MSI Press Blog

  Our elderly gentlewoman Simone has had arthritis for 5-6 years now, controlled well enough by cosequin until recently; now she needs a monthly shot. Not only has she lived a long time with arthritis, but she has also lived a long time, period, for a Himalayan cat. The life span of that breed is 10-15 years. Simone is a dignified 17 years old. In the past year, she has developed high blood pressure controlled by medication, and in the last three months, she has lost all of her eyesight. Still, she manages. She spends a lot of time dozing comfortably in her memory-foam cat bed (shown above) that was especially developed for arthritic cats, but she insists on spending nights in bed with me in my sleep number bed, set at a very firm mattress level but topped with two layers of foam. It is also comfortable.  Tomorrow, she is going to the vet to have her front leg x-rayed; she missed the stairs leading to/from the bed, which, of course, she cannot see, and tumbled onto the floor. ...

  Murjan at the pet hospital, scouting out the area As an owner of older cats , I am aware that all kinds of things can happen with them, just like all kinds of things happen with people. In addition to various illness and cancers, our oldest cat, Simone , has gone blind . We are learning how to help her and manage her environment to make it more manageable for her. Older cats, I have learned recently (though not through personal experience) can also develop dementia. I found this article quite helpful (should any of our cats start showing symptoms): Cat Dementia: Signs, Causes and Treatment Options (msn.com) For more Caturday posts, click  HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start? Our  author au pair  services will men...

  I have to start out by saying that our geriatric cat, Simone (age 16+), a street rescue at the age of two, has a great vet, but no vet is all-knowing or always right. Ten months ago, Simone developed a cyst on her back. It filled and drained, filled and drained. Then, it just filled, and her vet drained it -- twice. She told me I could drain it at home if it got too back (bigger than the size of a golf ball), but she did not want to do surgery. Eventually, as could be expected, the cyst, in its drained state, became infected. An antibiotic injection helped, but the infection did not totally disappear. Orbax did no good at all. The vet did not want to remove it surgically because of Simone's age, but having to clean a pus discharge every two hours just did not cut it as a long-term solution. I asked the vet what reason other than age she had for not removing the cyst; there were none. She thought that Simone would not survive surgery because she was so passive during her exams. Wh...

  Our gentle, loving, lap-sitting, bright-eyed, Siamese-mix Snyezhka, rescued from the streets a decade ago when she was a couple years ago, is in remission for breast cancer (thanks to immunotherapy) but now struggling with lung cancer (immunotherapy did not work so now she is on steroids) and liver cancer (this was last night's ER surprise).  She has been in the ER, with the vet, or with the oncologist three times in the past three week. Financially draining, yes, but even more emotionally draining, bringing back memories of the last five months of Carl's life -- one cancer leading to another and then to another in all too rapid an order until the end came, not unexpectedly although abruptly. Snyezhka is falling in that same path -- dozing more than awake, eating less and less, and losing her balance. She collapsed last night, rolled of the top of the sofa where she was sleeping, then staggered across the cushions, and rolled onto the floor, and staggered under a chair and ...

Street rescue cats have personalities all their own and their own timetable for joining the rest of the family (or cat family). Some take a brief time; those younger than 6 months, generally can be integrated into the rest of the cat family in weeks, perhaps a couple of months. Those who are older can take months. Simone was and is still cautious. She slept under the house for two years. When we moved, we were happy to be able to capture her (and she promptly bit the vet and was marked FERAL).  She likes living with us, and she has never tried to leave the house, even when we accidentally leave the door wide open. She has calmed down and no longer bites vets! She even likes to be petted, BUT, even after 14 years, she still sleeps under the bed. It is interesting to see what coaxes her out. As I said, cats each have their own personalities. Simone fell in love with golf on TV. She would stand for long periods of time, following the ball, and swatting at it. We discovered this accide...

  When our alpha cat, Murjan , died, I thought that Happy Cat, Murjan's best pal and truly a pal to all the cats, would take over as alpha, keeping all the remaining six cats in line. That did not happen. Happy Cat earned his name by his mellowness. Our biggest cat at 16 pounds, he is our gentlest.  Integrating cats into healthy cat families and growing happy cat families is indeed tricky business. But it is easier with a beta. Happy Cat has shown us that again and again and again and again. Simone lived under the bed. She had been afraid of her shadow ever since we rescued her from human bullying on the street. Born a stray, she found houses intimidating, but there was safety under the bed. Of course, she would come out to eat, and we would cheer whenever she chose to spend some time in the sun. Then, a couple of years later, along came Happy Cat. While Simone still finds security in being under the bed, she comes out a lot more often and interacts with Happy Cat, the only ca...

 For a few decades, we have rescued feral cats. In fact, with only one exception, our "domestic" cats have been ferals that we brought inside to join other ferals, already domesticated, as part of a bonded cat family. Right now, we have five cats (alas, Murjan , the single non-feral cat we had, died from cancer last fall), all of whom get along pretty fabulously. Of course, all of that is easier said than done, and the bonding took time -- lots of it. Here are some of the things we did to create our cat family, some of which is not at all typical of what others have done, but it has worked for us. We don't trap the feral cats at all; we win them over and invite them in. We do this by feeding them a distance from the house and walking away, then moving the dish closer and closer to the house and walking less and less far away, until they are eating at our feet, at which point they will usually let us scooch or kneel beside them. To get to this point may take weeks. Getting...