Happy New Year, Southern Tier! We look forward to another year serving you and your fur-bearing family members. We've been very busy during this holiday season and one of our assistants, Hannah, made a daily diary to give you a taste of what happens behind the scenes here ...
Lennon the miracle cat! Lennon has a condition called FIP which, until recently, was fatal. But now we have a treatment!
Lennon's family was very committed and did everything they could for him. FIP is extremely hard to definitively diagnose, so we were not sure whether or not he had it, but it was the disease that made the most sense. We were on the verge of putting him to sleep and they decided to give treatment (which is very expensive) a shot.
He had a rough time - first he got better, then he got LOTS worse but his family stuck with him and we got him stabilized again. Now it's been a few weeks and he's making steady improvement. Lennon has not been able to walk for about a month but his neurological function is returning, slowly but surely and today he is able to walk with assistance. Go, Lennon, go!!!
Ever wonder what we mean when we say a cat is “making biscuits”? This little baby is here to demonstrate. He’s such an accomplished biscuit maker that he makes them in the air!
Batman is a miracle pup. He was part of the cute litter pictured a few posts ago but he came in the day before the rest of those guys. He was in bad shape. So bad, in fact, that he actually went into cardiac arrest while we were treating him! Thankfully, Tiffany had already gotten his IV catheter in place so the team jumped into action, simultaneously starting chest compressions, placing an endotracheal tube and physically breathing down it, grabbing the crash box and starting CPR medications and hooking up IV fluids. Tiffany, Kaylee, Lily, Hannah and Dr. Gies all working together to save this little guy. AND IT WORKED!
CPR is almost never successful, but Batman pulled through! He was wagging his tail within 10 minutes of having no heartbeat and not breathing. Turns out he was dangerously anemic and our colleagues at Blue Pearl Greater Buffalo were able to bring him the rest of the way to a full recovery within just a couple of days! Sound UP to hear what Batty thinks of his time in the hospital!
Sláinte, Southern Tier, and Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Did you know that the ancient Irish also loved their cats? Here's part of a 1,000 year old poem written in Irish Gaelic by a monk about his cat, Pangur Ban:
I and Pangur Bán, my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O! how glad is Pangur then;
'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I.
(The gif is a cat chasing a mouse from the "Book of Kells")
Little Josie here got into rat poison. There are several different types of rat poison and she got into the kind that makes you bleed. This type is sneaky because there are no symptoms until several days after the poison is ingested, so the symptoms come out of nowhere and have to be addressed immediately or the pet will bleed to death rapidly.
Josie presented in the most typical way - she was bleeding out into her chest cavity. Once we stabilized the bleeding with a plasma transfusion, we performed what is called an "autotransfusion", meaning that we took the blood from her chest and gave it back to her intravenously through a blood filter. We took almost half a liter off just one side of her chest! Here is a video of the autotransfusion in process. Josie is only lightly sedated - she was in pretty bad shape at this point but was wagging her tail by the end of the procedure!
Unfortunately we weren't able to download the video that the family sent the next day, but she's doing great, back to her puppy self :)
Providing care for sick pets in the Southern Tier.
