I finally finished the tapestry of Iggy – about five years after I bought it! Hugely pleased with it, and its lovely frame done by Images Framing of Anlaby. It’s now hung opposite the living room door, so I see it whenever I walk into the room.
I do miss that cat …
Original post here.
Mirrored from the Tribe.
One last photo of my much loved Iggy, innabox. Those golden pears survived, and are hanging above the fire.
I still miss him dreadfully, but I deal with it - I don’t go to look out the window for him thirty times a day, or keep listening for his distinctive rowl. But I was slightly overcome in Morrisons this week, when confronted with packs of mixed nuts in their shells. Neither P nor I eat nuts, but we always bought a pack for Igpuss, who liked to fish them out of their bowl and bat them round the room. Such little things undo us …
The rest of the Tribe are well and happy, and P is adamant that there will be no more kittens for a while, so we shall continue with a Gang of Four for the time being.
So we all wish you the compliments of the season, and may your cats be gifted with dew kissed baby grouse in 2013.
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We haven’t seen Iggy since Friday. More worryingly, we haven’t heard him, which is very unusual; he’s a vocal cat, and calls a lot when he’s out and about. I went over and spoke to Kath and Frank this morning, and they haven’t seen him either, and Frank has been out looking for him.
Also, to add fuel to our fears, the other cats have been slightly out of sorts. I’m convinced that cats sense far more than we give them credit for, and so … do they know what’s going on? Do they just miss him?
In any event, I’m close to giving up hope. He’s old, ill and in pain, and perhaps he just gave up and took himself off somewhere. But the not knowing is very hard.
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As I mentioned, Iggy is spending a lot of time away from home, and yesterday my suspicion is confirmed. The elderly couple over the road are feeding him. I went over yesterday while Kath was in her front yard, and asked them not to do it any more, explained that he was quite ill and we needed him to come home for his medication, and that we’d spent £90 at the vet last week, which was a bit of a waste if we couldn’t actually get him home for pills.
“Oh” she said. “We thought you didn’t want him any more.” Which is just a bloody *nonsense*, isn’t it? They knew where we live, they knew where Iggy lived, and they must have heard us call and call him, and even pick him up from their front step. I do wish people wouldn’t feed other folks’ cats … Anyway, they say they won’t any more, but I’m not sure I actually believe them.
On the same subject, we’re not seeing much of Lilith at the moment either. Now, we know she has a penchant for, shall we say, sharing her favours – see this entry - so we weren’t too worried, although we do miss the vile baggage when she’s not around. The other night I woke up about 3.a.m, to see her sitting on Pete’s chest of drawers. I actually woke him to see her, as I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a dream, and he clearly remembered the next day.
Lo and behold, last night she burst through the cat flap, completely wired. Wouldn’t let us even touch here, looking completely feral. We gave her a pouch of wet food (a rare treat in this house, as they are fed on bikkit, mostly), and she positively ravened it down. She’s gone again now, but at least we know she’s OK, and she’ll be home when the weather turns. But I might do a bit of leafleting and ask people not to feed her, please.
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A chap really doesn’t want to be at home at the moment, and we don’t see him much. Whenever I can, I grab him and he gets fed a pill wrapped in chickie! (and the others all get chickie! too, obviously), but he’s nowhere near his full dose of kidney medication.
Our feeling was that the arthritis is getting worse – he seems to be spreading his back toes, perhaps to better take the weight, and I think he’s roaming his turf for his last summer; I know that sounds mawkish, but …
Anyway, out of kidney pills and horse medication, I managed to catch him yesterday and put him in the cat box, then phoned the vet for an appointment. Fortunately they had one in 15 minutes time, and so we bundled him into the car and took him over to Sarah. She confirmed what we thought; he’s getting worse. Which is inevitable, of course – he can’t get *better* from what he has. She agrees with us; we shall endeavour to keep him comfortable as long as we can, but that’s it.
So if a chap wants to roam the Dukeries, who am I to stop him? I’d rather have him home safe, but his desires come first.
Cost: £91.95 yesterday. I daren’t add it up :)
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A few people have (very kindly) enquired as to how Igpuss is doing on his new regime and, to tell the truth, we don’t know.
He was doing absolutely great on the two injections a week for his arthritis, and then as soon as we dropped him to one a week, as directed, it all seemed to go bad again. Also, it didn’t help that he decided that he’d really not have the jabs after all, thankyouverymuch, which means he has to be stalked and stabbed while he’s asleep.
We’ve settled on one every five days for now, which seems to be helping him, and see if we can stretch it out over time.
In other news, Henry has a cold, and is spluttering and sneezing all over the place, but he’s still eating, so I don’t worry too much.
