I can not tell if harley is sick or if her allergies are just worse this year

Other than more frequent sneezing and being a little quieter and a little extra sleepy last week shes acting totally normal

But shes not lethargic. She didn't eat or drink much yesterday but sometimes that fluctuates anyway and shes been eating and drinking just fine today and had been before yesterday except maybe Wednesday but the weather was fluctuating again and allergens were high that day

Its possible shes having a reaction to the carpet cleaner cuz that was in and on my vacuum when I used it Monday (and her symptoms showed up soon after that) and I havent washed my rug so its possible I didn't get all of it back out of the rug after the vacuum spit it out

So im gonna clean my room this week and dust and wash everything and see if that helps

Like she was less sneezey when my mom took her outside earlier than she's been in the house all week (and she spends most of her time in my room)

She was doing yoga

My cat is having her toe amputated on Friday.

There’s been an ongoing mystery about her sudden Extreme Sadness™️ that developed a few weeks before Christmas. When I took her in for the first time I said I thought it was her back foot. She would flick her foot a lot (you know like they do sometimes after using the litter tray if they have a bit of litter stuck in their toes or between their pads?), and when sat up her paw would be slightly raised, she often couldn’t get the leg comfortable when relaxing, and there was, of course, the limp.

The vet said it was her back and offered acupuncture to which I was all 🤔 “I’m sorry what?”, and I asked specifically for them to check her foot, and they did briefly, and said there was nothing wrong with it. So off we went with some more pain meds and instructions to monitor it.

The limp got worse and worse, so back in we go. Different vet (they have lots), who also couldn’t see anything wrong with the foot, who also said it’s her back, and maybe her leg, and said we should do xrays, which she had a couple of days later.

The xrays found nothing. Next option was an mri but they don’t do those there and would have to refer and frankly Peggy was getting very stressed by this point and there was no guarantee it’d find anything, so we opted for more ‘wait and see’ and started her on a new anti-inflammatory tablet alongside her regular gabapentin, with the assumption it was either arthritis or a hidden injury, and multi-modal pain relief was the best option to see if she’d heal. She also had lots of opiate painkillers to take the edge off when she needed it.

I should note, when she came home after the xrays she had developed pain in her front leg (same side) as well. It seems like a different pain though. She holds her leg out a lot, and if she gets a claw caught she howls and cries and growls and hisses in pain. The rest of the time she can walk on it fine. It’s weird.

For two weeks all was going well. The new anti-inflammatory medicine seemed to be working wonders, and every day she got a little bit better. She went from being 10% Peggy at her worst to regularly being about 70% Peggy — a huge improvement.

Then on Friday I saw her spending more time than usual licking that back foot. I took a look and saw she’d licked it bloody and the toe was swollen and nasty. I managed to get her into the vet today, saw someone else different, who said ideally they’d do a biopsy because it’s most likely either infection or a growth, a biopsy will tell them which and if the latter what kind of growth, but considering her age and to avoid multiple anaesthetics he recommended just taking the toe off and sending the whole thing to be analysed. She’ll apparently do just fine without it, and the biopsy would probably come back saying it needed to come off anyway.

So she’s booked in for Friday. She’s had a long-lasting antibiotic jab today that will last two weeks, and if on the off chance it does make a remarkable difference to her toe between now and Friday they might not take it off, but that’s unlikely. At the very least the antibiotic will help avoid infection as a result of her licking while we wait, and will cover her during and after the surgery too.

So it’s been quite a stressful few weeks. Peggy’s on four tablets a day: gabapentin at 8am, 4pm, and 11pm (or thereabouts), and onsior (the antinflammatory) at 8am, and she has a dose of liquid vetergesic in the evening if I feel she needs a little extra help. It’s a full time job trying to look after her!! She’s still a lot more comfortable right now than she was before we started the onsior. She’s laying on me at the moment, which is something she couldn’t do for weeks because it was too painful for her.

To really top everything off, I’m meant to be starting a new job next Monday, and have had to cancel my first couple of days so I can take Peg back for post-op checkups and so on.

