Coated With Fur: A Blind Cat's Love

by Kristen Nelson

  “Your family will be here soon to take you home, handsome,” Allie whispered to him. He leaned his entire body against the gate for more scratching. “You are such a goof, Goliath.” She smiled and petted him one more time. “I’ll be back when we finish surgery.”

  While Allie prepped for surgery, I updated Stephanie on Bianca’s condition. Bianca had urinated on her own this morning. All Kim had to do was hold her up to keep her weight off the broken bones in her pelvis. Unfortunately, she hadn’t defecated since the accident three days ago. If she didn’t go soon, we would have to give her an enema, something none of us cherished. Stephanie and I brought Bianca outside for another try. Stephanie was sure that Bianca would go while she was there.

  I placed her on the grass, letting her stand by herself on her front legs while holding her back legs off the ground. Bianca looked around and sniffed the air.

  “Bianca, go poopy,” Stephanie encouraged her. I turned my face to the side, trying to hide my laughter. I didn’t expect to hear that word come out of her mouth. Bianca urinated, but refused to do anything else. A deflated look spread across Stephanie’s face. “Will she ever be normal again, Dr. Nelson?”

  “Of course, Stephanie. Please remember that she’s only three days post the accident. We have to be patient and give her time to heal.” I let Bianca sit in the grass while I stroked her face. “She’ll be following you around again in no time.” Stephanie forced a smile. My words seemingly brought little comfort. She left the clinic with a heart full of worry.

  By the time we finished in the OR, our first appointment of the afternoon had already arrived. I drank two cups of tea with a bite of lunch, hoping the caffeine would help me get through the afternoon. My eyelids felt so heavy it was difficult to keep them open. I splashed some cold water on my face before heading into the exam room.

  At 3 p.m., Bob Turner arrived for Goliath. Allie brought him into the dog exam room to go over the discharge instructions before bringing up the Rottweiler. Dogs need physical therapy after orthopedic surgery, just like humans. Twice a day, Goliath needed range-of-motion exercises to maintain flexibility in his hip joint.

  When Allie finished answering all of Bob’s questions, she got Goliath. He walked with her into the exam room, thinking he was going outside again to use the grass. When he spotted Bob sitting in the chair, Goliath rushed toward him. Bob leaned forward to block the dog from jumping into his lap. Goliath hopped around him, whining and moaning with delight.

  Once Goliath calmed down, Allie commanded him to lay down. Goliath looked at his dad to see if he had to obey. Bob winked at Allie then pointed at the floor with his right hand. Goliath complied, sighing pathetically. Allie placed her hands on the injured leg and slowly guided the hip joint through its full range of motion.

  “Now I want you to do it,” she instructed Bob. They switched positions, and Bob placed his hands on Goliath’s leg. He slowly extended Goliath’s hip but stopped abruptly when Goliath’s leg started to shake. With a little encouragement from Allie, he successfully completed the exercise. “Dr. Nelson wants to see Goliath back in two weeks to check on his progress.” She stared into Bob’s eyes. “Remember, 20 reps twice a day. Dr. Nelson will be able to tell if you don’t do it.”

  “Twenty reps twice a day,” he repeated. “I promise.” Allie placed a towel around Goliath’s abdomen for the walk to the parking lot. Goliath made a beeline for Bob’s jeep. With a little help, he made it up and into the back seat. He sat with his back against the seat and his injured leg off to the side. Bob jumped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking lot. Goliath had the air of a businessman being chauffeured in the back of a limousine.

  By 4:30, the energy burst from the tea was gone, replaced by mental dullness. I felt like I was looking at clients through a fog. Their voices seemed to come from somewhere in the distance. I started making cheat notes on the margin of the record to stay on track. When a patient needed medication, I calculated the dose twice, then had the technicians verify it. To top it off, nausea returned. I walked to the microwave for another cup of tea, jogging in place while the water heated.

  “Dr. Nelson, what are you doing?” Kim asked. She had not seen me jog in place before.

  “Trying to stay awake. It’s a trick I learned from Allie when we worked emergency together.” I looked at my watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be gone by now?”

