WARNING: The following post is going to be about throw up and poop. I know. It's gross. If this topic offends your sensibilities or if you have a weak stomach, don't read this post.
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This story begins a week ago. I got home from church and noticed the bottle of pet odor and stain remover out on the counter. Odd. I asked Marty about it.
Someone (but not either of us) wasn't feeling so well. Marty said he'd already cleaned about 5 throw up messes. But he didn't know who was doing it.
Foolishly I thought the issue was taken care of.
It wasn't.
Later when Razor and I were taking our Sunday afternoon nap on the couch, I woke up to Razor vomiting on the blanket we were sharing. Cute. I guess that answered the question of which one was sick.
Until an hour or so later when I caught Cher vomiting on the living room carpet.
Ugh. I figured they'd gotten into something together and were now forcing Marty and I to suffer the consequences. I still don't know what they got into. We took a watch and wait approach rather than taking them to the vet immediately.
Other than the throwing up thing, Razor seemed fine. She was eating fine. Pooping fine. Drinking. And after Sunday she really wasn't throwing up. At least for a couple days. But I'll get to that in a minute.
Cher on the other hand clearly wasn't feeling well. She stopped eating. She'd find a hiding place and stay put, and she'd complain when I picked her up rather than purring like she normally does. She did this for a couple of days. Days. Not eating. In fact, there were a few times that I offered her food, she took a sniff then immediately threw up. The fact that she was still drinking is the only thing that kept her from going to the vet early in the week.
On Wednesday I was ready to take Cher in. But Wednesday was not a day that I could rearrange to make it work into my schedule. By Wednesday evening Cher's attitude was up. She was acting like she was feeling better. I offered her food. She didn't throw up in response. Improvement! Marty offered her tuna. She didn't eat it. I took a medicine syringe and force-fed her the tuna water. Aside from the sticking a syringe in her mouth part, she actually seemed to like it.
I watched her. No throw up. I gave her more tuna water. Still no throw up.
But she still wasn't eating--either her food or the tuna. So on Thursday I got her some Nutri-Cal, which is sort of like Pedia-lyte but for cats--a nice mix of electrolytes, vitamins, and sugar all in a nice gooey paste. I force-fed her a bit of that in the medicine syringe. Again, she seemed to kind of like it except that it involved me restraining her and sticking a syringe in her mouth. But at least Cher was feeling better.
While this was all going on, we were continuing to find throw up spots. Not necessarily new ones, just in places we hadn't looked. It was like a really messed up Easter egg hunt. The first ones we found were in places we'd notice quickly--door ways, the kitchen floor, our bed. But the others were less obvious--Cher's favorite chair to sleep on, the quilt on the couch (different quilt than the one Razor had thrown up on right in front of me), off to the side in the second bedroom.
Back to Razor. Saturday morning 3:41 am. Razor woke me up just in time to get me to sit up so she could puke where I had been lying. Thanks, Dog.
And then there was this morning. This morning was the worst.
A smell was permeating my dreams. I rolled over, but it remained. At first I thought it was a Razor fart. A really, really potent Razor fart. And suddenly I knew. It was poop. Cher poop. At 5:51 am.
I hopped out of bed to survey the scene. First stop, Marty's bathroom where the litter box is. The good news is that there was poop in the litter box. But there was also poop smeared on the bathroom floor. And on the walls, and the kitchen floor, and the living room carpet, and more walls, and doors, and I really, really wish I were exaggerating.
Cher had had a slight problem and had some poop stuck to her tail. Try as she might, she couldn't get it off. And from the looks of the apartment, it looked like she really was trying with all her might. I helped her out, and then began on the apartment clean up. Oh, and just in case the poop wasn't enough, Razor puked in the dining room while I was cleaning up in the kitchen.
I guess this is Cher and Razor's way of saying "Thanks, Mom. We love you. Happy Mother's Day."