Oh, and when the vet felt her back today he said there’s no pain at all and I was silently screaming “ I knEW IT WASNT HER BACK AND I KNEW IT WAS HER FOOT”.

this is gonna get heavy and i might delete or make it private later but i need to vent

content warnings in tag

so today’s a special day right. It’s a personal anniversary for myself, the 22nd of august marks the start of another year of being clean from self harm. Right now, im proud to say it’s the start of my 4th year being clean.

A lot of emotions come up on this day, every year. Things i’ve said to friends before, small rules and boundaries i’ve created for myself for when shit gets real fucking tough mentally. I’m prepared, i know how this dance goes, i know what to expect.

except today i had an exam, and i had to go outside and face the world after not doing that for a good while. An added stress factor i didnt prepare for.

i lost Billie, my cat, in July due to an undiagnosed illness. She was extremely special to me, and i miss her every day. Shit’s been rough, and grief came for me strong today, and i was ignoring the pain bc i had other shit to do. Back when i was a kid and i lost my first cat, my mom told me a story about how the souls of our loved ones come back to visit us as white butterflies. This has always been special to me, and it helped me a lot as a kid. When i lost Checkie a few years back, this story came back to mind. It’s been different with Billie. When we buried Billie, a red admiral butterfly sat around, and sat on my shoulder for a while. I’ve unconsciously been calling them Billie’s butterflies. 

i saw a bunch of those today, and it kept being reminders of how its been a little over a month without Billie now. It kept pushing on the pain of grief. 

Now if you know me you know we have another cat in the house, Minoes, who’s very old but very independent. she’s usually always on time for the wet food we give her every evening.  Except today she wasnt. And she didnt come rushing home like she usually does when i call for her outside. 

I havent had the energy to take Minoes to a vet to do a checkup on her, to avoid a situation like Billie’s. I just havent had the mental brainspace to deal with the possibility of Minoes not being in her best health. I just can’t rn, it’s too much to think about. So when Minoes wasnt showing up, after a day of stress and anxiety and a whole backpack of mental stuff, it just was the last drop and it all came pouring out. 

MINOES HAS SINCE SHOWED UP AND IS AS FINE AS SHE USUALLY IS. SHE ATE AND WENT BACK OUTSIDE, NO PROBLEMS.

its just that everything combined became too much for my brain to handle rn. One of my small rules for myself was i would say ‘goodnight, see you tomorrow’ to Billie. Every. Single. Night. a failsafe for myself, i couldnt leave for good bc i had told Billie i’d see her the next day.

Remembering all this was just a lot for today, and i needed the space to vent.

So I had to spend abt three and a half hours at the emergency vet last night. Hayao's gonna be fine, but looking back now that panic has died down I probably let them charge way too much for stuff that wasnt fully necessary. Long story short, he had an accident on the carpet that made it clear that there was blood in his urine. He's never had issues with marking his territory or peeing in the house before so we rushed him in. The vet started off by telling us he was morbidly obese bc he's 16 pounds at 1.5 years which...no? He's a big breed with a big frame and loose skin. He's got a lil bit of chub on him but we literally just had him at the vet a few weeks ago for a checkup and she said he was only slightly overweight and would easily be back on track if we just adjusted his food rations. Yeah I spoil him but it's Hardly "morbid" territory. The emergency vet also claimed she couldnt get a solid feel of his organs because he was so fat. At which point I was getting annoyed like how dare you call my son morbidly obese i will have you know he is just big furred. And again, our normal vet, who owns ragdolls of her own, has never had a problem here. Sigh. They also gave us a mini lecture and a huge pamphlet on correcting bad behavior and said he's peeing outside the box because he's bored which, also, no? He has literally never done it before, and I think you're missing the point a lil bit if you're more concerned about him peeing on the carpet than the fact that he's peeing blood. In the end we left with inconclusive lab results, some antibiotics, and a very stressed kitty. I'm hoping it's just a uti that we caught early on, bc he wasn't exhibiting any odd behavior before his accident on the carpet and doesn't seem distressed otherwise. He only started acting a bit off just yesterday so hopefully the meds will nip it in the bud. I'm gonna take him in to our usual vet and have her check him over as soon as I can. But yeah. Parenthood.