Misty Grey

I brought Misty in because she was almost due for her rabies vaccination and I wanted to get in on time so I could get her the 3-year one instead of one year.  The county I live in apparently requires me to send in a copy of the paperwork and $15 to get a tag that shows she is vaccinated, so I’ll be putting that into the mail tomorrow.

While we were there her doctor took the opportunity to give her a good look over and make sure all is ship shape.  She looked at the bulgy area on Misty’s neck – seems to be just fat, but let’s keep an eye on it and don’t worry unless it seems to be getting bigger. Misty’s been scratching at her left ear a lot so I made sure to have her take a peek, and sure enough there was gunk in there. They took a sample and it was an infection – yeast. This is what Misty was suffering from when she was first diagnosed with food allergies a few years ago. Boy did Misty’s back paw go when they were digging out a sample! Poor girl, it must be so itchy!

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Some back story here (cue the time travel music): Years ago I brought her in because her ears were clearly painful – she would scratch at them vigorously and cry, and when I was petting her she would flinch if my hand bumped her ear, and even run away and hide. At the vet they found that her ears had gunk in them, and so they started the months-long process to get then cleaned up (once it was diagnosed as NOT ear mites, which she apparently had at first too and so we thought it was all being caused by them).

The vet dosed both her ears with a sticky goo called BNT, which is anti microbial and works against both yeast and bacteria.  We had to go back every two weeks for another dose of BNT, and when it was finally cleaned up they could see that underneath it all the tissue in her ears was inflamed. Apparently this is a common way in which food allergies manifest. So,  they gave us some prednisolone (easy easy to feed to her because she LOOOOVES treats and I just wrapped the pills) and some stuff to continue to cleansing of her ears (two times a day in each ear, and NOT easy at all because even on a good day she is not fond of liquid being put into her ears). The first  ear medicine caused her to pull the fur out all around her ears where it dripped, and we were getting it all over me of course, and it bothered my skin too (Zymox, and my problem was caused because it contains propylene glycol which I have found out the hard way makes my skin itch and burn), so they gave us something different (TrizUltra + Keto) and prescribed hypoallergenic food (Royal Canin rabbit formula).

Her ears got better but she has been on the hypoallergenic food ever since. She started to get bored with eating the same thing all the time, so I’ve had to be creative in finding ways to keep it interesting for her.  I bought a frozen rabbit from the butcher and cooked it just like a chicken in the slow cooker, then pulled it off the bone and froze it in many tiny pieces.  I take out a few at a time and let them defrost as treats for her. And now and then I try adding something back into her diet.

Cue music for time travel back to the present.

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Apparently something I gave her recently must have been enough to trigger her allergy again. I hope maybe it was the canned food that I offered her a couple weeks ago that she didn’t seem to like (first time EVER in HISTORY). I gave it other and she sniffed it and didn’t eat it, instead she came back to me and begged for more.  I gave her some treats and she ate them and then ate the food.  However she threw up later (I blamed it on her drinking too much water too fast out of the bathroom sink), and the next day she wouldn’t eat the food.

Anyway so we came home today with more TrizUltra (plus Revolution and her rabies paperwork). So she got her dose of revolution, and then the ear stuff. No fun, she still managed to catch me on the thumb with one claw, but once I got the cleaner into her ear and started massaging it around, she relaxed. I let her got and she shook it out (all over me but hey I deserve it since I’m the one that put it into her ear to begin with, right?). She found an afternoon sunbeam to curl up in and I followed her with some treats and the towel.  She graciously accepted the treats and allowed me to wipe the side of her head where it dripped. She started purring before I was even done, and put one paw on my leg – it must feel better already for her to forgive me THAT fast.  She hasn’t moved from her spot since, even though the sunbeam is gone.