About 7.30pm this evening Dr Emily Payne from Pet Vets left a voicemail with an update about Artemis: “She’s drinking a bit of water for us, and she has eaten a very small amount of food as well, so that’s good. And she’s purring when she gets a pat.”
You are currently browsing articles tagged artemis.
“I’m so glad she’s doing well, I really didn’t know if she’d make the night,” said our vet Glen Kolenc a short time ago. And yet Artemis did make it through the night, thanks to interns Dr Helsa Teh and Dr Dharshinee Rajkumar and their team at the Sydney After-hours Veterinary Emergency Service.
“On presentation Artemis was collapsed and her gum colour was slightly muddy,” says the discharge statement. “She was given oxygen by mask and started on shock rates of intravenous fluids. Her blood pressure improved afterwards.” Artemis then spent the night in hospital on the drip, with methodone for pain relief.
While there is a lesion in her mouth which, as I explained yesterday, “could be a tumour”, the report also says that “her small kidneys and very dilute urine despite being dehydrated is suggestive of kidney disease”.
This morning, thanks to James Neave providing transport and Kate Carruthers covering the bills for now, Artemis was transferred back to our regular vets at Pet Vets, Petersham. She’s back on the drip and at the start of a few more days in hospital while tests are run and diagnoses reached.
At lunchtime Dr Emily Payne called from Pet Vets to say the first of the blood results were back. They show very marked kidney disease going on, “all kidney-related enzymes high”, “this all relates to kidneys”. And if it is kidney disease, well, it’s generally manageable long-term. It could even explain the mouth lesions: ulceration. We’ll find out more over the next few days.
However for the time being it’s mostly a matter of getting Artemis her strength back and then figuring out what’s going on. There will be uncertainty for a while, but she’s alive and now in no immediate danger.
My especial thanks to the many, many people who’ve given support, both personal and financial.
Donations have now well exceeded $2000, and this will probably cover the emergency treatment, hospitalisation and diagnoses currently scheduled. Whether further treatment is needed remains to be seen.
Of course if the mouth lesions do turn out to be cancer then we’re in for a bumpy ride. But it may not be that, and Dr Payne emphasised that at this stage we simply don’t know.
Thank you, everyone.
Right now I’m mentally exhausted, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I will respond properly to comments in the next instalment. But for now, I’m taking a nap.
[Photo: Artemis, 30 May 2004.]
What a week! If you were following my Twitter stream this evening, you’d already know that one of the cats, Artemis, is gravely ill tonight. She is in hospital. My cashflows are thoroughly depleted. And I am severely stressed. But I am also astounded by people’s generosity of spirit.
In writing all this, I run the risk of alienating those who want to see a supposed-professional’s website full of serious things like my media work and serious commentary, or at least mildly amusing satire, not that supposedly lowest-of-low, “cat blogging”. My good friend Nick Hodge has already written this week about professional versus personal social media projections and the risks of letting them intermingle.
But you know what? Fuck all that!
If I am to be an honest human — and I would like to think I strive to be one — then what I write about should be what is on my mind. And this is what dominates my mind today. If you don’t like it, well, stop reading now and pop back another time. Maybe next week.
And if you think less of me for writing about the personal issues that happen to be dominating my life, well, fuck you too.
So, to Artemis…
The cat vomited this morning. Again. Artemis has this habit of gorging her food and then, five minutes later, throwing up wherever she’s standing.
Today it was a projectile effort from the heights of the TV stand, a reddish-brown spatter right across the living room floor.
Remember that last time you threw up? How the acrid stomach acids burnt your throat and mouth? How it felt like it was surging up into the back of your nose? It’s just like that. Freshly warm and mixed with the reek of cheap fish.
You can’t help but get it on your hands as you wipe it up.
I’ll bet just the thought of that smell is causing tightness in your sinuses, clenching in your throat.
Wiping up cat vomit first thing in the morning is rather unpleasant, no?
If wiping up cat vomit is the worst you have to think about today, then you’re one of the luckiest bastards on this planet. It’s not a particularly demanding sacrifice to make in return for some furry companionship.
Today is, of course, Anzac Day, our national memorial for those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and that other country.
… like sitting in high vantage points around ’Pong’s desk while he’s working.
That’s Artemis on the left and Apollo on the right. Artemis had spent all afternoon asleep on my jacket, near where I was working. Apollo had been sleeping on my other jacket on the office floor. I think they now expect to be fed or something.
Since the Weekly Poll was clearly in favour of publishing the “disturbing image”, here’s a photograph of Artemis’ tail injury. Yes, you have to follow the link since some people thought that “appropriate”.
The basic deal is that our beautiful cat was probably hit by a car. She ran, but the car’s tyre caught the hair on her tail and scalped a 20cm section. The photo shows what it looked like after the vet had shaved it back for inspection.
Since then, Artemis “failed to re-gain tail functionality”. The tail has been amputated. So, as I explain to friends, we now have 1.95 cats. Apparently this is quite a common injury for urban cats.
Artemis is coping remarkably well, and it was a neat piece of surgery (thanks Katherine!). The main trauma was that it all happened while ’Pong and I were in Bangkok. Thanks to the Snarky Platypus and my office manager Virginia Bridger for helping out while we were away.
Ah, I love the smell of democracy in the morning! But since we’ll be overloaded with election news today, I’ll avoid politics in today’s Weekly Poll. Instead, the scalping of a cat’s tail.
The other day Artemis, one of our cats, was run over by a car. Or at least the fur on her tail was, and a 20cm section was effectively scalped, exposing the flesh beneath the skin. Yummy.
I have a photo. It’s fairly gross. A TV newsreader might preface it with “Some viewers may find this image disturbing.”
Now I have no qualms about publishing good Anglo-Saxon swear words. We can hear them any day on a bus, so I reckon being coy and writing “f*ck” and “c*nt” is stupid. I mean, we all know what these words are, so adding an asterisk doesn’t change the received meaning. But I did hesitate before posting this photo.
So, should I publish it? Go to the website to vote!
Last week’s results: After a year of phoney campaigning and a long, 6-week election campaign, it looks like most voters are indeed very glad today’s election day and we can all move on.
I decided not to publish a high-resolution version of this photograph. This morning one of our cats, Artemis, proudly brought us a Noisy Miner chick which she’d just hunted. After she’d played with it a while I decided to grab my phone to photograph her victory. But by the time I’d done that, this is all that remained.
Good heavens, I’m blogging about the pets!
I think I’d better migrate to Cincinnati immediately.
That said, it’s interesting that she left the claws. I don’t like eating chicken’s feet either.
ABC The Drum
Crikey
CSO Online
Delicious
Dopplr
Flickr
LinkedIn
newmatilda.com
Patch Monday
Posterous
Qik
Stilgherrian Live (Ustream)
Technology Spectator
Twitter
Viddler
Recent Comments