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We took Iggy back to Chants Vets Monday before last – 6 Feb, for them to look at his mouth. Sarah was very pleased with his progress, and said to bring him back in ten days so we could look at the options for treating his osteoarthritis. Pete and I do both feel that this is getting worse quite quickly :(
The standard treatment feline arthritis is Metacam, but it is a steroid, and thus not great for cats with impaired kidney function – yes, he has this too. She asked us, carefully, if we would prefer him to live a longer life, or a shorter and happier one without pain. It seems extraordinary to me that anyone would give the former answer, and of course we didn’t. But we are first going to try something called Adequan, which is some sort of magic potion which miraculously grows cartilage back (no, I don’t really understand it either). It was developed for horses, and is not actually licensed for use on small animals in the UK, so we had to sign a release form. The downsides are a) it’s £60 for a 5ml phial (!), but he will be on one 0.2ml dose per week in a couple of months (two a week for four weeks, then one a week for four weeks, then one a month), and that – oh dear lord – it has to be injected. We can hardly wait, especially as he was extremely displeased to be given his first dose (by the vet) today. Kevlar gloves may be required.
We’re also starting him on Benzacare today, which is used for the treatment of chronic renal insufficiency in cats. These pills claim to be palatable. We shall see. Half a 5mg tablet daily; perhaps we should keep an ambulance and a blood bike on standby … The vet gave us 3.5 pills, i.e. a week’s worth, and charged £6.81. She is perfectly happy to give us a prescription, so I have sourced them online, at £17.99 for 28, which seems rather better to me. It seems impossible to buy the Adequan except in packs of 5, at about £250 or more, so I don’t think we’ll bother.
We should know within the month if Adequan helps his arthritis, and if it doesn’t, we’ll have to put him on Metacam, with the risk that carries. Ho hum.
Cost today: £87,50. And I have to buy a load of syringes and needles, and we now have a sharps disposal bin in the house!
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Iggy has been suffering from pain in his hips/back legs for a little while; it seemed to come and go, but on Friday we determined we would take him to the vet this week, and so fetched one of the cat baskets out of the loft while we were getting some other stuff down.
We were away for a couple of days, and when we got back, he seemed quite miserable, and wanted a lot of company, so I phoned for an appointment this morning. As he sat on the stool in the kitchen, I said to Pete that his mouth looked a bit … crumpled, and we wondered if he’d had a mini stroke or something.
Anyway, off we trundled to Chants Vets, and explained why we’d brought him. Sarah said he would need an X-ray under anaesthetic, but obviously wanted to have a general look at him. She went to open his mouth, and he really didn’t want her to. I held him while she managed to take a look and, to our horror, his mouth was in a dreadful state; he had a hard lump in there, and there was no question but it would have to be properly investigated. She said it might be an abscess, but it might also be a tumour, and if it were the latter, it would almost certainly be kinder to not let him come round from the operation.
We came home about 10.30, and just waited. They phoned about 1, and said they’d done a blood test which showed his kidney function was a bit poor, but that really they had to go ahead with the operation, he couldn’t be left as he was. I phoned at 2, and was told he was still in the theatre, and phoned again at 3.30 as instructed, to find he was out, and could be collected at 6.
Along we trundled, to find that all four canines had broken (one of which was causing the abscess), and had to be removed, two other molars ditto, and several small incisors. We have an opiate-based painkiller for him, and he has to go back in a week to see what to do about the kidney function, and the arthritis – our options on the latter are a little limited due to the former, but there are several options. We were warned that he probably would have little appetite today, and to try and tempt him.
Cost today: £525 (ouch), and we will be paying for various treatments for him for the rest of his life. And the chap is worth every penny. He’s now sitting in front of the stove, which we lit before we went out so that it wold be properly warm for him, and it’s exceedingly nice to have him home, given that we thought he might not come back at all … Oh, and his first action on coming out of the cat basket was to wander into the kitchen for some ham, and then to the bikkit bowl :)
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The weather has become quite seasonal here, after a late flurry of warm weather, and we’re noticing a distinct increase of Cat in the house. Here is an unseemly heap on the chair in the bedroom, with Mustrum protesting slightly underneath Iggy and Ron. The heap inhabitants remained unchanged most of the day, although the positioning did alter from time to time.
There were two cats – Henry and Mustrum – on the bed when we woke this morning, and more cats are predicted in this position. They haven’t actually noticed that the stove is being lit yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
It’s so nice to see Iggy in again – we’ve barely set eyes on him this summer, poor old man. I do fear he’s not going to see another winter after this one …
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I’ve recently taken up tapestry once more, and am currently finishing off an aubergine by Kaffe Fassett. Next up, I’m going to do this one, which I’ve already ordered. Don’t you think the resemblance is uncanny?
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Iggy loves the slow cooker because it is warm, and there is an old padded jiffy bag beside it for a chap to rest his old bones.
Today there is a whole chickie! in the slow cooker, which means that he is even more determined to maintain his station. If he works out how to get the lid off, we’ll have no chicken for our supper …
Still, warmth *and* chickie! FTW, as far as he’s concerned.
[For the sake of accuracy, this photograph was taken when the slow cooker was dealing with some lentils]
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We live in an urban jungle here – (biggish) Victorian terraced houses, with alleys and runs between the back yards. The spotty boys have found it hard to settle into this new environment, and Iggy in particular is not very happy with his lot; he’s never liked change, and this was hard for a 13 year old chap to bear.
