Casts and Cats
May. 7th, 2009 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmarleyI had my final cast removed yesterday, and am sporting a highly fashionable black Velcro splint. All I have to do is refrain from breaking my pins until Monday.
The doctor went into a little more detail about the surgery on Monday, but there wasn't much to tell. All they'll be doing is taking the pins out, and also, apparently, manually flexing my wrist a bit while I'm unconscious to help stretch the muscles. This is probably a good idea, since tentative experimentation while I was waiting for my x-rays showed that, after two months in a cast, I can't flex my wrist at all. Not that I tried very hard, because I don't want to break anything, but the muscles were completely stiff. I'll be back in the ginormous plaster splint for two days, and I'll start physical therapy on Wednesday or Thursday.
In other cat news, I took Greebo in for his checkup on Tuesday. While I had Tom there, I realized that I might as well get Greebo his (overdue) shots and have him looked at. Greebo is nine years old, so I wasn't surprised that he needed his teeth cleaned. Apparently they have a nifty anesthetic that the cats can breathe that doesn't stay in their systems, so they can put older cats under for non-critical procedures like teeth cleaning. This was something we were never able to do with Sylvester. As seems to happen, he didn't need his teeth cleaned until he was too old to have his teeth cleaned. But Greebo is going to have his done in three weeks.
I also found out why, despite the fact that he was obviously huge, my other vet never mentioned Greebo's weight.
Greebo, as you can see, is not a slim cat:
And using a 17" PowerBook for size comparison:
I always joked to my sister that he was "big-boned" when she remarked on his weight, but it turns out that, um, he actually is. I didn't really see it because he and Sylvester seemed to be pretty close in size, at least at first:
When that picture was taken, though, and when I first got my impression of their relative sizes, Greebo was an adolescent, maybe eight to ten months old, and Sylvester was full-grown. Sylvester's optimal adult weight was about eleven pounds. According to the vet, Greebo's optimal weight is fifteen pounds. That's nearly one and a half Sylvesters. I just never adjusted my thinking once Greebo got to his full growth. I always thought that he was a bit overweight. It turns out that he's just a damn big cat.
At the moment, though, in addition to being a damn big cat, Greebo is about two or two and a half pounds overweight, so we're going to stop free-feeding him and institute two mealtimes a day. That's how we used to feed the cats anyway, before Boo came along and not having Sylvester jumping on our faces and twanging door stoppers every single night suddenly became a lot more important. This means that I have three different cats getting three separate meals in three places twice a day. Plus, Tom gets a pre-meal snack of his antibiotic (which, by the way, did turn out to be odorless, at least enough that he's falling for the "pill in the food" trick for possibly the first time ever in the history of cats).
Speaking of Tom, he's doing very well. There's no visible swelling in his paws or signs of fever. He hasn't touched the litter box, but he's making use of some spilled potting soil by the wall, so I suppose I can't complain much. I even tried dumping potting soil into the litter box, but he's having none of it.
The doctor went into a little more detail about the surgery on Monday, but there wasn't much to tell. All they'll be doing is taking the pins out, and also, apparently, manually flexing my wrist a bit while I'm unconscious to help stretch the muscles. This is probably a good idea, since tentative experimentation while I was waiting for my x-rays showed that, after two months in a cast, I can't flex my wrist at all. Not that I tried very hard, because I don't want to break anything, but the muscles were completely stiff. I'll be back in the ginormous plaster splint for two days, and I'll start physical therapy on Wednesday or Thursday.
In other cat news, I took Greebo in for his checkup on Tuesday. While I had Tom there, I realized that I might as well get Greebo his (overdue) shots and have him looked at. Greebo is nine years old, so I wasn't surprised that he needed his teeth cleaned. Apparently they have a nifty anesthetic that the cats can breathe that doesn't stay in their systems, so they can put older cats under for non-critical procedures like teeth cleaning. This was something we were never able to do with Sylvester. As seems to happen, he didn't need his teeth cleaned until he was too old to have his teeth cleaned. But Greebo is going to have his done in three weeks.
I also found out why, despite the fact that he was obviously huge, my other vet never mentioned Greebo's weight.
Greebo, as you can see, is not a slim cat:
And using a 17" PowerBook for size comparison:
I always joked to my sister that he was "big-boned" when she remarked on his weight, but it turns out that, um, he actually is. I didn't really see it because he and Sylvester seemed to be pretty close in size, at least at first:
When that picture was taken, though, and when I first got my impression of their relative sizes, Greebo was an adolescent, maybe eight to ten months old, and Sylvester was full-grown. Sylvester's optimal adult weight was about eleven pounds. According to the vet, Greebo's optimal weight is fifteen pounds. That's nearly one and a half Sylvesters. I just never adjusted my thinking once Greebo got to his full growth. I always thought that he was a bit overweight. It turns out that he's just a damn big cat.
At the moment, though, in addition to being a damn big cat, Greebo is about two or two and a half pounds overweight, so we're going to stop free-feeding him and institute two mealtimes a day. That's how we used to feed the cats anyway, before Boo came along and not having Sylvester jumping on our faces and twanging door stoppers every single night suddenly became a lot more important. This means that I have three different cats getting three separate meals in three places twice a day. Plus, Tom gets a pre-meal snack of his antibiotic (which, by the way, did turn out to be odorless, at least enough that he's falling for the "pill in the food" trick for possibly the first time ever in the history of cats).
Speaking of Tom, he's doing very well. There's no visible swelling in his paws or signs of fever. He hasn't touched the litter box, but he's making use of some spilled potting soil by the wall, so I suppose I can't complain much. I even tried dumping potting soil into the litter box, but he's having none of it.