{"id":20813,"date":"2023-04-17T15:23:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T20:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/?p=20813"},"modified":"2023-04-17T15:23:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T20:23:26","slug":"mostly-all-about-lester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/uncategorized\/mostly-all-about-lester\/","title":{"rendered":"Mostly all about Lester"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Let me just start by saying that this story has a good ending…however, I started writing it on Monday April 3rd and I feel like I haven’t sat down since then. This is ridiculous, of course – I have done plenty of sitting, but haven’t managed to carve out time to write. But finally, two weeks later, here I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday night, March 30th, I went to bed and Les jumped up on me as he always does and lies on my chest while I pet him. But he suddenly gave out a low growl. Lester does not do that. And suddenly I it dawned on me that he’d also growled the night before, but I hadn’t paid attention. Uh oh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then that Friday he didn’t look right. His eyes didn’t have that twinkle, and he slept out on the screened porch most of the day. I petted him and he hissed at me when I touched his chest. What was going on? Later when I ran my hand down his back he hissed again. Clearly he was in all kinds of pain. I called the vet and they couldn’t get him in and told me to call on Saturday morning for an “urgent care” appointment. She said all the urgent appointments had filled early in the day, so I should call when they first open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Les didn’t look so bad but he was so listless and I know that animals hide their pain. Early Friday evening a big storm rolled through and we had to herd all the cats into the basement. It was just like…herding cats. Les was agreeable about getting into a crate to be taken downstairs, and Sweetie didn’t like it but she’s so tiny that I was able to get her in, and ditto with four pound Marley. I could hear Kevin trying to persuade Pumpkin to get into his crate in the bedroom and I kept saying “do you need help?” but he managed even though Pumpkin is very big and strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there’s no way Lovey would get into a crate without serious drugs and there was no time for that as the tornado sirens continued to blare. Kevin said that she’d go into the basement anyway, which she did. He also thought Riley would be agreeable about walking downstairs, but then it quickly turned into a Keystone Cops kind of situation – Kevin would get Riley down the stairs and Lovey would shoot right up and out the door, and when he corralled her, Riley would bolt. Lots of closing doors, too, trying to get the two cats trapped in the basement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It finally happened and we let everybody out except for poor Pumpkin who was lying quietly in his crate on top of the pool table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We weren’t there more than maybe 15 minutes because the sirens stopped and I was glad to see Les Paul walking around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went to bed Friday night and I tried not to worry too much and asked Kevin to call the vet at 7:30 on Saturday morning when they opened. He said he would, but I woke up at exactly 7:30 so we both started calling. After getting voicemail for 33 calls I finally looked at their website. They didn’t open til 8:30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I tried them back it didn’t take long to speak to somebody. I described his symptoms and they said they didn’t have any availability for the day and we should take him to the Animal Emergency Clinic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clinic used to be about fifteen minutes away but they’ve moved across town. I guess it didn’t take much more than twenty minutes, really, to drive over there but I was just so anxious. Les was lying there in his crate, eyes so dull and I was afraid he was dying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ended up spending a big part of the day there. The vet seemed was nice and knowledgeable and she right away said he was dehydrated. She pulled up the skin on his back and it did stretch alarmingly and I wished I’d recognized that. His gums were also dry. They whisked him away to get some fluid and to do tests, and I sat in the room for a very long time. Eventually they came back and said he didn’t like getting the blood draw so they were going to keep him in the back while seeing what else they needed to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots and lots of waiting. There were two vets working and one was doing an emergency surgery so my vet was incredibly busy and I could hear her rushing in and out of other rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the vet had me go with her to look at his x-ray. He was constipated! I guess that’s why he was dehydrated, or was he dehydrated because he was constipated? They gave him an enema, poor fella. His blood work was all good (better than the blood work I recently had myself), and they did a Thyroid test and that was also good. They did that test because he’s lost a pound since the middle of January which is a lot for a cat. He also has some arthritis in his elbow and his spine which is partly why he was in pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vet asked if I’d like them to do a radiology report and I said, why not. They had to e-mail it off somewhere but it’d be ready in an hour or maybe longer, and they could call with the results. They sent me home with one drug, I can’t remember which one. Shortly after I got home the vet called to say that his radiology report was good, and they wanted to give him some drugs for the pain. Kevin thought it’d be better if they gave him the first dose so Les and I got back in the car and headed out again. This time was so much better because he had that Lester look in his eyes again, and he was sniffing around in his crate and just so alive. Whew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They gave him two shots of painkillers and sent us home with stuff to take. He has to have a pain med and a laxative three times a day, plus pumpkin to that he’ll poop. They gave me a bunch of papers about giving pumpkin to a cat. It said that “some cats think of pumpkin as a treat,” but Lester didn’t feel that way. We did mix it with squeazy treats and got him to eat it that way. We’re taking him to the vet on Thursday and will have many questions for her… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

…Ok, that was written two weeks ago. Since then Les has been flourishing; at first I was an anxious wreck about him, but now we’re in a routine of giving him just a couple of meds a couple of times a day, plus the canned pumpkin mixed with his food. I spend way too much time making sure he’s pooping, but he purrs all the time and tears around the house and sleeps cuddled up next to me and all is good. They don’t know why he’s lost weight but they’ve ruled out pretty much everything bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It made me think about the fact that we’re probably going to outlive our cats, and how hard that is, so I’m trying to focus on how lucky we are to have all of them right now. Even though there are too many of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile…my boat is in the water. The weather has been cold and then in the 80s then chilly, and, well, April-like. I’m sorry to say I haven’t done any yard work yet except for pulling a small amount of the dreaded chameleon plants evil weeds, but I’m pleased that I don’t see so many of them this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a huge list of spring and summer chores but I’m trying to be calm about it. It’ll get done. Meanwhile, Kevin had hist first cataract surgery last week and now one of his eyes is great and he keeps saying “I can SEE!” and “everything is so BRIGHT!” I’m very happy about that. He gets his second eye done next week and then his vision will be unparalleled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now I’m going to go upstairs and sit with Pumpkin, the cat, not the squash, and I’ll bring him down so he can walk around and sniff and hopefully lie around quietly for a while. He’s my other source of anxiety because I hate that he’s sequestered so much and not sure if the other cats will ever be OK with him, but because he’s on Prozac now he doesn’t care about bothering anybody at all. He’s better off than if he were out on the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep breaths. I try to take deep breaths throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s Les looking like he’s posing for a calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok then, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

G.H.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me just start by saying that this story has a good ending…however, I started writing it on Monday April 3rd and I feel like I haven’t sat down since then. This is ridiculous, of course – I have done plenty of sitting, but haven’t managed to carve out time to write. But finally, two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[94],"class_list":["post-20813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-les-paul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-5pH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20813"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20823,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20813\/revisions\/20823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}