  “I’m leaving,” she said, showing me the jacket draped over her arm. “But I wanted to give you Snowflake’s blood tests first.” I froze. I was so tired that I had forgotten all about Snowflake.

  “How do they look?”

  Kim winced. “About the same, I’m afraid.”

  I scanned the paper, hoping Kim was wrong. Unfortunately, she wasn’t. Snowflake’s liver enzymes and bilirubin were still extremely high. He wasn’t dehydrated anymore, but some of his electrolytes were still unbalanced. I felt my stomach churn even more. Margaret and Scott were in the treatment room visiting their cat. I escorted them to the cat room before giving them the news.

  Scott’s eyes filled with tears. Margaret began to sob. Scott placed his arms around her, drew her close and cried with her. I placed a box of tissues on the table and left the room.

  With the door closed, I pulled a tissue from the pocket in my lab coat and wiped my own eyes. Allie came in with her hands raised over her head in celebration. The instant she saw me, she dropped them back to her sides.

  “Would you like some good news?” she asked. I nodded, still unable to speak and spun around in a circle. “Bianca pooped,” she exclaimed. “I don’t have to give her an enema!”

  “Did you tell Stephanie?” I finally managed the question.

  “She was with me,” Allie replied. “We were both cheering. The people going into the boarding kennel thought we were nuts.” She smiled. “Stephanie went to pick up Mark so they could bring Bianca home together. They should be back by 5:30.” She hurried off to get Bianca’s medications and discharge instructions ready.

  “Dr. Nelson,” Scott called to me through the door. I opened the door and went back inside. “We’ve talked about it and come to a decision.” Scott and Margaret exchanged glances before he continued. “We want to keep treating Snowflake. We decided to give him two more days of treatment. If he doesn’t show any improvement by then, we’ll put him to sleep knowing we did everything possible.” Scott took Margaret’s hand in his and gave it a light squeeze.

  “That sounds reasonable,” I said.

  “Please call us right away if his condition changes,” Scott said.

  “And it doesn’t matter what time it is,” Margaret added.

  “Absolutely,” I replied. They left the clinic with their arms around each other. I returned to the microwave for another cup of tea. “I’ll sleep when I’m retired.”

  Chapter 8

  Tom and Zip

  “Krissy,” Steve called from the side of our bed. “Wake up, Sweetie, there’s an emergency.” Steve waited 15 seconds for a response. I continued to sleep. He sat down on the bed next to me and tried again. “Honey, you’ve got to get up. Zip bit a cord.” He placed his hand on my shoulder and gently nudged me. I jumped into a sitting position, almost knocking Steve off the bed.

  “You scared me,” I said. “Is Snowflake OK?”

  “He’s fine. He’s been a good boy for his treatments.”

  “Great,” I grunted and laid down again. I pulled the covers tight around my shoulders to form a cocoon of warmth.

  “You have an emergency, Krissy,” Steve insisted. My breathing was already deep and regular. He pulled the covers off of me. “Get up!” I flipped over with my back facing him. He gently rolled me back until I faced him, took my hand and pulled me up.

  “What?!” I complained. The clock on our nightstand read 10:30. “I thought you were going to feed Snowflake until midnight.”

  “Zip McCloud bit an electrical cord. She’s having trouble breathing,” Steve said. “Tom’s on the way to the cl
inic with her.” I put on a fresh pair of scrubs and threw water on my face while Steve got Snowflake ready. We didn’t want him to miss any feedings while we were away. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot with Tom right behind us.

  “She’s in bad shape, Doc,” he yelled as he jumped out of the pickup truck. He wore a fleece jacket over a flannel shirt with a pair of faded jeans. He pulled Zip from the passenger seat and followed us into the clinic. I motioned for him to place her on the treatment table while I plugged the anesthesia machine into the oxygen supply. The young Gordon setter held her mouth open, gasping for air. A small amount of clear fluid dripped from her nose. I spotted a purple mark on the roof of her mouth that extended from one side of her teeth to the other, a burn from the electricity.

  “What kind of cord did she bite?” I asked while placing an oxygen mask on her.

  “A lamp,” Tom replied. “I put protective covers on all the cords. But they didn’t do much good. She bit the cord and yelped. That’s how I knew she got shocked.”

