Betty's Emergency has Ended

The Betty Emergency has ended, today her stitches came out.

She has been allowed complete run of the farm since Friday and she seems hail and hearty.

The E collar was a godsend. That kept her away from her stitches and allowed her to heal. But sadly the Ecollar did not last very long. By tuesday it had gotten broken some how be ause we were allowing Betty to run around in the fenced back yard and while i was not watching she ripped the thing apart. but it was nothing strips of duct tape could not fix. So for two more days she sported the latest in e collar/duct tape fashion before ripping the thing apart again. Since the vet people said she could get her stitches out as early as Friday and she was not bothering them we left it off and we had one happy pup on our hands. Freedom to run and no stupid lampshade thing on her that kept getting in the way of everything.

All in all she was a good patient. Much better than I expected. We did have to stay with her pretty much all the time while she was wearing the e collar or she would do things like rip up carpeting but we live a life where that can be done. And it was hard Friday and Saturday after the emergency surgery. We could not easily stay with her on Friday and get all the stuff done that must be done to prepare for the farmers market. So the solution was to put her on a chain near where i was washing produce in the morning. Early afternoon is always nap time so we could leave her be for 2 hours but than late afternoon both Eugene and I had to get things bagged and bunched and Betty did not want to be alone so we took her to the store which she really disliked.

Saturday was worse because we both went to the market. We had considered one of us staying home but decided we both should go. So we went and got through a cold and windy market. came home and found Betty had chewed up a part of one of the carpets. Bad dog! But we were able to stay with her pretty much all the time for the rest of the time she had to wear the e collar and once that came off she quit being so needy and destructive.

We are very appreciative to all the people who have contributed to the "Betty Fund". This idea came up on Face Book conversation about the Betty Emergency, via Rose Campbell-Blake who commented that people should donate towards paying off Betty's emergency surgery. And what do you know, this has happened and the Betty Fund was born. Betty (and Eugene and me) have way cool friends.

I wish I could say the same about the vet we used. we have not been able to talk to her since the emergency surgery despite having been in there twice. We will not be returning there.

Betty's Emergency

On April 26th we did what both Bob Barker and Drew Carey ask us to do at the end of every episode of The Price is Right-Please spay and neuter your pets. Yes Betty went in to get her ovaries taken out of her body, otherwise known as being spayed.

She came through the surgery A-OK but things started going down hill. We were not issued an E-collar at the time and of course Betty being betty got obsessive about licking her stitches. than she got loose and ran about 1/16 of a mile about 3 days after the surgery and I believe the final straw was Saturday when we were away from home most of the day. She got out of control and destroyed a Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog (she does not know that we have an extra-Ha!), along with chewing on a calendar from 2 year ago and my camera bag (which she did very little damage too other than cosmetic). It was quite the display of anger and frustration. This activity (which I am sure involved running around and other banned activity) I believe popped all the interior stitches, holding the muscle walls together and a bright red wad of fatty tissue started to appear Sunday morning.

Oh no! This is not what you want to see along a suture line. this is something that needs to be dealt with ASAP. And since it was a Sunday we had to take her the Dayton Emergency Vet Clinic. that was an experience i do not want to repeat. that place is depressing as the only people who go there have a life of death situation and not everyone survives these situations. we were lucky, Betty got into surgery as soon as we got there and we got her back by 6pm in much better shape. And with an E-collar



But now we have to make sure she does not do this again which means keeping her quiet and still. She is still in bad enough shape that she does want to sleep a lot but she now feels a lot better and thinks she should be able to run where she wants and do other things that will pop out the stitches again, such as lick the sutures (which she cannot now that she is sporting the latest in E-collar fashion).

Now for the next 2 weeks we have to be with her to make sure she is not hurting herself. She does have separation anxiety which is made much worse by the strangeness and pain of the spay job and that translates into hyperactivity (i.e going ballistic) which can translate into popping out the sutures again. And that translate in a heap of trouble for her.

So this means I have to miss my Niece Carrie graduating from her Masters program at IU this coming Friday and probably I will have to skip market and make Eugene go alone so Betty has company and doesn't hurt herself again.

About the only half way good thing that happened through all this was the fact I had canceled a FSI pot lick dinner due to bad weather (which got really bad around 5pm through midnight-lots of rain and some wind-not conducive to an out door event). We were in no shape to hold a social event. hell, we weren't even home at 6pm when I told people to come over as we were in Dayton picking her up.

Hopefully things will get better from here on

Stewie Update

Okay Stewie as I mentioned sprayed the house (but i got all the smell out of everything) so he was banished to the barn. Last Monday we had a vet appointment to get his nuts neutralized. he had to be at the vet's by 9am. So at 8 am we go out to look for him in the barn. cannot find him. 8:30am comes, still cannot find the damn cat. 8:45 comes, still no Stewie. I go in the house, call the vet and cancel the appointment. they say when we catch him bring him in and they will put him in a cage and de-nut him the following day. Cool.

I, having called the vet, give up on the Stewie search and start dealing with tomato seedlings. Eugene has not given up on the Stewie search and at 8:55am catches him and crams the cat into the pet carrier. Stewie is pissed off majorly by this state of affairs.

We take cat to the vet drop him off, run some errands in Richmond, IN and go home. Call the vet and are told the cat is staying over night and we can get him the following day. This is good because we have lots of farm work to do and having to spend 45 minutes going to the vet and back home would have put a wrench into the works.

the next day we get over to the vets early afternoon, pick up the cat. Pay them money. The vets say "boy he'll be happy to get home" I say "but as far as he is concerned he is not going home". Stewie is glaring at us through the bars on the door of the pet carrier. He is not happy about anything

We take him home, put him in the barn open the door to the cage and after sitting there for a minute, gets up and slinks away. We have not seen him since. but we know he is there because he is still liberally spraying the barn. The only good I can see here is the stink will keep mice, rats and other rodents out of the barn.

I wonder if Stewie will ever warm up to us or if he is so perpetually mad at us and his situation that he will be the phantom barn cat.


The lesson is never ever get an unfixed sexually mature male cat via FreeCycyle.

Feline Woes

We still have had virtually no rain.

Navin, my oldest cat is sick with something stuck in his trachea. He has been wheezing and retching as if he has a hairball from Hell stuck down there. He has been to the vet once and is going back this morning for X-rays and probably an extraction of whatever is stuck in his throat (a feather? a Bone?). This whole cat affair has been extremely worrisome to me as I have had Navin since he was 4 weeks old and we are tightly bonded. I also has been hard to sleep with the cat sitting next to me on the bed wheezing and hacking all night. At least this is not likely to be fatal (he does have to be anethesized and there is some risk in that with a 15 year old feline, no matter how healthy the cat is) like Feline Leukemia or FIP would be. I am hoping they find the problem quickly and remove it so in a day or two Navin is back to his old, non wheezing ornery self.