Little Pennywhistle

We had a rough weekend last weekend. Little Pennywhistle, who seems to get more blog time than Maltie, and whose name is just Pennywhistle but somehow I always call her Little Pennywhistle, had to take a few trips to the Pet ER.

Thursday evening I came home to a little 'treat' on the living room floor. I wasn't too concerned as it happens on occasion. However, Friday I came home to multiple piles of 'treats'. I was starting to get a little concerned. Several hours later, and halfway into a Lost catch up episode, and after having noticed that it was 55 degrees in the apartment and that the furnace had stopped working, Pennywhistle started emesising and howling in pain. It was 10:30 on a Friday night (um, yeah, I have a REALLY exciting social life), new to the area and not knowing any vets, I was a little frantic.

I finally found an emergency clinic. I stayed until about 12:30 while they did a few xrays on her and then they kept her over night.

The next day I collected her about 1:30 in the afternoon. She seemed worse than the night before. Wobbly and weak and hair all matted. Maltie went on the attack the minute we came home. Animals are not kind in the face of illness.

For the next 12 hours I worried and fretted. Come bedtime, I couldn't sleep and would get up at the smallest sound to see if she was still okay. The 3:00 a.m. check and it was 50 degrees in the apartment and she was huddled up on a box along an outside wall. I put a towel over her hoping to help her keep warm. 8:00 a.m. I brought her back to the ER again.

Having grown up on a farm, I have a great love and respect for animals, but I also don't believe in spending large sums of money on pets. animals are animals. humans are humans. All weekend long I was contemplating what my price threshold was and what illness I was willing to treat and which I were not.

The second check-in the vet sat with me and asked, "is there a possibility she could have eaten a foreign object?" A possibility? Oh, it's a certainty. I am always having to pull plastic and string from her mouth. I try to hide these non edibles but she hunts them out! They did an ultrasound and knew that it was something lodged in her stomach. He didn't ask, so much as told me, they were prepping for surgery. So I guess I was glad that I didn't have much choice in saying "yes" or "no" to the procedure.

She was able to come home Monday evening. Almost a week later, after hand feeding her yogurt and wet cat food and struggling to shove antibiotics into her, she is starting to put a little weight back on. She's not as wobbly and can now jump into my bed, but can't yet make her higher perches. Maltie has stopped hissing at her. And my landlord did get the furnace back on so the apartment is now warm again.

The one 'good' thing that came out of the weekend was that I was able to get completely current on Lost as we head into the final season.