A Tail of Two Cats

The veterinarian who examined Buster, a young woman with tattoos and piercings, told me he has a deformed ear. Well, yes. Technically, he has ear polyps. "You can have them clipped out," she told me, "but they'll grow back in a few months." Why, I wondered, did she even bother to explain that option? Anyhow, then she says, "For polyps we recommend surgery to remove part of the ear canal." She explains what that involves, I demure. I ask for some kind of antibiotic. She offers me a cleaning fluid and Neosporin drops. OK. After three weeks of treatment, Buster's ear is still infected.

Sharon wants me to take Buster back to the hospital. My problem is, he's eleven, he's basically a very introverted cat — contemplative, I like to say — and I know from reading up on the procedure on the internet that ear surgery for cats can easily have complications. Buster definitely wouldn't want an operation. Plus which, it's expensive. Wouldn't it be easier just to give him antibiotics whenever his ear gets an infection? After all, he's managed to not have an ear infection for eleven years and I find it hard to imagine that the structure of his ear would have suddenly dramatically changed. But I don't want to get into a big argument with the vet over whether to prescribe antibiotics. Plus which, the last visit was expensive and I don't want to pay a lot more money for nothing. Nor do I want to start over under these circumstances with a new, completely unfamiliar clinic. What to do?

Experiment. I looked up several natural treatments for cat infections, compared ingredients, and decided to try a combination of tea-tree oil, rosemary oil, garlic extract, and mullein leaf extract, mixed together, squirted and/or swabbed into his ear.

First results weren't bad, but the infection kept coming back. I tried a mixture of the oils by themselves, but that didn't work at all. Then I tried a mixture of the two extracts by themselves, which seemed to work, so I wondered whether maybe it's the garlic and continued with that, but by itself it didn't do anything except stain his ear canal brown. Oh, well. Long story short, a week of swabbing out his ear with mullein leaf and garlic extract has cleared up the infection. His ear is still grotty, it's still producing itchy, scaly ear wax, but it otherwise looks clean and smells clean. Buster's acting very pleased with himself.

Great.

Then Ginger has problems. She's a very different kind of cat, very slight, a lap-cat, purrs a lot, probably the smartest cat I've ever had. I really love Ginger a lot.

She's been on a decline for a while. Same age as Buster, but last year I noticed swollen glands in her neck and the color of one of her eyes had changed. Not good. I took her last August to the aforementioned veterinary hospital, where the vet told me nothing was wrong with her. I was skeptical, but kept my misgivings to myself. Besides, I wasn't about to inflict eye operations on her or start up with all sorts of cancer treatments, if that were the problem. In short, I've been waiting for Ginger to shuffle off her mortal coil.

Over the past few months she's been eating less, has lost a lot of weight, and has had a runny nose. But I didn't want to take her back to the hospital. A mistake!

The last couple days she had a dramatic downturn, was breathing heavily, stopped eating (even when I finely diced up some ham for her — her favorite), and started drooling most of the time. I figured she was dying from a persistent illness, maybe feline leukemia, maybe a cancer. She seemed relatively content, would sit amicably with me, and I didn't want to inflict all sorts of unpleasant end-of-life treatments on her. I was prepared to let her go.

"Not so fast," says Sharon. She gets back from work yesterday, takes one look at Ginger, and insists we see the vet. I figure for Sharon's peace of mind it's worth it, but I don't have much hope the vet can do anything. OK, once you start with this sort of situation it's not like you can pick and choose what tests you want: you get everything. So Ginger has an x-ray, blood work, gets hydrated, etc., while we wait. To my surprise her blood work all seems normal. She hasn't got feline leukemia or feline immunodeficiency virus. No obvious signs of cancer, though her eye is still suspect and some specialists in Minnesota will take a second look at her x-ray tomorrow. What she has is pneumonia and it seems like she's probably had it for several months!!

Poor Ginger. She's still strong enough to put up an impressive resistance against having nose drops administered (I prevailed), and she doesn't much care for her oral antibiotic either, but she's looking much better already. I'm hoping this morning she may want to eat some ham.

Sharon saved her life. Ginger may yet be found to have an underlying condition, maybe cancer, but she might live for quite a while longer despite that. We'll see. I consider this affair a cat miracle...

Between my guilt over having not taken Ginger back to the vet earlier when I should have done, and my growing irritation at how unreliable this particular veterinary hospital has become, I'm thinking that so long as we're discussing health care reform for people it might make sense to also consider some sort of socialized veterinary medicine. Why does putting veterinary care on a purely for-profit basis make it any less problematic than having purely for-profit health care for humans?

Just a thought...