Keeping On

Cattyhop as a very very ill kitten.
The six sick kittens, one of them Cattyhop. That's her in the far back.
Cattyhop with Dex.
Cattyhop adores Miss Daisy.
Catty used to bully Electra then discovered she loves her.

The daily drudge yesterday included the discovery my car is leaking oil.

I determined the oil filter to be the source of the leak and made a late trip to Napa Auto Parts to get a new filter and four quarts of 5-30 wt oil. The car takes 3.6 qts with filter change.

I am hoping the gasket just failed on that filter. I changed the oil, which was quite dirty. I try to change it every 5000 miles as the owners manuel suggests, but I have not really kept up faithfully. Air filters now cost close to $20. On my model car, even those are a pain in the butt to change.

I got the oil and filter changed in a matter of 15 minutes, maybe 20. It's a messy yukky job, but at least it doesn't take much time.

I'm hoping that had something to do with the way it was running the last couple of days. Not enough oil had leaked from the filter to even show the level as low on the dipstick prior to changing, however. Just some drips. It was a little on the loose side. I can't remember when I changed it last. Might have been about a year ago. Oh boy.

Catthop, who suddenly lost weight last spring, whom the vet thought might have cancer, then gained again during the summer and was doing fine I thought until about a week ago, when again she began a rapid weight loss. I brought her inside two days ago, and have been giving her fluids and babying her and she will have to go back to the vet. Her left kidney feels the size of a marble. That isn't good I don't think. I hope she is not in kidney failure.

She's always had kidneys that felt way too small to me, but I'm not a vet and, as one vet told me, if they work for her, then don't worry about it. I tend to worry about such things, even if no problem has resulted. But now she's having trouble. Back to the vet.

Cattyhop comes from what I called the Slaughterhouse colony. An old woman feeding strays from her trailer and she lives near a slaughterhouse, hence the colony name. I was there to trap adults for her, to take to a Salem FCCO clinic, that's how long ago it's been, because I have not been to a Salem FCCO clinic for years and years. Instead of trapping adults, I caught kittens, about six of them, all with squirting diarrhea. Oh, what a mess that was. The vet could find nothing in their stool. I lived in that shack over in Corvallis and having such kittens in my tiny bathroom was not easy.

The vet finally recommmended I get some Science Diet tartar control dry food, break it up with a hammer, since the pieces come in large balls, and try that. She said she'd had luck stopping diarrhea in cats with Science Diet tartar control. And boy, it worked, too. They also tested negative for FIV/Felk. I was able to adopt all of them out but Cattyhop. Two kittens who looked exactly like her went to one McMinnville woman who just loves them. I ran into her again a couple years after she adopted them. Both also were bobtails like Cattyhop.

I believe Cattyhop is five years old. Too young to be in kidney failure, but she might be. Too young to have cancer, but the vet last spring who saw her is kind of like a cat whisperer, I think, or a psychic. He may be right. Lymphoma is so hard to find in a cat if in the digestive tract with tests before the end.

Update: Catty seems to be doing better, now well rehydrated. She has a nasal drip going on, and may have gone downhill fast, with a cold that doesn't show in sneezing or eye drainage, by becoming dehydrated. Doesn't take long with cats. She's back to eating and I'm still giving her fluids twice a day, large amounts. She is peeing normally and normal color. So, am hoping for the best.