Cat Leper Colony

I have two unhappy cats on my hands. They are getting along fine. No more hissing and no cuddling or playing - yet. But both are sick.

It started with Stella. I noticed her normal dry eye boogers were turning into long trails of mucus and during the day her eyes were tearing. When it got so bad that I had to help her open her eyes in the morning, I made a vet appointment. This was our first trip to the vet together. She was fine in the car and waiting room but was a ball of hissing and claws being checked out. It turns out she has an upper respiratory infection (which I am used to. Ras gets one annually). Since her eyes were mainly effected, I was given medicated ointment. She was cool with having me wipe her eyes with a cotton ball and after some bribing with treats, the ointment in the eye went fine. It was all an uneventful routine for a week until this past Sunday. Suddenly, once the ointment came out, she became a hissy clawball with me. Treats didn't help. She has been steadily improving but I don't want her to relapse. I've had to skip two treatments due to her freakouts. Ugh!

As Stella got better and better, Ras started becoming more listless and vomited a lot. His breathing this past weekend became so ragged and noisy, I was worried that he'd choke or suffocate. Plus, he was only throwing up mucus so it looked like he had a wicked head cold. He wasn't really eating or meowing much. I took him to the vet and he had to have chest x-rays. I knew something must have been seriously wrong since he was quiet the entire ride to the vet. Usually, he meows the whole way. I have to admit, I love taking him to the vet because he's such a gorgeous sociable boy everyone from the receptionist to the doctors fall in love with him. I feel so proud like I had anything to do with it... Poor Ras has bronchitis and some weird objects stuck in his digestive tract. Since he was running a slight fever, the vet was concerned about those objects. That was a little embarrassing - trying to identify objects in my cat's bowel from x-rays. He gets Clavamox to take orally twice a day for two weeks. He's a good boy for medicine so that shouldn't be a huge deal. I just hope he poops those things out soon!