Thursday, February 15, 2007, 18:22

The Joy of Public Radio. . .

With disbelieving eyes, I watched as my silver tabby, Winifred, slowly and carefully made her way across the table, over the telephone, onto the file drawers and onto the counter behind me and then began eating out of a dish of dry kitty food I had left there.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout. I wanted to jump up and down. I wanted to laugh out loud for joy.

I couldn't do any of those things because. . .I was on public radio at the time.

Winifred had not eaten or drank anything for three days, and she chose the time when I was on the public radio show about the sand mine on Tuesday to eat a few bites of kitty food.

Monday I noticed that Winifred was starting to get dehydrated. She cut her gum last Wednesday, and she has been going downhill since then. By Monday, her skin was losing its elasticity, and I knew I had to do something for her. So, I went to the vet clinic and got a bag of Ringers fluid, tubing and a handful of needles. Monday night, Randy helped me give her 100 cc of subcutaneous fluid to help for the dehydration.

I learned how to do subQ fluid when my beloved Tiger Paw Thompson was dying from chronic kidney failure. Winifred is his sister.

Also, as luck would have it, the small animal vet just happened to be standing there when I walked into the vet clinic Monday afternoon. Last week, the large animal vet gave Winifred a shot of pain medication, and then the vet tech told me it was a "one shot deal" because the medication can be hard on a cat's liver.

I knew the pain medication had worn off on Saturday and that being in pain was part of what was bothering Winifred.

"You can give her oral Methacam, you know," the vet said to me Monday afternoon after I explained about Winifred and that she was not doing very well.

I looked at her closely to see if she was joking.

"I CAN?" I said.

"Yes," she said.

"REALLY?" I said.

"Really," she said. "But the dose is only one drop. And only every two or three days."

Cats, I know, metabolize pain medication very slowly, which is part of the problem of being able to treat pain in cats.

The vet went to the back to see if there was an open bottle.

"I don't want you to have to buy a whole bottle just for a few drops," she said.

I followed her into the other room.

"Is that the same stuff for dogs?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"I have some at home," I said. "It's left over from Charlie last summer."

"Oh," she said, "that's right. Charlie needed pain medication after his surgery."

Oh, boy. Did Charlie ever need pain medication. But that was neither here nor there at the moment.

I paid for the fluid and tubing and needles, and then I headed for home. I could hardly wait to give Winifred that one little drop of pain medication.

Seeing as it takes so long for pain meds to work out of a cat's system, I figured it would take a long time to kick in, too. And it did. I couldn't see much difference in Winifred Monday evening.

I tried offering her everything I could think of, but she did not want to eat. I managed, on Monday, to get a few globs of Nutracal into her, but that's not great, either, because she hates it, and I was afraid I would hurt her mouth trying to get her to swallow it.

As the days went by since last week, Winifred continued to grow more thin and emaciated. Her hip bones are sticking out. I can feel the ridges of her skull when I pet her head. She is part Maine Coon, and the Main Coon cats tend to be large and well-proportioned. Of the four kittens in the litter, Winifred has always been the smallest, but at her heaviest, she weighed around 12 pounds. She only weighs 7 pounds now.

But then, miracle of miracles, on Tuesday while I was on the radio, she ate a snack of dry kitty food. In the evening she ate a few more pieces of dry kitty food and drank a little milk. I gave her another dose of subQ fluid. She ate a couple of snacks Wednesday, too. She is far from being out of the woods. But I think she is feeling better. Wednesday evening, she batted at the "pink mouse on a string" while I was playing with Sophie and Snowflake.

As for me, I am happy to report that I lived through the show on public radio Tuesday regarding the proposed sand mine. Fortunately, I was not the only guest. I was on the show along with a hydrologist, a farmer whose land is right next to the proposed mine and a man who is a mining consultant.

The truth of the matter is, we were only able to give the barest mention to only a few of the issues concerning the sand mine. It seems to me we could have talked for many hours and still not covered everything. Which tells me, of course, that it is a complex issue.

I did the interview by telephone, seeing as the show was on from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. and I had to leave for another meeting at 6:30 p.m. If I had gone into the studio, I would not have had anywhere close to enough time to make it back for the meeting.

But more importantly -- if I had gone to the studio, I would not have seen Winifred eat her first few pieces of kitty food in three days.

Cold -- The weather is still cold. The last two nights it has gotten down to 10 below zero and is still only warming up during the day to 5 degrees or 10 or 15. Strong winds out of the north/northwest have created a subzero windchill during the day, too. The bottom dropped out of the temperature on January 12, and it has been below zero and/or below zero windchills since then.

LeAnn R. Ralph