we went to see the veterinarian today. the cats were very good during the visit, especially Sonar who had a lot of stuff done to him.
we started by talking about harvey's weight, which i had worried would be somewhere in the 20-25 lb range. But it turns out Harvey hadn't gained any weight at all since last year when he weighed 17 lbs. So that was a relief. nevertheless, 17 lbs is still overweight, so the doc prescribed some special diet food for harvey. I need to continue with providing closely-monitored quantities of food.
the doc then asked if there were any other concerns, and i mentioned that harvey sometimes weezes or sounds like he has snot in his nose. she said it could just be harvey's asthma acting up or some allergies that might be triggering the asthma. Or it might just be hairball. Doc prescribed some hairball medicine and showed me how to administer it by squeezing this gel onto her finger, sticking her finger into harvey's mouth and then scraping it off against the roof of his mouth. Harvey immediately starts licking/clucking as he instinctively wants to get that weird gooey stuff off the roof of his mouth.
that was about it for harvey.
When it was Sonar's turn, i warned the Doc that Sonar did not like being held. I had not been able to hold him long enough to trim his claws, so I asked if she could do it for me. She actually did a pretty good job keeping sonar calm for the first 6 toes, but then sonar began to get squirmy and a veterinary technician had to be called in to help with the remaining toes.
I had also asked her to help me clean his ears, which i noticed had quite a bit of dirt buildup in them. That required the vet tech's help, too, as sonar began to get sick of being held down and having his ears poked with a Qtip.
In terms of weight, Sonar did even better than harvey. Sonar lost about a half of a pound since last year. He now weighs about 11 lbs.
By the end of the visit, i had remembered that I wanted to have both felines microchipped. As they were microchipping harvey, they discovered that he already had one in him! I think this kinda caught the doctor off-guard and may have made her wonder if I had stolen Harvey. No way, Harvey has an anti-theft system. plus he's so heavy, he's unsteal-able.
anyway, the visit went relatively well and we got a lot of stuff done (especially with Sonar). I'm always relieved when the vet doesn't find anything wrong with my cats.
-dad