He’s making it his home, though – I’ve just spent five minutes watching him through the window, while he decided where he wanted to go. He was sitting on a wall, preparatory to jumping onto a flat roofed extension, and it was fascinating how he looked, judged, then moved backward a smidge, rinse and repeat, until the distance was perfectly judged and he leapt, landing light pawed on the roof.
He didn’t stay there long, probably because the window was closed (none of the Tribe have ever been particular about whose house they visit, or indeed eat in), so he moved along to the next roof, and did the same thing before landing on someone’s shed.
We can observe a fair bit of the secret life of the neighbourhood cats from up here – it’s endlessly fascinating.
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We were out for the day yesterday, and this is the sight that greeted us when we got home.
I wondered if perhaps Iggy was behaving a little like Greyfriars Bobby, and was loyally awaiting our return, but I suspect the truth is more prosaic, and it was just a relatively cool place to be on a very hot day.
He sang us a lovely rowling welcoming song, though.
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I think they were protesting our culpability at letting it rain outside at this point. That and the utterly inadequate and, what’s more, inedible supplies of food downstairs.
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We have a large bedroom here, with two tall, south facing windows, so the sun streams in there during the day (when it shines at all, of course). We set a chair that is very like, but is not, an Ikea Poang by one of the windows – it’s a nice quiet place if one of us wants to read or listen to music. And we assumed that the Tribe would love the chair, and bask in it during the sunlit afternoons.
But no – they never went near it, not even when I put one of their cat rugs on it.
I try very hard not to dump stuff on the chair, but a few days ago I left my swimming bag on there. And the next morning, when I got up, I most definitely didn’t see Iggy and Lily on the chair. No sirree Bob. Nor, at various times, have we seen Ron on the chair, or Mustrum (curiously, Henry has really not been seen on it). Iggy and Lily are on it now, in fact – they have spent every night on there since the bag arrived.
We can only assume that they’re now using it because it’s no longer clearly *meant* for them – ornery creatures, cats.
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We are due to go to Leeds this afternoon – we have tickets for a Show of Hands gig (yay!), and are also going into Ikea to pick up a few bits (yay! meatballs!).
However, we did wonder last night whether we might have to cancel … Ron wasn’t too well – he was doing an odd thing with his mouth, clicking his teeth and shaking his head; we think he had something caught in his throat. He hurtled through to the food bowl and ravened when we put fresh meat down, though, so I tried not to worry. And this morning, he seems heaps better.
It set me thinking though. We’ve had to cancel a fair few Outs due to cats:
Odd how these memories stay with you …
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We’ve been worried about Iggy since we arrived here in Hull last November; after his four day walkabout, he was clearly unhappy with his environment, and displayed evidence of same. He lived mostly either in the bathroom or the kitchen, rarely setting a paw in the bedroom, living room or study. He absolutely hated the snowy weather too.
But now there are signs of spring in the air, and there’s a most definite change in the chap. He’s going out a lot (although he much prefers for me to open the front door, rather than use the cat flap), is spending time in the bedroom where the sun streams in – when it’s shining, of course – and generally being more Iggyish.
I took the above photo on Tuesday from the study window – he’s on the wall of the back yard of the house over the way, he’d faced down another cat and was quite clearly reasonably pleased with life. I’m so pleased that he’s settled down at last.
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We had to take Iggy and Mustrum to the vet this morning – they are going to have to go into a cattery for a few days in a while, and so they needed some jabs.
They don’t like cat carriers. They don’t like cars. They don’t much like being indoors at all when the weather is nice, which it is, so we felt that the whole episode was going to be fraught. But actually, it went remarkably well.
I went down to the bottom of the back garden and did the “iggy” cry, which is a particular tone of voice that means waffer thin ham might be in the offing, and that brought him in – a trail of ham then neatly led him into the carrier and the door was firmly shut.
Then I went out the front (Mustrum’s stomping ground) and did the same thing, and it worked again! I bet I’ll have to think of a new strategy the next time.
We conveyed them to Vim, who checked their teeth (not many, but fine), general health, and weighed them – they both weigh 5.1 kgs, which makes them fairly substantial chaps. Nice to know they’re in rude health.
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Next door is having their extension refettled – this is an irritating process, given we work in the room just above where it’s being done, but no matter. Steve the builder is fascinated by the cats, and the other day when I went out, he said “that golden one’s caught a bird”.
This seemed unlikely, to be honest – Iggy has never been much of a one for hunting, and he’s a bit of a creaky old man these days, but Steve the builder was emphatic. And indeed, Iggy was under the patio table with an unfortunate ex-bird. Apparently he moved “very quickly”.
Having caught the bird, he didn’t seem quite sure what to do next. No matter, really, as the thieving Ron nicked it out from under Iggy’s paws, and had it away on his toes.
Not really the sort of behaviour we would wish for, you might think, and you’d be right. Ron scampered around the garden with it firmly clenched in his jaws for a bit, while we failed to retrieve it (as usual). Eventually he reappeared without it, so we assume it was scoffed.
He really is a dreadful beast.
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