Day-after-Memorial-Day vacation
Vacation day yesterday. I took my Patches cat to the vet for her annual checkup and vaccination. This is my poor girl with chronic health problems. She has diabetes, which thankfully is under control with special diabetes diet food. She also has has chronic yeast (or something) ear infections (it's like ear mites, but without the mites). I picked up more drops to help with that. She hates getting the drops, but if I use them every so often when it flares up we do okay.
Patches also has a herpes infection in her lungs, which causes a wheezing cough, as well as making her susceptible to chronic colds. It is very frustrating. There is no anti-viral medicine for the herpes, and as long as she has that she'll continue to get chronic upper respiratory infections. I picked up another coarse of antibiotics for the cold. But chances are she'll get another one on a few months.
The vet did give me some l-lysine powder (Viralys) that is supposed to be the best thing to help the herpes. I gave it to all three indoor cats last year, and it did seem to clear up the little bit of coughing that Ki and Polybius had, so I think it does work. But Patches' infection is more persistent. Maybe I just have to keep at both the l-lysine and the antibiotics and maybe it will eventually clear up. Poor thing. Those deep herpes coughs sound just awful.
I am grateful to have a vet now who understands the illness and is compassionate with me about how frustrating it is to try to treat. A previous vet once mis-diagnosed it as an allergy, and told me to give her benedryl when the coughing got bad. The benedryl did stop the coughing, but it also put her to sleep (as if Patches, being a cat, didn't sleep enough).
After I got back from the vet I did some house cleaning. One of the two places in the house where the original 150-year-old wood is still visible is in the bathroom in front of the shower (the other is in the front foyer). As you can imagine, it gets heavy use there, including getting wet. It was looking kind of sad. I washed the wood with Murphy's Oil Soap and then applied wood wax that I recently picked up at Lowe's. Now the wood is a deep warm brown that looks much happier.
That's the most interesting house work I did yesterday. I also cleaned the bathroom sink and toilet, vacuumed the bathroom, dusted the bedroom and living room, and did several loads of laundry.
The sky and wind threatened rain all day, but it never came. Today is cool and breezy, with a bright blue sky. It feels strange to be back at work.
Patches also has a herpes infection in her lungs, which causes a wheezing cough, as well as making her susceptible to chronic colds. It is very frustrating. There is no anti-viral medicine for the herpes, and as long as she has that she'll continue to get chronic upper respiratory infections. I picked up another coarse of antibiotics for the cold. But chances are she'll get another one on a few months.
The vet did give me some l-lysine powder (Viralys) that is supposed to be the best thing to help the herpes. I gave it to all three indoor cats last year, and it did seem to clear up the little bit of coughing that Ki and Polybius had, so I think it does work. But Patches' infection is more persistent. Maybe I just have to keep at both the l-lysine and the antibiotics and maybe it will eventually clear up. Poor thing. Those deep herpes coughs sound just awful.
I am grateful to have a vet now who understands the illness and is compassionate with me about how frustrating it is to try to treat. A previous vet once mis-diagnosed it as an allergy, and told me to give her benedryl when the coughing got bad. The benedryl did stop the coughing, but it also put her to sleep (as if Patches, being a cat, didn't sleep enough).
After I got back from the vet I did some house cleaning. One of the two places in the house where the original 150-year-old wood is still visible is in the bathroom in front of the shower (the other is in the front foyer). As you can imagine, it gets heavy use there, including getting wet. It was looking kind of sad. I washed the wood with Murphy's Oil Soap and then applied wood wax that I recently picked up at Lowe's. Now the wood is a deep warm brown that looks much happier.
That's the most interesting house work I did yesterday. I also cleaned the bathroom sink and toilet, vacuumed the bathroom, dusted the bedroom and living room, and did several loads of laundry.
The sky and wind threatened rain all day, but it never came. Today is cool and breezy, with a bright blue sky. It feels strange to be back at work.