  “When did she start breathing like this?”

  “During the ride here. Can you save her, Doc?”

  “Hold this mask over her face,” I instructed, not offering an answer but probably revealing the tough odds on my face. Tom immediately placed one hand on the back of Zip’s head and the other on the mask. Zip continued to fight to breathe even with the supplemental oxygen. She held her eyes wide open, showing all of the white sclera. I placed my stethoscope on her chest. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh was all I could hear. It sounded like a washing machine during the rinse cycle.

  Electrical shocks are a common problem in dogs, cats and rabbits, especially when they’re teething. The youngsters explore their environments with all of their senses and often taste things they shouldn’t. Cords are so tempting, especially to kittens who view them as linear playthings similar to string. The electrical current burns the animals where it enters, causing a bruise. In mild cases, the burn is painful but heals on its own. The severe burns destroy the tissue completely, requiring surgical repair. We wouldn’t know the extent of Zip’s mouth injury for days.

  As current flows through the body, it seems to affect two areas the most — the lungs and the nervous system. Because the nervous system is basically a mini electrical system, it always made sense to me that a disruption could cause seizures. In my subsequent experience, the seizures usually occurred within the first hour and responded well to diazepam. In the lungs, the electrical current causes edema — watery swelling — that interferes with oxygen transport.

  My professors used to argue over the exact mechanism of edema formation, which then led to even more arguments about the best method of treatment. One group believed catecholamine release secondary to the electrical shock caused blood vessels to constrict. When the blood vessels in the periphery of the body constrict, blood is shunted to the lungs. Extra fluid leaks out into the lung tissue, making it hard to absorb oxygen. This group treated its patients with oxygen and rest while the group that believed that hyperosmolality played a role added a diuretic to get rid of the fluid and a steroid to decrease swelling.

  So far, no scientific study had proven either treatment protocol to be more effective. The goal of therapy is to keep the animal alive long enough for the lung to repair itself, usually about 48 hours.

  “Tom, Zip has non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema. That means swelling and fluid in the lungs,” I explained. “The main treatment is oxygen until the edema resolves. In addition, some vets like to give a diuretic and a steroid to help with the edema, but it’s controversial as to whether it helps or not.”

  I stopped to let Tom catch up with the diagnosis. “When animals are struggling as much as Zip is, I usually give one dose of each to see how they respond.”

  “Go for it, Doc,” Tom responded without hesitation. “I want to do everything possible to save her.”

  Steve and I sprang into action. I clipped the fur from her front left leg, cleaned the area and inserted an IV catheter in less than two minutes. Steve attached a bag a fluids to the catheter while I drew medicine. I gave her the furosemide first, flushed the line and followed it with the dexamethasone. Now all we could do was wait to see how Zip would respond.

  Steve gave Tom a stool and turned his attention to Snowflake. I paced around the treatment room, unable to sit still from the adrenaline rush. I placed a treatment sheet on a clipboard, wrote “Zip McCloud” across the top and filled in the first column with her treatments and vitals. Her respiratory rate was 100 breaths per minute. Five minutes later, I checked her respiratory rate again. I recorded a new number, 120.

  Tom bought Zip from a breeder in North Dakota when she was only seven weeks old. On the drive home, she chewed up his favorite jacket, the leather truck seat and a pair of boots. Tom told the breeder he wanted a dog with a lot of energy that could hike all day with him. After the trip, he began to reconsider. Zip had an unbelievable ability for getting into trouble. She chewed up carpeting, knocked over a coffee pot and even managed to pull a picture off the wall.

  Thanks to Zip’s penchant for digging, Tom’s backyard resembled a perfect home for prairie dogs, with holes all over the place. But the crowning moment of her destruction came when she threw her chew toy through the TV in the middle of a football game. Tom was a huge Vikings fan and still held that grudge.

  During Zip’s first visit to the clinic, she wandered around the lobby looking for trouble. She spotted the large Norfolk pine in front of the window and made a beeline for it. She was hanging from the lip of the pot with her front feet when Allie pulled her off it. Tom had to hold her in his lap to keep her out of trouble. Even then, she managed to leave tooth marks on the arm of a lobby chair.

