Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Take Your Cat To The Vet Week

Aug. 18-25, 2012, is Take Your Cat to the Vet Week. Jane at Petfinder ran a a blog post about it awhile ago, and it's our work signature message for the month, so it was kind of hard for me to ignore!

Curious, I went leafing through Ivan's medical records and was shocked to see it has been over five full years since his 2007 urinary tract disaster. Actually--horrified. My two veterinarians had performed that surgery on a Sunday when they were closed, for a huge discount (less than $600 for surgery and at least 6 visits) because I could not afford the university hospital. I hadn't even gone back for a "it's been a year, let's check everything out" visit? I felt like a very ungrateful client and a bad cat mom.

I discovered why when I packed Ivan up for his vet visit today at Cornerstone Veterinary Hospital. I forgot he gets desperately car sick. I think he found the veterinarian's poking and palpating and blood-drawing easier to bear than the drive up and back.

He's safely home and happily sleeping in the sun in the catio. His long-expired rabies vaccination has been updated (1-year Purevax, because after all of this I'd hate to lose him to a vaccinate-site sarcoma), and a vial of his blood is being shipped off for testing, just because he's getting to be an old boy. He had a small nodule on his thyroid, and the blood panel will help see if that could be a problem down the road. Heart: great! Teeth: gorgeous! Weight: very good! His urethrostomy looks great as well, and he seems to have good control over urine flow. My veterinarian was pretty much beaming about how well he was doing. She certainly saved his life, and it can also be a touchy surgery.




So there is one less thing for me to worry about. I've been watching my grand old man become a senior cat, feeling guilty that he was not getting the care he deserved. Now I can look at him and just...love him.

2 comments:

  1. Great job by all! I'm glad to know that handsome Ivan is doing so well. :)

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