New Cat Update - Read To The End For Possible Names!

This is NOT going to be pretty. So if you are eating anything, Ill give you some time to consider your options.

1. Finish eating real quick and keep reading.
2. Come back later, after you are finished.
3. Keep on chugging, cause you have a strong stomach and ketchup bottle analogies will not phase you.

OK so you have decided! Good for you. Now onto the business for the day.

The new cat has been having a problem since day one. That problem is related to poop. It comes out in massive quantities (for her size, new cat weighs only a little over 4 pounds), and in one of two forms. Form one has the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Form two is more like bird crap - stinky liquid ranging from clear to curdled chocolate milk like gross stuff with larger chunks of some really nasty stuff here and there.

You know that sound that a plastic ketchup bottle makes when there is just a little bit of ketchup left so when you squeeze the bottle it makes that splattering sound? Well that is what the new cat sounded like far too often.

And she seems to lack the ability to hold it in. The result - sometimes the poop made it into the litter box, and sometimes not. I was feeding the new cat in an unused bathroom so that the other cats did not eat her kitten food, and the sink got ugly. The cover on the toilet seat lid had to be taken into the back yard and hosed off.

I told you that it may be a good idea to put that chocolate milkshake down!

When she first showed up, I did bring her to the vet. The vet said that sometimes kittens just have soft poop, and it goes away. But it did not go away. It did not even get a little bit better. It just got nasty. And of course she HAD TO be a long haired cat. Talk about dingleberries! The poor little cat had to get multiple baths because of this.

Anyway, I took her back to the vet Tuesday. It was clear to me that whatever the problem was it was NOT getting better. Sometimes the poor cat would just meow and meow and then meow even louder when you picked her up - only for that almost empty ketchup bottle sound to start emanating from the back door accompanied by explosive decompression.

The vet did some more probing. The new cat hated that. When the first probe went in for a shit sample, it got all over the stainless steel table. Houston, we have a problem.

So the new diagnosis is "chronic inflamed bowel syndrome". So what does this mean? Lets pick it apart word for word.

1. Chronic - long lasting.
2. inflamed - inflamed.
3. bowel - shit producing organ.
4. syndrome - malfunction.

The theory is that this condition is caused by some sort of allergy. To what nobody knows. Maybe food. Maybe something in the environment like tree pollen or dust mites. Could be ANYTHING. This is not 100% proven, but from what has been observed it seems like an allergic reaction to something.

The body reacts by producing some sort of cell and sending it to the gut. It has some special name but I forgot what it is. My latin is terrible. Sometimes the white blood cell count is elevated as well. All this causes the intestine wall to become irritated and inflamed which in turn hinders the re-absorption of water from poop. The result - soft serve and mostly liquid poop.

The fact the new cat has a normal temperature (rules out an infection), no signs of parasites, and in the three or four weeks she has been here nothing has improved - all help to strengthen the diagnosis.

So the new cat is on some anti inflammatory drug. Twice a day she gets a pill. Today I have to go back to the vet because her blood test revealed a very high level of white blood cells - which means she needs some other pill. In 10 days she has to go back to the vet for a check up. If the pills do not produce any results, things may get really good. The cat may have to get an endoscope crammed up there and have a biopsy taken of her intestine.

Something funny just occurred to me. Endoscope! Get it? END-o-scope? Cause they stick it up your end? Of course they also stick it down the in hole. But the joke still works! IN-do-scope. Not my best material, Ill have to file this away on my "B" list. Maybe even the "C" list.

Anyhow, my experiment proving there is no such thing as a "free" cat is going well.

I am leaning towards "Cleo" as the new cat's name. I also like Cibs. Get it? C.I.B.S.? Chronic Inflamed Bowel Syndrome? More material for that "C" list!

Notice how I did not include a photo for this post. Now I hope you are still reading cause this is VERY IMPORTANT. A lack of comments will tell me that you WANT to see some photos related to this post.