  Zip met Genny, the clinic cat, on her second visit. Genny liked to sit on the windowsill behind the pine, soaking up the sun’s warmth. She was stretched out along the entire sill when Zip spotted her. The precocious pup squirmed out of Tom’s arms for closer inspection. She had never seen a cat before. When Genny felt Zip’s nose on her back, she screamed. Zip retreated for a moment, then came back for another sniff. It only took one swipe across the nose for Zip to learn that cats are not playthings…especially the three-legged Genny.

  With some trepidation, I placed my stethoscope on Zip’s chest for the next check. Immediately, I noticed the whoosh with each breath seemed a little quieter. I looked at my watch and started to count. Thirty seconds later, I multiplied the breaths by two to arrive at the respiratory rate.

  “Ninety-six,” I announced. “Her rate dropped to 96.” I repeated my count one more time to make sure. Steve brought us sodas to celebrate. We clinked the cans together before drinking to Zip’s continued improvement. Twenty minutes later, she was stable enough for chest films. The X-rays revealed a mild edema in her lungs and no other abnormalities. We toasted again!

  At midnight, Zip’s condition changed dramatically. She shifted her body from side to side, pawed at the mask and whined. Tom struggled to keep the mask on her face while Steve and I held her in place. I reached under her leg to feel the femoral pulse. It felt strong and steady under my fingers. Her color was nice and pink, her lungs good…so why was she agitated? Was she going to seizure? Was it pain? Why the sudden change? I looked through her treatment sheet again. When my eyes hit the word “furosemide,” I had the answer. Zip needed to urinate. Tom carried the 4-month-old pup outside to the grass. The minute her feet hit the turf, urine streamed.

  When I first examined Zip, Tom complained that she wasn’t catching on to housebreaking. She would go outside, then have an accident in the house 10 minutes later. The breeder told him she was the smartest pup in the litter, but Tom had his doubts. I discovered a severe case of puppy vaginitis when I examined her. I placed her on antibiotics, and she never had another accident again, even when I gave her a diuretic. She was a smart girl, after all!

  “So what’s next, Doc?” Tom asked when we returned to the treatment room. “Can I take her home?”r />
  “Not yet, Tom. I’m worried that the edema in her lungs might return. For the next 24 to 36 hours, she’s still in danger of a relapse.” I placed a quilt on the floor for Zip while Steve brought three folding chairs. We talked about Tom’s farm equipment business, local politics, urban sprawl, the weather — anything to keep Tom’s mind off the beautiful puppy sleeping at our feet. Every 10 minutes I checked her respiratory rate. So far, it remained within normal limits. I wrote “wnl” on her chart.

  At 1 a.m., Zip’s front toes began to twitch. Twenty seconds later, her back toes moved back and forth as well. The conversation stopped as we focused all of our attention on her. I slipped off my chair and sat on the floor next to her head. Zip stopped twitching immediately but did not wake up. Fifteen seconds later, the twitching started again, but this time it wasn’t limited to her feet. This time she moved her legs back and forth in a running motion.

  “Is she having a seizure?” Tom asked pensively.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied. “Steve, get the diazepam out of the safe.” Steve headed toward the office. “Usually they arch their back, urinate and sometimes defecate during a seizure. I think she’s dreaming.”

  “Dreaming,” Tom repeated. “Are you sure?”

  “Not 100 percent sure, but let’s try to wake her up.” I placed my hand on her shoulder and rocked it back and forth. “Zip, wake up Zip.” Her legs stopped moving instantly, but her eyes remained closed. “Come on, Zip.” I slid my hand along her neck to her face and rubbed her ears. Zip yawned and slowly opened her eyes. She blinked four times, then rolled onto her chest and yawned again. Tom leaned back into his chair, hands resting in his lap.

  “How did you know she was dreaming?” he asked.

  I pointed at her nose.

  “At first I wasn’t sure, but she was twitching her nose,” I replied. “Dogs don’t do that when they have a seizure, only when they chase imaginary rabbits.” I smiled and patted Zip’s head. She thumped her tail a few times, then rested her head onto the quilt. Her lungs sounded great. I gave Tom the thumbs-up sign before hanging the stethoscope around my neck.