A Crisis Averted!

As many of you know, Cody suffers from allergies.  He is on a veterinary diet, but I am inclined to think, and the vet will be revisiting this, that his allergies are in fact, seasonal and not diet related. Approximately every three months Cody breaks out in miserable "hot spots", red, oozing patches on the top of his head, just above his ears.

If you look at Cody's head
you will see the "evil hot spot"

When Cody has a flare up the vet begins a course of Prednisolone which  often involves approx. 10 days of pills.

In our household, I am the "piller." My husband does not know how, nor is he comfortable "pilling" a cat. **Note:this is particularly upsetting because Cody is easier to "pill" than any cat I have ever seen. You simply trick him with food, grab him and plop the pill in his mouth. Cody is food-obsessed and it works like a charm, EVERY TIME.

A week or so before BlogPaws, I was obsessed with Cody's head, knowing it was nearing time for him to have another flare-up. I was on the alert.  My husband was a wreck. He kept telling me to "quit putting this out in the Universe." Every time poor Cody just passed within my view, I would say "Let me look at your head!" Two nights before I was to leave for BlogPaws it happened. The evil "hot spot" appeared. I promptly went into maniac mode.

I paged my vet, who, being the angel that he is, promptly returned my call. I began crying and shrieking  "Cody is having another flare-up, I am scheduled to leave for a conference in the next two days and my husband cannot pill a cat! What am I going to do?" I had missed last years conference due to a kidney stone attack and there was no way I was going to miss the conference two years in a row.

Vet to the rescue! He had me bring Cody in first thing in the morning. While waiting, I noticed changes that had been made to their remodeled facility.

I couldn't tell you if the Feliway worked, because Cody is quite good at the vet and always has been. I did like the effort on the part of our vet to make their environment more comforting to the cats that visit that are much higher strung than Cody. Cody has thankfully always been a "take things in stride" kind of cat, mostly if there is food involved!

While I waited for the vet to enter the exam room, I  surveyed the new "cat friendly" decor:

And...it was time to test it out with Cody who wasn't impressed with the "new digs" at all! 

It was mean Mama who put him up on the ledge, he did NOT go there willingly!

Cody wanted NONE of this new "cat-friendly" exam room. He disliked it so much that he actively sought out the comfort of his PTU.


Before shooting this video Cody DID get back in the PTU because I had left the PTU door open! After unceremoniously "dumping" him on the table, I locked the PTU door to prevent a re-entry!

But Cody wasn't going to give up!

"I know I can get in here!"

"It has to open, I know it has to!"

"Now where did that latch go?"

"They got me...I'm trapped"

And then we got him!

Thankfully all turned out well, Cody was given a steroid shot (which normally we don't use, but due to my husband not being able to "pill" him, we had no choice.)

Cody returned home,  I left for BlogPaws the following morning in TEARS because I had never left home with one of my pets not being well.  I was even more upset than I would have been leaving under normal circumstances.

Cody's Dad did a great job on "head patrol." I called numerous times a day for updates, and aside from a few terrifying  "I'm not sure how his head is" reports, when I returned home he was completely healed!

A Crisis Averted!