Thomas Cat

Thank you, Lord, that you care about our pets too! I feel so blessed and humbled to know God looks out for us and the pets we love.

Monday evening Thomas never came out to say, "Hello," like he usually does. I'm not saying that he greets me at the door or anything like that on a daily basis, he is a cat you know, but he does make an appearance at some point. After a short search, I found him in the basement and he was not himself. He wasn't in his usual spot down there, and he didn't move, meow, or purr when I pet him. He felt like he had a fever, and when I offered him some water he didn't want anything to do with it. He finally got up off the video chair he was laying on, but he wasn't moving very well. I was really concerned for him and even prayed for him before I went to bed.

On Tuesday morning I checked on him again and things seemed about the same. I debated about staying home from work to take him to the vet, but I really didn't feel like I could do that. Instead, I called the vet clinic on my way to work to try and schedule an appointment after work. The latest appointment I could get was 3:45 PM, and in order to take that one, I would need to take the afternoon off. I wasn't sure if that would be possible, but I took the appointment with the hopes it would work out. I also took an appointment on Wednesday at 5:30 PM just in case I couldn't get the afternoon off.

When I arrived at work, I was able to talk to one of my supervisors right away. Even though we were a little short-handed, I was able to have the afternoon off to take Thomas into see the vet. Again, I have to say, "THANK YOU, LORD!!!" It turns out that what Thomas had was quite serious. In fact, had I waited for the 5:30 app't. on Wednesday night, Thomas would not have lived long enough to get to that appointment. (Bear with me on this explanation, I don't fully understand it)Because of his metabolism, Thomas was not fully digesting all the minerals in his cat food. This caused crystals to form in his bladder, preventing him from urinating. The doctor guesses that he was not able to potty for 24-36 hours, and his bladder was the size of an orange and very hard. He was dehydrated and in a lot of pain.

To fix the problem, Thomas had to be put under, had his bladder flushed out, and received a catheter. The doctor called me after the procedure and said that Thomas was doing well. He was surprised by what he found, though. He was expecting to find thousands of little sand-like crystals, but what he actually found were 6-7 larger stones. Since the stones could be seen on an x-ray, he went ahead a took one this morning. Thankfully no more stones showed up on the x-ray so Thomas didn't have to go through another "flushing out" procedure. I was hoping that he could come home this afternoon, but the doctor thought it best that Thomas stay one more night for observation. If all goes well, I will be able to pick him up after work tomorrow.

To prevent this from happening again, we will have to change Thomas's diet. Luckily it will only be a small change. He'll now get Science Diet CD instead of regular Science Diet. I'm just so thankful! I don't know what we would have done without our Thomas Cat!!