don’t know what it is either, so I’m happy to think it’s a concussion and hope that by next week, she’ll be back to normal. Oh, and the herniated disk that we thought she had…is fine right now. She doesn’t seem to be in any pain and she’s stopped limping.
We’re exhausted. We barely got any sleep on Friday night due to worrying about Bunny, and waiting for the vet’s office to open on Saturday morning. We took her in as soon as we could in the morning. We had locked her in the bathroom with Missy Mae, our bathroom cat (seriously, that’s where she’s happy - she sleeps behind the toilet and mothers tiny foster babies when we have them), because we knew that Missy Mae is our least active cat, so there wouldn’t be any danger to Bunny in the bathroom. It was just her, Missy Mae, three or four cat beds, a bowl of toys, a bowl of water, and a litter box. When we got up, the bathroom was the most amazing litter/water mess we had EVER seen. The floor was just covered in gross clumps of wet litter, the water dish was full of litter, Bunny was covered in dried litter (it was like she had a coating of cement on her paws, legs, and tail) and we were really really confused. However, after we found out that she was blind, we figured out what happened. The pain meds wore off (we practically have a pet pharmacy here) and then she woke up confused and started to wander around frantically, spilling litter and water, over and over again. She’s just now finally gotten most of it off of her. Her tail still has a few litter spots on it, but she either cleaned herself up at the vet’s office on Saturday night or someone cleaned her up. Whoops, tangent. I just wanted to say…we’re tired and now we’re going to bed. Cross your fingers that Bunny doesn’t find any more breakables.
Bunny in December
Bunny at 9 weeks
Tiny Bunny & Carlo (her tongue is sticking out, which is why she looks a bit odd - if you click on the picture, you can see the larger version with more detail)
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OH NO! Poor little Bunny! I hope she gets her sight back…even if it was a blood clot and not a concussion, it seems like she could get her sight back since her eyes are still working. Aw, I’m so sad about this happening to her…
Helly on 02/23 at 10:23 AM -
It was a rough night. She couldn’t seem to get comfortable, and about an hour after I fell asleep, we awoke to a horrible crashing sound. Bunny was trying to do her usual, walking across the answering machine, but she misjudged and did something that caused her to run into the lampshade, popping it off the light bulb (it’s one of those shades that attaches itself to the bulb directly with a metal clamp) and the shade was so old and dried out inside, that the plastic liner shattered all over the floor. Poor Bunny. It was scary for all three of us, but moreso for her.
Finally, late this morning, we got her to actually get a few hours of sleep, curled up next to Leigh-Ann on the bed. We think she’s finally starting to like being on the bed, which she’s always hated. It’s both good (we can make sure she’s comfortable and gets some rest without being disturbed) and sad, because we know that she’s only on the bed because being other places makes her afraid. Poor kitty. It’s soooo sad. I’m glad that she’s finally getting some sleep though because she hasn’t slept well since she came home, always hearing new noises and having the other cats be mean to her. Her brother hissed at her this morning - he’s never been mean to her before, and I know it’s because she smells weird from being at the vet. I’m hoping they can work things out soon because she really needs her kitty friends right now.
Flippy on 02/23 at 07:41 PM -
Poor little cat - I’m really sorry to hear it, too. I hope she gets her sight back. It must be so scary for her.
Nancy on 02/23 at 10:11 PM -
Poor Bunny! We’ve watched her since she first came to you. I laughed at the wet litter cement because Victor once dumped a litter box in our laundry room and the litter went right into the floor drain, where the AC drains. Water + litter in a drain… There was a puddle by the time we finally decided Victor was trying to tell us something and not just singing. Bonnie had normal vision but knocked two glass champagne flutes and a crystal candle holder from our counters to their deaths. Anyway, we’ll be purring and purraying for Bunny!
Victor Tabbycat's Mom on 02/24 at 05:01 PM -
I’m sending my best wishes to you and Leigh-Ann and Bunny. As I wrote on Leigh-Ann’s blog, I really admire you two for opening your hearts. What you go through!
Calamity Jenni on 02/28 at 11:22 AM
