Update on Cayenne

Cayenne saw the vet two days ago and he prescribed an anti-inflammatory for her.  It was to reduce inflammation around the two tumors on her belly, hopefully to help prevent or at least reduce the tissue breakdown around the tumors, and also to relieve any discomfort she might be having.  She didn't appear to be in pain, to me, but it's hard to tell with cats.

Did you know that the reason cats don't act sick or like they are in pain when they are is because of their wild instincts?  Cats are much less domesticated than dogs.  They still have a lot of wild cat instincts.  In the wild, if you act sick or hurt or weak, another bigger animal will attack you and eat you.  So cats hide it well when they don't feel good.

Once Mike's cat Larry was limping slightly.  We looked at his foot and couldn't see any injury.  It was early evening and we decided that if he was still limping in the morning, we'd take him to the vet.  He was eating, walking, jumping up on furniture, being affectionate, acting really normal, except for the slight limp. 

Well, it wasn't better in the morning, but it wasn't any worse, either.  I took him to the vet and it turned out he had a shattered hip.  Not just broken, but shattered.  I couldn't believe what the x-ray looked like.  The vet said he had probably been hit by a car.  I felt so awful for not rushing him to the vet right away.  It had to have been incredibly painful.  He was not only walking on a shattered hip, but jumping up on the couch, jumping back to the floor, landing on that shattered hip.  I can't imagine how much that had to have hurt.  But he was barely limping.  I'm not even sure how long  he'd been limping.  Could have been a couple of days.  It was barely noticeable.

Anyway, Cayenne had one night a couple weeks ago when she seemed to be having some pain, but she seemed better by morning.  Other than that, she hasn't seemed to be in pain.  I've suspected for a while that she may have some arthritis, though, because she hasn't liked jumping very high for a while.  She'll jump onto the couch but she doesn't like to jump much higher than that.  But that's been the case for more than a year.

She still is not jumping around, but she is a little more active, and even though she didn't look uncomfortable before, she looks more comfortable now.  I'm glad.