Samantha had been very stressed in the cage. Granted, she had never been caged before all her life, assuming she had grown up on the street, that is. After we tricked her into the house on 27th January, she was always upstairs in the big bedroom, free to move around. And I think she did not mind being in the room too. She used the litter box, she ate, she drank. All was well. She gave birth, she nursed her kittens.
But yesterday, after being caged, Samantha let out her anger. She scratched on the cat litter and scattered it angrily all over the room (and she wasn’t even using the litter box for anything, simply to let off her anger). I had to clean up the room twice because of this. She did it again this morning.
And she went on a hunger strike as well. Refused to eat. But she finally ate overnight. I found the bowl empty this morning. And she only urinated once so far, in the litter box. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to use it. She does. She’s been using it for 6 weeks now.
I took many, many photos of her face this morning to send to the vet. I don’t really know how to see if there are new lesions.
These two brown spots weren’t there yesterday. But I don’t know what they are.
I don’t know if it’s like sporo whereby after medication, it has to get worse before getting better because all the underlying spores has to come out to the surface. I really don’t know. This is totally unqualified opinion.
Is there still a nose bump, I don’t know.
I just took as many photos as I could, for comparison purposes.
Ming-Yi bought me this torch. It’s for detecting fungus. Just shine it on the cat (or person) and if there is any fungus, those spots will be identified with an bright apple green (neon) colour. I’ve shone it on Samantha since yesterday and today, there are no bright apple green spots at all.
I’ve been looking at tons of images (online) of crypto lesions in cats, but they all look quite different. So it’s really hard to compare. Also, Samantha’s lesions have been scraped so they really look terrible now.
This morning, I had to give Samantha her medication. I stuffed the 1/2 tablet of Prednisolone into the Inox capsule and syringed out 0.5ml of Vetri DMG. I’ve never had any success using the pill popper, but since the vet used it so effortless, I decided to try today.
My left hand had a rubber glove and my right, two layers of thin surgical gloves. But with the rubber gloves, I could not get a good grip on Samantha, so I couldn’t get her out of the cage. Hence, I went partially into the cage and tried to insert the pill popper at the side of her mouth, exactly how the vet did it at the clinic (it was just the vet and me handling her over there, but as you know, cats almost always behave at the clinic). They totally misbehave at home.
Well, it was a disaster. The capsule fell off before I could pop it and it was at the tip of Samantha’s mouth (which was tightly shut). So I just instinctively shoved the capsule into her mouth, which worked. But she struggled and I quickly syringed in the Vetri DMG, but that was a struggle too.
Then I rubbed Cindy’s baby food on her mouth with hopes that she would lick it off, but she did not.
Finally, I saw the Inox granules at the tip of her mouth. She must be trying to spit it out.
Sigh…
If only I could impress upon you, Sam, that this is for your own good.
Finally, I gave up all my defenses. I took off the rubber glove, the two layers of surgical gloves, and I patted her with my bare hands.
Slowly, I managed to take her out of the cage.
After that, I just kept giving her Cindy’s baby food. Let’s hope she will start licking it, which she did now.
I guess Samantha must have hated the rubber gloves.
So I managed to make Samantha lick off baby food from my bare fingers.
Then I let her go in the room. I think she’s just too stressed being caged up and the stress won’t do her any good. She’s probably never been caged before so she retaliates with anger, being the calico that she is.
I’ll see how it goes today.
The vet told me to put an e-collar on her, but I decided not to. Imagine what that would do to her calico pride.