welcome to camp telophase

Had to take our older cat, Sora, to the imaging center for thyroid scanning today in preparation for the full iodine treatment in a couple of weeks. Our little ball of anxiety was Not Happy.

He’s home safe, though his hind legs aren’t obeying orders properly just yet. And I’m now stuck on the bed because he shoved his head up my sleeve and fell asleep. XD I don’t want him trying to climb up my desk to get to me and hurting himself, and sleep is the best thing for him right now, so this is my life now.

Pictures when I’m able to get to a computer and post them.

The people on our north side sold their house and the new owners are moving in today. Although the house is on the side where we don't have any windows open, Sora is stressing over the noise. Every so often a truck drives up, and people walk around outside, and Sora hears it and growls and just in every way expresses that he Does Not Approve.

Or, at least, he was doing this all morning, in between bouts of soliciting Toby for catnip (something that occupies his brain for most of the day, every day). He fell asleep in a sunbeam about half an hour ago and has barely twitched an ear since then.

Here he is, doing what he best loves to do in the morning: waking me up by sitting on my chest, purring, and placing his paws on my face.

Sora is over the cold he had last week. We took the cats in to the vet yesterday for their annual checkup and vaccinations, which took a toll on Toby as Sora scratched the shit out of his hand when we were wrangling him into the carrier. We'd given him a kitty tranq an hour or so beforehand, but it hadn't made any difference. Sora was much calmer at the vet, and they suggested giving it to him 2 hours beforehand, as it takes longer with some cats.

Sora's got a heart murmur. :/ The vet says it can be caused by stress, and he was obviously very stressed, or by congestive heart failure, heartworms, or other things. If it's heart failure, that can be managed. The vet took blood and it's going for tests, so we should know in a few days if it's CFS or something else.

Anyway, Nefer's going to have to go in for a teeth cleaning at some point in the next few months, but that's about it for her. Her heart is perfectly fine (the vet let me listen to both Sora and Nefer's hearts with her stethoscope, so I could hear the difference).

Sora has been VERY LOVING and POSSESSIVE now after his TRAUMATIC DAY. He spent last night glued to me, and when Nefer jumped up on me in the wee hours of the morning, he chased her off the bed (not before she got some scritching, at least).

Sora isn't feeling too well, we think (I posted yesterday that he has a cold, and he's sneezing everywhere). Toby reported that Sora opened the closet door in the spare bedroom, slunk into there and curled up on the spare mattress pad we have on the floor (I have no idea why it's there), and stayed there all afternoon. Toby gave him a couple of Pill Pockets, and he ate those, so he's not off his feed too badly, and when I got hom, he let me scratch behind his ears and under his jaw.

He's still in the closet, but we've caught him slinking out a couple of times since I got home. He doesn't really want to be petted, so our best guess is that he just feels like shit and doesn't want attention, but he's feeling good enough to come out when everything is very quiet.

Our plan is to keep an eye on him and see how he's looking tomorrow morning, and decide whether or not to take him in to the vet then.

ETA; Shortly after I posted this, he crept into the room, then eventually jumped on top of my chair and started to come down onto my chest...then sneezed a bunch of times in a row and scared himself and jumped off. So I guess he's feeling a bit better?