The Veterinary Review, May 6, 2021

Well, so much for skipping this week. That’s not really something I can do after this past weekend. It’s been rough.

Friday night our oh so precious Ferrell Brown let us know that he was ready to cross over the Rainbow Bridge. We cried and cuddled him for one more night and took him in to our vet on Saturday morning. He crossed over with his head in his favorite place - Matt’s beard.

Saturday night, Aries seemed off. We thought he might be constipated, so we planned to wait it out and give him some medicine if it did not resolve quickly enough. By early Sunday morning we realized he actually had a urinary blockage - a very critical event. Off to the emergency room we went.

They examined him and confirmed that yes, he was blocked, We confirmed that we wanted treatment. (Many people choose to euthanize due to cost of treatment or how veterinarians present the issue.) They unblocked him and took care of him overnight, running IV fluids and medications, and testing his phosphorous levels to be certain that he was improving.

I picked him up around noon on Monday and transferred him to our veterinarian for continued treatment. They set him up on IV fluids and made sure we had all of his daily medications straight as well as what they added. I left him there, though it broke my heart to do so. We had to get him healthy again before he could come home.

I was very fortunate in that Aries only had to stay through the end of the day on Tuesday. I am so very glad to have him back at home. Things just aren’t right without him here. He is still on some extra meds for the urinary problems, but everything is expected to resolve - at least back to where we were. (we were having some urinary issues prior to this event)

Jump back to Sunday morning. Aries was in the hospital and we were home by around 8:30. Around 11:20 I get a text message from Tiana saying that Mystic (whom she fosters) was “foaming at the mouth” and that she was on her way home immediately. (One of her parents had called her) I got another message about 15 minutes later saying that our sweet Mystic had passed.

She had been doing so very well after her amputation. She was up and moving around, and playing happily with the other cats at Tiana’s. I described the event to Dr. Heimlich. He immediately said that he believed she threw a clot to her lungs.

After losing Grady and Miss Piggy just two weeks prior and now this, things are pretty solemn around here. This is the ugly side of what we do. We fall in love with so many cats, and we lose them so very often.

That is all for this week.