Thursday, August 18, 2005, 06:14
Convalescing
"Hi Sweetie, what's up?" Randy asked.
My husband always answers his phone this way when I call him at work. He works for a small local telephone company in the Internet division, so he has Caller ID and knows it's me before he even answers the phone.
"Rocky has pneumonia," I said.
"Oh, no," Randy said.
Rocky is the black tom cat I raised from a newborn kitten last year when he and his sister fell out of the nest. We didn't know where the nest was, so we took them into the house.
For about a week, Rocky has not been feeling well. On Monday I got some antibiotic for him at the vet clinic. But by Wednesday morning he had really gone downhill -- rapid, shallow, rattling breathing. I called the vet clinic, waited two hours for the vet to call me back, called the clinic again and finally got to speak with a vet. He told me we needed to switch antibiotics, and as luck would have it, I already had some of what he recommended, enough for a dose anyway.
I gave Rocky the meds at 10 a.m., and then the waiting started. I must have made 20 trips downstairs during the day to check on him. He was lying on his pillow on his favorite chair, struggling to breath. At noon I went to town and got some more of the antibiotic. During the afternoon, I kept checking on Rocky because I was afraid he would slip into a coma.
While I was at the vet clinic, the vet tech informed me that they were seeing a lot of pneumonia in cats this year. It's because of the dry weather and all the dust in the atmosphere and all the ragweed pollen. If it would rain, that would wash the dust particles and pollen out of the air. But we haven't had any significant rain in weeks and weeks, and most of Wisconsin has been classified as being in a moderate drought condition. The southeastern part of the state is in a severe drought.
I spent most of the day, too, kicking myself for not starting Rocky on a different antibiotic sooner. This is the same sort of respiratory condition he developed after his neuter surgery last winter. He went downhill rapidly then, too, so I should have suspected that he would go downhill fast now.
The first glimmer of hope flickered in the back of mind this evening when I went down to see Rocky and he opened his eyes, looked at me and yawned. His breathing was still rapid and shallow but maybe not as labored. I gave him another dose of meds this evening, and throughout the evening he seemed to be perking up a little more. By Thursday morning, I ought to be able to tell if he really is feeling better or if it is just wishful thinking on my part.
PASTURE UPDATE: We have started building a small shelter for the filly. Nothing fancy. Just some tall posts we sunk into the ground that will have a roof overhead so she will have shade if she needs it and maybe a little shelter from a downpour. That's if it ever decides to rain again. I still have to finish tying on the rest of my pink flags, too.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, August 16, 2005, 18:21
Pretty in Pink
I'm seeing pink. Lots of pink. On my fences, that is.
I have started tying on pink streamers (pink plastic marking tape, the kind surveyors use) to mark the fence so that when the filly comes home, she'll be able to more easily know where the fence is located. I started yesterday, and this morning, I got to the half-way mark.
"Gee, do you think you have enough flags on the fence?" Randy asked Monday evening when he saw what I had gotten done so far.
"I hope so," I said.
Perhaps I am going a bit overboard, BUT, I don't know how fence-savvy the filly is, and I would rather spend time now, tying on flags, than spend time later chasing her around because she went through the fence, and then spend more time fixing the fence.
What's that old saying? -- A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Also, our fences are built out of high-tensile wire, and at certain times of the day, when the light is just right and the sun is at just the right angle, the fence wires become virtually invisible.
Most of the time when people use high tensile wire, the wire is electrified, but we have never put electricity through the fence. More than one vet (not to mention a couple of visitors) have been hesitant about crawling through the fence. "Is thing 'on'," they wonder.
And I tell them, "No, it's not on. Never has been."
I like using the high tensile wire because it's smooth, and if a horse should happen to go through the fence, it wouldn't get as torn up as it would going through barbed wire. (We do have a single strand of barbed wire along the top, and that's to keep the horses from leaning on the fence to get grass on the other side.)
One time many years ago, when I still had my Standardbred mare, she became frightened during a thunderstorm and ran through the fence. At that time, it was all barbed wire, and she tore her shoulder to pieces. The vet stitched and stitched to get everything pulled back together, and forever after, she had a scar on her shoulder.
When we brought our two geldings home 10 years ago, the ladies who hauled the horses for us asked the same question: "Do you think you have enough flags on the fence?"
Instead of pink plastic streamers, I had used cloth strips that I had made from tearing up old towels and shirts. The fence was brand new, then, and Red and Kajun had never had experience with smooth wire. Apparently I *did* have enough flags, though, because neither of them ran through the fence.
I'm hoping for just as good an outcome this time around.
LeAnn R. Ralph
P.S. -- SOPHIE UPDATE
I got the amoxicillan for Sophie. She hates it. Thinks I am trying to poison her. She seems to be feeling a little better, though, so she'll just have to continue hating the medicine because as long as it's helping, she's getting it, whether she likes it or not. Her appetite is picking up, and she is becoming more playful, so that's how I know the medicine is helping.