Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Delia



I took Delia to the vet a short while ago. She's the cat on the right in the picture. On the left is William, her old buddy, who died a few months ago now. Delia is the queen these days. She's about 15 years old. Delia has only been to the vet's a scant few times in her life because she makes such a dramatic production out of it. She hates to be confined and she most of all hates going to the vets. True to form, today she saw the cat carrier and figured she was the one. She stayed 20 feet away from me....until of course I brought out a bag of cat treats and offered them to the others. Then jealous old D came over for hers. I grabbed her and tried to quickly get her in the carrier before her first line of defence, but she was fast and spread out her legs so they wouldn't fit in and showed me how sharp her claws really were. I managed to get her in, after which she howled like I was torturing her all the way to the vet's office.

In the vet's office, she was a different cat. She was quiet, polite, let the vet do whatever she wanted to do. You go figure. The reason I took Delia in is that there has been blood in her stool recently. She has been otherwise OK, although over the past couple years, she's lost a little weight. Blood in her stool can apparently be caused by a number of things including parasites (if that's the case, all the cats get treated), an inflammatory bowel disease, or possibly even a nasty cancer. The vet took some blood and I'm going to gather three days of feces samples and we'll test everything and see what's what. Her physical exam was OK. She has a bit of a heart murmer, but everything else looks OK. Even her teeth were not bad for her age. Let's hope it's nothing too serious.

5 comments:

Wandering Coyote said...

I don't think I met Delia...She's such a gorgeous tabby!

Barbara Bruederlin said...

I hope all goes well for her! My cat is so rude to the vet, that she has to wear leather gloves to handle her and wrap her up in a towel.

mister anchovy said...

WC - Delia usually doesn't appear to people unless they visit regularly and she's comfortable with them. She's quite shy with strangers.

L.M. said...

Delia & I had an instant rapport when we met. I grabbed her and she went totally ballistic.

(I love her the best, but I'm sure she'd prefer that I didn't)

sp said...

Poor Delia. The vet trip is so traumatic. It's funny how they can behave once at the vet. I think it's a good sign if she remained calm through the exam. The vet is obviously good with cats. I guess Delia figured she'd just endure it by staying calm.

I hope it's nothing serious.