Pixie and the Pill

Pixie has been one sick kitty these last few weeks. Even with her striped brown and orangey colored fur, she looks a tad green and gets this funny look on her face just before she goes into vomit mode. On carpet, of course, or in my shoes or on only the best dry clean only pants I own.

So. I got the cat carrier out and called the vet. His staff seemed undaunted when I told them she actually threw up some blood, but I was terrified something really awful was wrong. The next step was getting her INTO the cat carrier, which she decided was definitely a bad, very bad, horrible idea.

Pixie weighs 6 pounds. She is small anyway, but it took all my will power to tuck her legs (all 4 into a bunch) and shove her into the crate. There was a towel in there which she shoved to the door so that she had to lay on the cold, hard floor of the crate. It was sad. It was tragic. She made sure the neighbors knew it, as I hauled the crate full of hissing, yowling tabby cat to the car.

Her idea for the day included snuggle time on the bed after a nice smelly can of wet food. It did NOT include being stuffed into a crate with a bath towel and then hauled around. And we hadn't even gotten to the vet's yet.

We entered the vet with two scowly eyes looking through the grated door of the crate. She made a little terrier wet on the floor when he approached to give a friendly hello. Another client said she was a beautiful kitty and a low growl emitted from the crate. Pretty, yes. Happy, um no.

The vet and I wrestled her out of the crate and we slammed the door shut just as she disappeared under the chairs. At this point, it made me such a liar that she was lethargic and not acting like herself. She seemed feisty, she seemed full of spunk, she appeared perfectly healthy.

After a full exam of which Pixie squirmed and struggled and meowed like she was being murdered, the vet determined her thyroid was enlarged, which would explain all of her symptoms. So he ordered a blood test to check her thyroid and he said he would give her a pill for her upset tummy.

A pill. I gulped and explained that prior vets had never been able to get her to take a pill and the attempts at home had involved failed attempts, bloody scratches and bite marks. I have tried wrapping her in a towel. She escapes. I've tried holding her front paws down and sticking the pill down her throat. She bites me. I've tried holding all four paws while someone else stuffs the pill. She won't open her mouth. And if you think you've won and the pill is swallowed, she will spit it out. Despite my warnings, the good doctor, scooped her up and said they'd be right back.

I heard the yowling, I heard things flying and people yelling to get her paws. They returned with an angry, bedraggled looking kitty, full of hatred for this smelly vet office. I held her and told the vet she was licking her nose and working the pill back up. He declared she swallowed it and he'd succeeded. I think he was gloating. Two minutes later "plink" and the pill went rolling onto the exam table. Whoops.

"Be right back," and off the doctor went with a now furious tabby. More yowling, more hissing, things falling and scattered scuffling sounds. Moments later the vet returned, looking like he now saw what I meant, and handed me the angry feline, still wrapped in a towel. "We gave her a shot instead. She didn't care."

Exactly, no worries if it's a shot, but do NOT stick your fingers in Pixie's mouth. You'll be sorry. When we got home she tore up her scratching box, she ripped up some "important" papers from the stacks of bills in our bedroom, and she tipped the garbage can over. Oh, and shredded some toilet paper, just in case we missed the message.

I'm just glad she's going to be okay. If no pill is involved, all is right with the world, especially if we are snuggling. What a cat!

Cats Love Owning a Pet Human

  Pixie, luxuriously stretched out in my bed, our daily fight for prime bed real estate begins again. She waits for one of us to get up, sometimes tricking me into getting up by demanding food or shredding paper that may or may not be important tax papers. The minute my feet hit the ground she is on my side of the bed, curled into a little ball, snoring and purring at the same time.

                I love to watch the news in the morning, in bed where it’s warm and toasty and I won’t wake up my sleeping offspring too early. My husband, immune to the TV being on, snores on and ignores our cat shredding, meowing, demanding feline.

                This morning I went to fill my coffee cup and there she was when I got back to my bed, so I moved to the stuffed chair in front of the window in our room (I call it my thinking chair). I enjoyed myself, on this beautiful, rainy coffee sipping, news watching morning. Disgruntled that I would not be coming back to bed, Pixie jumped down and came to the ottoman and meowed and meowed and meowed, which I interpreted as, “I would like to see out of that window. Open it now, woman, open it now.”  So I pulled the blinds up and she jumped up to the back of the chair, surveyed her kingdom, meowing at me occasionally. I was too busy sipping coffee to see if she was just commenting or needed anything.

                I got up to refill the coffee cup. I really should just move the machine up to my bedroom in the morning. Gone two minutes and get back to find Pixie, curled up on my afghan, hand crocheted by me. Her sleeping on my afghan is okay but she is kneading away at it with her little sharp spiky claws, most covered with soft paw covers. She has this blissful cat look. I booted her, anyway. Rudely. She meowed at me and stalked off to the bathroom to perhaps poop in my whirl tub bath again. Too bad I keep water in it now. What a drag. She came back and meowed at me. Insistently. So I returned to the bathroom and gave her fresh water and stirred the existing full cat dish. No, Pixie does not own me, not at all.

                I wandered back to my chair, with a paperback book and turned the volume down on my way past the TV. To my astonishment and chagrin, there was the stripy beast, in my spot, again! So, I figured I’d go down and stretch out on the sofa. Meow, meow, meow. Seated in prissy cat style at the bottom of the steps, she glared at me until guilt overcame me and I came back to my flowered chair. The couch was hard to sit and read and sip my coffee without spilling anyway. Right, if that’s what I want to believe. My cat just manipulated me into coming back to her domain.

                I sat in the chair and sipped and went back to reading. Pixie jumped up on the arm of the chair and placed her head on my arm, making it hard to turn pages. I pushed at her and she didn’t move, so I let her sit on the arm of the chair until, in her quest to have the best seat in the house, she bit my book. Really! Now my cat is a book-ivore. Eating and sampling paper from the shred pile isn’t enough? Nope, apparently a book is her new delight, leaving her little sharp teeth marks on my book like a toddler teething. I’m just glad it’s not a library book, now that’s hard to explain.

                My morning routine began as the news ended and the soap operas began. Making the bed, which for the moment was cat-free and shuffling around aimlessly, as we humans are prone to do. Pixie tried out the chair, but apparently it was no fun to be there if the human was off doing two-legger stuff, so she crawled back into bed, on the man’s side of the bed, trying to get under the comforter. And yup, last I checked she was contentedly purring and snoring on his pillow. Sorry dear, you’ll want to change your pillow case for tonight. The cat has won.